26 August – 30 September 2015

174 Rivington Street Bar and Gallery is pleased to announce that spotlight curator Lisa Lush has assembled an exhibition to feature musicians who are also artists. As a former musician on the NYC garage punk scene she noticed that many of her artist friends have put their focus more on music, but also deserve to have their visual art showcased. THE ART OF NOISE: A Punk Collective features the artworks of Anthony Begnal, Lee Ann Fassbender, Max Frechette, Sierra Furtwangler, Stu-Art Gray, Sam Harris, Sean Pryor, Tommy Volume, and Joseph Western who are all part of the local underground punk music scene. The opening reception will take place on Wednesday, 26 August 2015, from 6 to 11pm, with DJ Charles Gaskins.

Anthony Begnal is a quasi-legendary punk rock artist originally hailing from the wilds of Pennsylvania and currently located in NYC. His art has spanned from Necros flyers to paintings hanging in the Los Angeles Punk Museum. He released a successful, sold out, first issue of a comic book series last fall entitled, Life is Wonderful. His paintings in this exhibition feature “Great Moments in Punk History.”

Lee Ann Fassbender, or Melody Lee (as she’d like you to call her), a transplant from Philadelphia now residing in Jersey City, has been in punk bands since the age of eighteen including The Percs, Dead End Drive and Used Rags. This jack of all trades is a DJ, seamstress, musician, and artist! She uses various mediums to create her punk and seditionaries reproductions as well as original punk inspired pieces.

Brooklyn resident Max Frechette studied fine art at Pratt and fronts the garage punk trash band Othermen. CMJ described them as one of “the most exciting garage punk acts currently soiling stages in NYC.” When asked for an artist statement, Frechette responded, “’Music is ‘cooler’ than art.’ –Mr. Knickerbocker Boppity Bop.”

Multimedia sculptor and painter Sierra Furtwangler’s hand stitched masks, made from various fabrics and fake hair, are each based on anatomically accurate animal skulls and planets from our solar system. Furtwangler currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband/bandmate and their teenage daughter. She is cofounder and keyboard player of garage punk disaster Lex Loser, and makes up half of misandrist folk-punk duo Anus Eyes.

Stu-Art Gray has been making art for as long as he’s been doing music, and that goes back to 1978. In Australia he played in bands such as, Salamander Jim, The Beasts of Bourbon, and Lubricated Goat, which became famous for their always naked performances. In 1987 he was listed in the Who’s Who of Australian rock as having been in about seventeen bands. He currently plays, with clothes back on, in The Art Gray Noizz Quintet, in New York City.

New Yorker Sam Hariss was born into a family of multiple artists. Though the bass guitar is what he considers his first love, he has been encouraged to create art from the time he could speak. Sam plays bass for Lower East Side band, The Sweet Things.

Drummer for EXECÜTORS, Sean Pryor, who attended SVA and has worked with comics author Harvey Pekar, presents electric illustrations of skeletons and iconic fuck off’s.

Tommy Sirignano, a.k.a. Tommy Volume, a New York Native, is the singer of The Conjugal and former guitar player of The Star Spangles, signed to Capitol Records. The exhibition displays a few of his portraits, he plans on graduating to full figures in the next year.

Joseph Western has been photographing since his early teenage years, which is also when he first started to discover punk music, play in bands, and attend gigs. The initial motivation for taking pictures was impulsive and his primary visual influences were informed by what he saw on record sleeves. His most recent and comprehensive series of pictures is titled “Let the Good Times Roll,” a culmination of the personal visual diary which began in those early years. He plans to release it as a small run of self-published zines later in the year.

This multi-media exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and illustrations featuring iconic figures in bronze and on toilets, fetishized planetary figures, woodblock printed band flyers, and seditionaries throw-backs with have you laughing, feeling nostalgic, and glad that the underground scene lives on in the Lower East Side.
We look forward to welcoming you to 174 Rivington!