The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum's upcoming major exhibition, Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s, will feature original works of art by a number of celebrated, Austin-based artists. Opening May 25 for a nearly three-year run, the exhibition explores an era of cultural and artistic exchange between Nashville, Tenn., and Austin, Texas. It will include commissioned illustrations by some of the artists essential to the Austin music scene, including Jim Franklin, Kerry Awn, Danny Garrett, Guy Juke and Sam Yeates.
Throughout the 1970s, Austin's music scene was notably entwined with and supported by a band of visual artists who produced now-iconic show posters, murals, album artwork and portraits that rivaled
UNDERGROUND work being created in San Francisco, New York, Chicago or Paris.
Artists Kerry Awn, Ken Featherston, Jim Franklin, Danny Garrett, Henry Gonzalez, Guy Juke, Bill Narum, Micael Priest, Gilbert Shelton, Sam Yeates and others were central to Austin's music and counterculture scene. The works created for music venues Vulcan Gas Company and Armadillo World Headquarters were remarkably progressive and started a movement that spread to other Austin venues like the Soap Creek Saloon, Antone's, the Austin Opera House and more.
"It was important for us to work with these artists," said Warren Denney, senior creative director for the museum. "They contributed so much to the
FRAMEWORK of the story back then, that it only made sense for us to tap them as we recall the story. It's a real honor, and their new works contribute a great deal to the exhibition."
The pioneering Austin artists commissioned by the museum remain active today. Franklin created the primary look for the exhibition, and Awn, Garrett, Juke and Yeates each contributed supporting pieces that will inform the gallery space for Outlaws & Armadillos. These original illustrations created for the exhibition are meant both to enhance the narrative and capture a sense of this rowdy and roaring era.
Galveston native Jim Franklin arrived in Austin in the mid-1960s, after spending time in San Francisco and New York. He succeeded Gilbert Shelton as primary artist for the Vulcan Gas Company. Ultimately, Franklin became a force at Armadillo World Headquarters, where he often doubled as master of ceremonies for stage shows. His depictions of armadillos are iconic works, springing from playful surrealist underpinnings, and they established Armadillo World Headquarters in the global pop consciousness. His approach ranges from pen-and-ink drawings to painting in oil and acrylic mediums. Franklin's influence on the vibrant scene cannot be overstated.
His primary work for the museum exhibition presents a prominent triangulation of portraiture featuring Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and a riff off of the classic Armadillo World Headquarters logo, suspended above a sea of armadillos.
"This project was attractive to me because the museum recognized that art played a key role in forming and shaping the scene," Franklin said. "The music and art absolutely fed off of each other. In the work, the Texas flag comes down as a tornado into the armadillos. It's the tornadic effect of
NASHVILLE on Texans. And, of course, the tornado is a subtle nod to [the late] Doug Sahm [who once was in a band called the Texas Tornados] in that whole scene. A tornado occurs when winds come in from different directions and as they combine, they swirl. Many musical winds were swirling."
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