Creator of the quilts: Ben Venom at Get This!

• Get This! Gallery
• Ben Venom’s ‘I Go Where Eagles Dare’ hand-made Quilt, 108” x 60”

Artist Ben Venom has returned to his home turf to exhibit a new collection of work at Get This! Gallery. His unique artistic practice combines the traditional aesthetics of quilting with the robust graphics of heavy metal and punk bands.

Venom cuts the graphics out of t-shirts from bands like the Misfits, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Poison, and others, then weaves them into intricate patterns onto quilts. These patterns often form the shapes of mystic creatures like griffins or the double-headed eagle. Upon a deeper examination, though, Venom’s work contains amazing symmetry, with various graphics being placed thoughtfully throughout the form itself. He also gives nods to the brash music he grew up listening to by incorporating quotes and lyrics that only the most hardcore listeners could pick up on.

Originally from Marietta, San Francisco-based artist Venom earned his BFA in Painting and Drawing at Georgia State University. His show, I Make No Mistakes will be his first solo show at Get This! While ironing out (literally) all of his art before the show, Venom took some time to talk to CL about his new work and artistic practices.

Where did you get the idea for combining quilt-making and hardcore music?
In 2006 de Young Museum in San Francisco had an exhibition of the Gee’s Bend Quilts and I saw that and was really blown away by that show. And then after that they had a collection of Amish quilts show too. I’d already been doing a lot of sewing while I was in grad school in San Francisco Art Institute, but I was making large flags and banners. I would screen print onto fabric, cutting that up, and then sewing it into large flags and banners, so I was already using a machine. Then fast forward two years to 2008, after I graduated, I had a show coming up in Berlin, Germany. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do because I wanted to do something big. And I’ve been a heavy metal and punk rock fan for a long time, I grew up in the Atlanta punk rock scene of the ’90s. I had a lot of shirts lying around, primarily heavy metal shirts, and some of them were just so threadbare I couldn’t wear them anymore. So I thought back to those shows at the de Young Museum, and I thought what’s the next logical step up from a flag or a banner, and a quilt is what came to mind.

Of course, quilts have a long history of using recycled materials, so then the first quilt that I made was in 2008 and it was shown at the Neurotitan gallery in Berlin. It was cool because the piece was roughly 6 feet wide by 8 and a half feet tall — that’s a pretty big piece, and I was able to just fold it up, stick it in a box, and put it in the overhead compartment on my flight and flew it over there with me. It ended up being the largest piece in the show because everyone else had to ship their work.