This video is from the Austin, Texas episode of the documentary series ONE SQUARE MILE and features an interview with Director Leea Mechling at the South Austin Popular Culture Center. You can watch the series and learn more about this video by going to the series website at www.onesquaremile.tv

The show will include Greg Anderson, Bill & Ruth Carter, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Cleve Hattersley, Lissa Hattersley, Guy Juke, Elizabeth Lee, Billy Perkins, Howard Rains, Jesse Sublett and Charlie Terrell.

The exhibit opens March 10th with a reception starting at 7:09 p.m. Remember, there’s no parking at the Center so park on Collier Street and walk over. Click here to RSVP for the event on Facebook.

The show will run through April 14, 2012

Is there a cerebral connection somewhere between art and skateboarding? For some people skating is an art, for others art has nothing to do with skating. Then there are those who combine these two things to form a lifestyle. One of those artists will be featured in an exhibit at the South Austin Popular Culture Center from May 5 through June 9, 2012. That artist is Lindsey Kuhn.

Lindsey Kuhn has found a way to turn his passions into career, and has been both skating and creating art for over three decades. He was born in Evanston, IL, but grew up on the coast of Mississippi where the now infamous Swamp ramp(s) stood for over ten years. In 1983 he began screen-printing t-shirts primarily to pay for maintenance of the massive ramp. Those simple t-shirts have ballooned into an internationally known company called SWAMP. Today Lindsey is best known for his silk-screened rock posters for hundreds of bands like The Melvins, Tool, Atmosphere, AC/DC and more. Swamp also does custom printing and publishes work for other artists.

Lindsey moved to Austin, TX in 1990 and within a year started printing posters for Southern California’s L’imagerie Gallery. L’imagerie set up a small flat press shop in Austin to produce rock posters for Frank Kozik, as well as, Serigraphs for other artists they represented. Such as Robert Crumb, Ed Roth, Robert Williams, Joe Colman, and others. While printing all this great art, Lindsey realized there was a demand for what he had been doing for years and seized the opportunity to learn from these lowbrow masters helping to revive the lost art of the Rock Poster. He has continued to create posters for over 20 years, keeping his D.I.Y. ethic alive by printing his own work as well as other artists from around the world through his print company called SWAMP, which is now located in Denver, CO.

In 1994, Lindsey started making Conspiracy Skateboards because of the lack of big skateboards in the industry at that time. Today, Conspiracy has grown into one of the few truly “independent” skate companies working with artists like Pushead, Stainboy & Angry Blue as well as having some of the best underground riders in the country. In the same year he started, with the help of longtime friend Tim Kerr, Nolie Records which released 19, 7”records & cd’s most of which were local Austin bands including Jack o’ Fire, Jesus Christ Superfly, Lord High Fixers, Fuckemos and Live at Emo’s, volume 2. In 2010 his first book, “Lure of the SWAMP”, was released. It compiled many of his Rock Posters that he made over the years. This year the second edition is out with bonus pages featuring more work up to his 20th Anniversary of making posters.

Lindsey has also done commercial work for X-box, Camel, Oakley, toured with the “Southern Comfort Music Experience”, as well as having art shows in Japan, Europe and all over America.

Lindsey has brought art, music and skateboarding together throughout his life paving the way for others to enjoy and hopefully make connections with his work.

View images from the show below:

Video Interview with Lindsey Kuhn:

The South Austin Popular Culture Center is proud to announce an exhibit focusing on the Austin Opera House.  This concert hall, a partnership between Tim O’Connor and his friend Willie Nelson, opened in July 1977 with a special performance featuring Waylon Jennings.  This club was not your typical Austin-hippie-hangout; it was more known for its “outlaw” country slant.

The Austin Opera House was truly multi-dimensional. There was nothing like it in Austin. All this was right on site:  A recording studio was grown there by Freddie Fletcher, Willie’s nephew.  During the early 80s bands like Asleep at the Wheel maintained their offices on site in one of the apartments that were out back of the concert hall. Films like Honeysuckle Rose and Songwriter were filmed there, along with a Ray Charles/Willie Nelson HBO special. Stevie Ray Vaughan recorded a live album there titled Live Alive.  A wide variety of music was booked…like Todd Rundgren, Tom Waits, Third World, Suzanne Vega, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Roy Orbison and George Jones and local bands like Alvin Crow, Steam Heat and the Uranium Savages were used as opening acts whenever possible.  Willie performed there regularly, often with Asleep at the Wheel as the opening act and always with loyal fans waiting in their lawn chairs outside for hours before the show.  In 1984 Bud Shrake presented his play Pancho Villa’s Wedding in the small ballroom.

Yet, for all that, the Opera House was underappreciated and doesn’t get the press and accolades other venues of the time have received like Soap Creek Saloon, the Armadillo World Headquarters and the Split Rail.  Most of the other concert halls around town were also open every day as a bar and/or restaurant.  The Austin Opera House was open only for specific concerts and events and so didn’t have that daily interaction with its demographic like the other venues.

This exhibit should help shed some light on what went on there and its effect on Austin’s culture during the approximately 15 years the concert hall was open.

You’ll get a sense of the Austin Opera House through curator Leea Mechling’s selection of gig posters, photographs, paintings, newspaper articles and personal stories by staff members and folks who attended the shows.

You’re invited to check out the exhibit that opens June 30^th with a reception starting at 7:09pm.  Ty Grimes and some of his musical friends will provide era-appropriate music starting at 8pm.   There’s a $5 suggested donation.  Funds receive support the Center’s programs (like this).

This exhibit will run from June 30 to August 26, 2012.

Please remember there is no parking at the Center, so pull on around to Collier Street (just adjacent to the Center) and park there.  SAPCC is just a very short walk away.

For more information, please contact the Center:  telephone: 512.440.8318 or by email: samopc@gmail.com  You can also send us a message on Facebook.

Usual hours of operation are Thursday through Sunday 1 – 6pm and by appointment or chance.

South Austin Popular Culture Center: Exploring Austin’s Alternate Route

Video from Austin Opera House Exhibition Opening

Music.  T-shirts. Rock n Roll Images.  A modest article of clothing, the T-shirt, can tell a real story.  Of bands, clubs, musical and artistic performances, political events or what ever happens to be on someone’s mind that shows up in print for all to see.

The 1960s brought a proliferation of t-shirts printed with slogans and when touring bands and performance venues adopted the t-shirt as a merchandise item, there began a phenomena akin to the music poster.  It is possible to trace a part of the music scene simply by displaying the shirts.  These particular t-shirts range in time from the early 1970s to this year.  Shown in this special exhibit are items like the shirt on loan from Freddie Krc from BW Stevenson’s performance during the first season of Austin City Limits. Other t-shirt collectors contributing to the exhibit are George Majewski and Henry Gonzalez.  SouthPop includes shirts from its permanent collection in the show.  Over 130 shirts will be on display with a special tribute to the Austinatious t-shirt printing crew Slow Printing.

The exhibit opens December 1^stwith a reception that starts at7:09pm.  Tex Thomas will amaze with musical entertainment.
This exhibit will be on display through December 23^rd.
 
 

“There’s more to Austin’s music scene than just the music.

At the South Austin Popular Culture Center, you can find relics of all kinds which tell a different side of Austin’s colorful history. Vintage music bills, posters and comics speak to Austin’s rock-and-roll history.

Leea Mechling, the executive director of the South Austin Popular Culture Center, has collected posters and music memorabilia since she was 14 years old. The self-proclaimed “poster geek” said the South Austin museum even has a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair.

Check out the video above to learn more.”

Link to full article here: http://austin.ynn.com/content/community/local_wonders/289923/local-wonders–a-museum-for-austin-s–weird–side

 For more information on Austin Carnaval  please visit their website  http://sambaparty.com/

Randy “Biscuit” Turner: The Real Punk Pioneer Exhibition Poster 

Randy “Biscuit” Turner is an iconic force of Punk Rock worldwide and Austin popular culture. Born in Gladewater, Texas, he was encouraged to create art and was drawn to the odd-ball, skate-punk culture of Austin where he and his friends formed the band The Big Boys. The Big Boys were innovative, sarcastic, and passionate in their music, building on punk conventions to create a unique funk-punk genre. As their front man, Biscuit was an edgy, energetic, inclusive, musician, poet, artist, and performer; The Big Boys grew, pushing the anti-everything Generation X to be more open-minded, bright, and relaxed, but still funny, shocking, and rebellious. Since the band broke up, all of its members have continued to play gigs with up and coming bands that espouse the punk ideals. Biscuit continued to create his own brand of performance art and celebrity. He died in 2005.

This exhibition presents a collection of Biscuit’s art, from the flyers he created to promote his bands, his poetry and song lyrics, to the works created from Austin’s junk and thrift stores. His visual style grew from the characteristics of Generation X fringe social outcasts into his own personal, authentic, and unique identity that embodied the ethos of DIY design and culture, here in Austin and globally, making Randy “Biscuit” Turner a real punk pioneer.

The exhibit will run from March 9^th through April 13^th.

SouthPop will celebrate the opening of the exhibit with a reception on March 9^th at 7:09pm.  At 7:30 the Hickoids will perform and later the Uranium Savages will take the stage.  While the event is free, donations are accepted and encouraged.  There is no parking at the Center so please consider parking on Collier Street and walking over or using public transportation or riding your bike.  For more information please contact the Center at 512-440-8318 or samopc@gmail.com

For more Information or if you have any questions please email us at samopc@gmail.com or give us a call at 512-440-8318

Click here to for more information and to explore the exhibit online