If you were a metal-head ever you probably have a collection of concert t-shirts stashed away in some closet, you know that prized Napalm Death shirt that the parents use to try and get rid of at every opportunity.
Well San Francisco based artist Ben Venom has come up with an unusual use for those old cotton gems — he sews them into quilts.
Venom (a.k.a. Ben Baumgartner) say’s that he was inspired by a 2006 quilt show at San Francisco's de Young Museum, featuring works from rural Alabama. "I was completely blown away by the architecture of the quilts, the handmade nature of them, and probably [for] over 130 years they've been making these quilts," he says.
Venom says his concert T's were logical materials because "they've been lying around my closet for years. Like my Testament shirt was completely threadbare; you could see my nipples through it," he says, "It's not very heavy metal to wear that out in public."
"I'm interested in juxtaposing traditional handmade crafts with one of the more extreme musical genres, Heavy Metal. My work can be described as a collision of Iron Maiden Metal ballads with the outrageous stage antics of Ozzy Osbourne. Serious, yet attempting to take on a B movie Horror film style where even the beasts of Metal need a warm blanket to sleep with. The question remains… Can I play with madness?"
You can check out some of Ben’s devilish duvet’s at Use Me, curated by Yuri Psinakis which opens at the Scion Space this Saturday, October 15th.
Video by Kai Tsing
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Don't Wake Me Lucifer! / 83" x 95" / 2010 Hand-made Quilt, Heavy Metal T-Shirts, Fabric, Batting, Thread |
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Am I Demon? / 41” x 51” / 2010 Hand-made Quilt, Heavy Metal T-Shirts, Fabric, Batting, Thread |
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| See You on the Other Side / 155” x 175” / 2011 Hand-made Quilt, Heavy Metal T-Shirts, Fabric, Batting, Thread |
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