WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA- Grace Slick, 1960s psychedelic icon and singer of Jefferson Airplane, has been down many rabbit holes in her 80 years on this planet. She left the safety of a middle-class Palo Alto upbringing and an early marriage to pursue her rock-n-roll dreams. In doing so she inadvertently became a role model for women everywhere. Grace insists today that she was not intentionally a Women’s Libber, that she merely did what she wanted without questioning why she shouldn’t. “My mother was a singer, but she stopped singing because it wasn’t fit for a woman who’s married to a banker to be singing in cabarets,” she tells a crowd, including Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady and Late Night with David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer, gathered to view a collection of her art at Mr Musichead Gallery in West Hollywood. “And my idea was, ‘If you don’t like me singing? Fuck you!”
With snow-white hair and a mischievous grin, Grace is intelligent, flippant and facetious, sprinkling curse words into conversation for both emphasis and shock value. She’s also still doing what she wants today by recreating herself as a prolific painter. She’s here this mid-October night, just two weeks before Halloween, to exhibit her work, a magical display of acrylic paintings and sketches, drawing heavily on her celebrated Alice in Wonderland mythology. “I was born in the year of the rabbit,” she shrugs. “I started painting animals because I had a break-up with a guy who had a brilliant mind, but he was crazier than a bag of screws. Animals make me happy.”
“My art is kind of like rock and roll. I’m not Picasso, so I do a thing that is part rock-n-roll star and part image.”
With other subjects conceived from her lifetime of musical consorts, she also presents portraits of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon and other idols who she has known personally. She discusses her early love of the Rolling Stones vs that of the Beatles and decides that Mick Jagger will probably be next in line as worthy of a Grace Slick portrait.
“I’ve considered doing children’s books, but I’ve also considered doing a bunch of pornography. I think my style leads more towards pornography than children’s books.”
Grace’s work can be purchased signed and in limited editions online at Mr. Musichead Gallery. https://www.mrmusichead.com/shop-grace-slick
Grace Slick Original Art Exhibition, Thursday, October 17, 2019, Mr. Musichead Gallery, West Hollywood, CA.
