eadweardyork.com
Title
Eadweard R. York: Infamous Art Photography Film & Design
Additional Information
Eadweard R. York
b. Twentieth Century
Birthplace: Omaha, Ne.
Founder of The Destructionist Art Movement.
Founder of The Museum of Cheap Art
Founder of The Omaha Center for Contemporary Art
Founded Dementia 99
Destructionist / Conceptual / Un-Conceptual / Un Pop / Outsider / Anti - Artist / Photographer / Filmmaker
Last Exhibition: Surreal Subconscience Dementia Paintings
Alias: Scherzkopf / Chester Stark / Eadwierd Kroy / Rhawn York
Eadweard was born in Omaha by complete accident. His family was on a plane trip from Los Angeles to New York when a huge storm caused so much turbulence that his mother went into labor causing the plane to make an emergency landing in Omaha. A really bad thunderstorm rolled through the city, and the very minute he was born the electricity went out all over town. The doctor jokingly said to his Mother, "Who is this kid? He just shut down the airport, and the whole city had a blackout, and he's only been here a few minutes."
Besides being a photographer, Eadweard is an infamous underground artist whose art, and public reaction performance has influenced a whole generation of conceptual, and contemporary artist.
Eadweard aka Rhawn York has a whole chapter featuring his early paintings, and performance art in the out of print hardback book "Passing in The Outsider Lane" published by Journey Editions / Charles Tuttle alongside the infamous visionary artist Reverend Howard Finster (Talking Heads, REM album covers,) and the legendary L15. Eadweard states that the book is a classic textbook example of pure exploitation of the self-taught / outsider artist with a babbling psycho analysis of their work by the author. The out of print book, and contents from the artist are included in the Vanderbilt Universities permanent collection.
Eadweard has had over 75 exhibitions, and is included in numerous private art collections. After living in a punk house, and on the streets as a kid, Eadweard moved to Omaha to focus on his art, and photography. Thinking that the punk scene would be dead he Buck Naked on the streets, then saw The Naughty Virgins, and soon fell into the very small close-knit Omaha punk scene. Omaha was a cultural wasteland, and Eadweard could not find anyplace to exhibit his art. Every gallery, and even the museum, and one art foundation featured Omaha's best Sunday painters. Eadweards work was too avant- garde for them to comprehend. So, Eadweard founded the first, and only punk outsider anti-art contemporary art gallery, "The Museum of Cheap Art" which was an infamous venue for radical experimental art, poets, and musicians The Museum attracted an international reputation as a cutting edge avant-garde art gallery. The Museum hosted the notorious Scherzkopf, and Slumlord exhibitions. The numerous musicians who played there were the only avant-garde musicians in the Midwest who contributed to, and influenced without any due credit what is now considered the so-cool Omaha music scene. Eadweard left Omaha 1989 for San Francisco, but moved to Seattle, then Portland, then back to LA in 92. In 1998, he went back to Omaha for a short time, and founded, directed, and designed the avant-garde art center "The Omaha Center For Contemporary Art." He left Omaha for LA in 2001.
Eadweard has shot photography portraits of Underground Celebrities such as Henry Rollins- (Black Flag, Rollins Band,) Laurie Anderson, Mike Ness-(Social Distortion,) David Worjorniwitz, Stiv Bators- (Dead Boys,) John Lee Hooker, Pond, Kim Salmon-(The Scientist,) Janis Ian, Gerard Malanga, Smashing Pumpkins, Alien Sex Fiend, Bahrdou Zoohaus, Chester Stark, Allen Ginsberg, Jesus Lizard, Crispin Glover, Beat Happening, Vic Chesnutt, Rex Church, Local H, Material Issue, The Pain Teens, Buddy Miles, SRL- (Survival Research Laboratories,) Lari Love aka Lodon James, GG Allen & The Murder Junkies, Peter Himmelman, No Heros, Hitting Birth, Scherzkopf, Ziva Cohen, Bo Diddley, The Sleeze Kangs, Nuns with Guns, The Electric Hellfire Club, Gary Lee Boas, and others.
Eadweard's work has appeared in numerous publications including Spin, Rolling Stone, Plazm, Zero Hour, Arena, The Rocket-Seattle, Art Papers, Venice, Harpers, Art Review, Emigre, The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Orange County Register, Coagula, ART RAG, The Folk Art Messenger, Creative Loafing, American Art Review and RayGun to name a few. He has worked with infamous art directors like Art Chantry, David Carson, and cool filmmakers like Jodi Willie, and DNA-David Naylor & Associates on projects.
"A little about me. As a kid still in high school, I didn't have anywhere to live, so I moved into a crappy punk house worse than the one portrayed later in the movie Suburbia. There was no MTV at this time, and only a couple radio shows with cool music. It was a time of anarchy in America. This crappy house had holes punched in every inch of the walls that were covered with punk posters, flyers, albums, and art. We hid everything in the holes in the walls behind flyers. Numerous people crashed there, and I had to lock my clean underwear in a toolbox. The dirty shag carpet had huge holes in it where you could see the plywood floor. The only furniture was a small plastic TV, a dirty plaid couch, a bowling ball, and a wrecked kitchen table with thousands of watermelon seeds spit all over it. There was never any food in the house. There was no phone, and the electric was constantly being shut off, so we took numerous cold showers, which sucked ! The toilet, and bath had scum rings, and a fungus like tree ring growing in it from years of not being cleaned.
When the song "Kids in the Black Hole" by The Adolescents came out, it quickly became our theme song for the house; we played it non-stop as it summed up exactly how we felt. Kids in the Black Hole, and Homicide by Nine Nine Nine are two of the greatest punk songs ever. This house was the most depressing place a person could have lived in, besides maybe a crack-ghetto hotel. The only good thing about this house was the huge skateboard ramp we built in a field next door which we skated everyday, and the music we played."
I was always into music, and one of the first punk bands that I discovered as a young kid was Eater. I went to every show I could, almost every night. I saw numerous great bands numerous times like FEAR, Black Flag, TSOL, The Adolescents, Flipper, The Cramps, The Ramones, Johnny Cash, DEVO, X, The Gun Club, Social Distortion, Sonic Youth, The Vandals, Youth Brigade, Crass, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, DOA, Haunted Garage, Tex and The Horseheads, The Buzzcocks, Nine Nine Nine, The Butthole Surfers, Specimen, The Misfits, Minor Threat, Toxic Reasons, 7 Seconds, The Descendents, MDC, ALL, Psychic TV, Dr. Know, The Angry Samoans, DC3, BOMB, Chuch Berry, L7, Nirvana, Early Flaming Lips, Tad, Run Westy Run, Hole, and The Clash to name a few. I lived for the music. I started a few noise punk & psychotic country bands: Neubach Chaotic on No Life KXLU Records (KXLU Demolisten compilation with Beck, and Sukia,) The Blue Earth Gypsy Tea Club, Glamour Kitty.
The only thing that got me off the streets was my art, and photography. One day, I took everything I owned except my albums, and threw it all in a dumpster, bought a one way plane ticket, left everyone, and everything I knew, and decided I would try making a living as an artist. High up in the plane as I flew away from my life, I picked up a station on my Walkman playing The Clash song (Should I Stay or Should I Go.) It was hard leaving everything, and all my friends behind, even though my life sucked, it was all I knew. I never looked back, throwing everything away, and leaving was the best thing I could have done at the time.
I had been doing art, painting, performance since I was a kid, and just fell into photography & film by chance; I borrowed a Nikon camera from a friend from Bhutan, and took some photos on the streets, and some homeless faces. A punk girl I knew showed them to a fashion photographer from New York that she was seeing, and I got a job as his assistant.
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