HodgeKerr
No Kings But Us

About the artists

Robert Hodge was born in Houston, Texas, and raised in the city’s historic Third Ward district. After graduating from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Hodge attended the Pratt Institute in New York and followed the pursuit of art and music to Georgia at the Atlanta College of Art. Hodge has exhibited his work in numerous national and international institutions, including The Station Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Young Masters Exhibition in London, Politics of Sound, Archive at Centre George Pompidou, Paris, France and the Contemporary Museum of East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya as well as the Virginia Museum of Fine Art to name a few. Hodge recently won the Champions of Local Artists award in 2021 for his work in the Houston Art Community during the pandemic and was announced an Artadia Award 2022 of unrestricted funds to use without desecration for his practice.

robertleroyhodge.com

Tim Kerr's first art award was winning an elementary school fire prevention poster contest. Like any self-respecting artistic outcast in Texas, he moved to Austin after high school graduation, where he has lived with his wife, Beth. He earned a degree in painting and photography at the University of Texas in Austin and studied the latter with Garry Winogrand. Tim was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant while at UT. He won a slot two years in a row for the new songwriters contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival during this time as well.

After college graduation, Tim became involved musically and artistically with the early stages of the DIY (Do It Yourself) punk/hardcore/self-expression movement. The idea that anyone could and should participate in self-expression burst open every door and window inside him. He was a member of bands that have made recordings for labels such as Touch & Go, Estrus, Sympathy For The Record Industry, In The Red, Sub Pop, and Kill Rock Stars. Tim also produced and recorded bands for all the above labels, both in the US and overseas. Journalists and critics have cited bands that Tim was a member of as having been a major factor in starting everything from punkfunk, skaterock, grunge, and garage; and all have played an important role in what is known, for better or worse, as the US indie scene today. The Big Boys, Poison 13, Bad Mutha Goose, Lord High Fixers, and Monkey Wrench are just some of the bands Tim was a founding member of. Some of Tim's art from then is now in books depicting that period. He shared bills with the likes of Grace Jones, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Fugazi, Black Flag, Africa Bambaataa, and X, to name a few. He has toured in the States and abroad.

Tim is now being asked to show his artwork in the US and abroad from galleries, including PS1 in New York, 96 Gillespie in London, Slowboy Gallery in Germany, Outre in Melbourne, Australia, and Beams in Tokyo, Japan. He was honored to have been selected as the first artist for the Arlington Transit's Art On The Bus program in 2010. He has also painted murals in Texas, Nashville, New York, Alabama, and California. In the summer of 2015, Tim had a solo show at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery. It then traveled partly to The Mill in Huntsville, Alabama, and in full to The WireGrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama. He was also given a residency through Void Gallery in Derry, Northern Ireland, AS220 in Providence, and I.A.M. in Berlin. Artist Matt Stokes asked Tim to help with his pieces The Gainsborough Packet (The Baltic & 176 Gallery), These Are The Days (AMOA), and Catata Profana.

Tim was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame by popular vote in 1996, which he says he is still honored, humbled, and confused by. His first band, the Big Boys, was inducted in 2017. The Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle asked to record an oral history with him in 2000. He has donated many of his personal archives to the Austin History Library. He composes and records music for several choreographers who work in Austin. These pieces have been performed in Austin, New York, and California. He created soundtrack work for films such as Bill Daniel's documentary, "Bozo Texino" and Jan Krawitz's documentary, "Drive-In Blues". Tim's art is on album covers, posters, skateboard graphics, and advertisements, and a book devoted to Tim's art has been reissued through Monofonus Press. From 1990 to 2000, along with his library job, he also worked in a stained glass studio building windows, fusing and sandblasting glass.

There are many interviews with Tim in various magazines, webzines, and books. He has been asked to speak on panels and also gave a talk at the college in Ljubljana, Slovenia, about himself and his involvement then and now. The approach of an upcoming documentary about him and one about his first band, the Big Boys, has Tim honored and surprised.

Throughout his life, he has never felt comfortable with labels and their restrictions. When someone confines him to one label, they do themselves and Tim a disservice. He is painting more than ever and now plays Irish and Old Time music with friends in Austin and wherever his travels take him. In Tim's own "words, "I'm not dead yet. I am still active, and as proud as I am of all that has happened before, I hope I have not seen the best thing yet." In the words of his friend Dan Higgs, "Keep Breathing til you stop because there's a whole lot of today before tomorrow."

timkerr.net