art// The Pizz: Remembered By His Friends
Recently we had a huge loss, in the world that some call Lowbrow Art. The Pizz was more than just a fixture in the kustom kulture scene, he was more than an amazing artist, he was also an eccentric character that can never be replaced. Not only did we loose a great artist, but so many of us lost a good friend.
The morning we heard of his passing we were in complete disbelief and shock. We thought back through the years and the conversations that were had with him. All the events that we kept eachother company at, while we sat and peddled our goods. The times when food and items would be missing and it was "the guy in the striped shirt and sunglasses" took it. Dinners at hometown restaurants that he introduced us to (and paid if you know him you know its shocking). The laughs, the encouragment, the long drawn out stories, the shit talking... it was all going to be missed. No car show or art show or event will EVER be the same without him.
Later that night I started writing, trying to compile facts that would sum up The Pizz into a few paragraphs - it just didn't seem fair to him. So rather than commemorating him, by filling space with Googled Wikipedia facts, I decided to leave that to the media outlets that did not know him. So here are stories from some of his friends and fellow artists, the stories and facts about Pizz that matter... he is and always will be important to us and we owe it to him to make sure that both him and his art are never forgotten.
Say not in grief: "He is no more", but live in thankfulness that he was.
Sara Ray:
I met the Pizz when i was very young, he wrote a story about our meeting where i rode up to his house on a Schwinn Pixie in pigtails - a mouth full of braces and sat me upon his knee and regaled me with tales of lowbrow. That's not AT ALL how it happened, but ok.
The person i am today is because of the Pizz. I, an art school dropout went to him with a trunk full of art he dissected and separated, my first task was to paint a canvas with his directions based on what he felt my strongest work was, I went home and did - coming back with the painting he took his sunglasses off for the first time and looked at me saying, " you did everything i told you!", " well yeah ", I said. "OK, then let the lessons begin " and the lessons continued for nearly two decades I learned more about art and technical detail than I could have ever picked up in a university. He even put me in my first show, by taking the paintings to the gallery and hanging them up without asking them ( hahahaha)
I remember one early painting , he stared at it in the living room for hours, finally saying , "you know if you made her clothing a little transparent, show a little pube or something, it would finish the piece", I stammered red faced, something about how that would be indecent. But, I went home and after much trepidation painted it , and it really did make the painting perfect. Since then I don't think I've painted much without bare breasts, all manner of protruding nipples and see through underwear. Who knows what I would have been painting without the direction of Uncle Pizz , 'Sara Ray painter of boobs' would be making sad kittens in puff paint on sweatshirts maybe.
The things i keep thinking about, laughing and cringing at the same time are our adventures into the outside world. The statute of limitations on the events that transpired have not quite run out so I'll have to keep it without all details. Trying to hide the stolen property he placed on me, or in my booth, cops on one side, people arguing on the other, him playing the perfect straight faced innocent trying to "Help" the people find what was lost. Never anything valuable, always something to cause a panic in his studies in human behavior. In the middle I stood , hand over face thinking " so THIS is what it's like to be kidnapped by gypsies" . I felt like the little girl in paper moon with him, I really am surprised we didn't sell bibles door to door at some point, for his sheer amusement.
One recent weekend, we had a show and I traveled down for it , I was not feeling great, but that was not getting me out of it. We set up and had the usual parade of characters to deal with, I was feeling worse, he went and got cold waters and rubber gloves. He felt bad for me, but didn't want to touch "sicky" so he patted me on the shoulder with his rubber glove, "there there". By the end of the show I had a full blown fever and told him he would have to drive, which in my delirious state I had forgotten what a mistake that was . He had a game he played on the highways of our fine nation lets call " Road Rage Chicken". He scanned the roadway in front of us like George Patton at Luxembourg . He had not been behind the wheel more than 3 minutes before manipulating the blinker and slowing into the passing lane in the opposite direction of said blinker. I witnessed a man in a Porsche on his cell, drop his Starbucks and go into a full body seizure of rage. Pizz yelled " WE GOT A LIVE ONE!", and giggled like a deranged demonically possessed schoolgirl. The Porsche tried desperately to get in front of us, but Pizz controlled the entire road in my Blazer. Right then, the chain of events got three more drivers hooked into his game like marlin on a charter boat. Assuming we were going to be killed i demanded he stop, only when I explained how my truck was easily identifiable and not his stealth beater, he relented... but grumpily. When we got back to the house I was on deaths door - i passed out on the couch with nightmares of toll road revenge seekers all night. When i woke up I didn't hear anyone in the house, "Hello? Anyone home?", nobody. I got up and heard something drop on the floor in the kitchen. "Hello?", a footstep, but no answer. I walked around to the hallway .... a figure draped in black, wearing a skull mask with a GIANT butcher knife jumped out in front of me. He yelled, "I'M MAKING BREAKFAST!" and he left the skull hood on the rest of my stay.
I knew Pizz longer, and better, than i knew my own father He is, and will remain, one of the most important people in my entire life. There has not been a single piece of art I've created that did not have his influence in it and that will never change. He made me who i am today and I know for a fact that I would be a lesser developed soul if i had never met him. I keep texting him about the things I see and read to ask his opinion because I'm so used to it. He was the captain of this misfit ship I boarded years ago, and it is going to be a very hard sail without him.
I will put my blinker on and drift into the wrong lane, and when that Starbucks gets tossed at my windshield and the Cayenne behind me goes absolutely apeshit, I will know I made you proud. I love you, Pizz.
Candy Weil:
I met PIZZ for the first time when I was 19 years old. Within seconds of meeting him I had a nickname (Candy). Within days of working with him I knew all I ever wanted to be was an artist. In the summer of 2002 I was working at a coffeeshop in Long Beach, drooling over his spread in Juxtapoz Magazine. His art was unlike anything I had ever seen! Exciting, colorful, raunchy...twisted perspective filled with menacing characters. Right up my alley! When I found out he needed an intern, through a mutual friend, I jumped at the opportunity.
He was scary at first. Super pushy, opinionated, stubborn (he never stopped being those things). He dubbed me his "Eager Little Intern" (as I was anything but eager) and he was my "Sensei." We fondly referred to each other with these titles well after my 'internship' ended and and I began working on my own.
The Pizz was a gifted artist...Even being the dominant art force he was/is, he was always trying to 'get better.' We could always be better artists and people...we talked about that lot. How can we improve? What can we research to take the subjects of our pieces that much further? It was inspiring being around someone early on that really wanted to know everything. It still is! Blacklines, perspective, creativity, his usage of color, all things he mastered and made sure those elements were ever present in his work. I'm sure most would agree.
Oh, what can I say? I could tell you he changed my life, or that he taught me everything I know. I could also say he was fascinating and had talent beyond measure. But to express the influence the PIZZ had on me (and so many others) is a difficult task, indeed. We all lost a great mentor and friend with the passing of the PIZZ. I can only say for myself that I am heavy hearted and lost. I truly love this guy and have since the day I stepped into his studio.
Even as I write this I can't help but wonder what he thinks of what I've written. What would the "Lord of Lowbrow" have to say about the words I'm laying down for others to read? Well, I don't know, and won't ever know (I'm sure he's got plenty of corrections). He's gone and I am left with a gaping hole in my heart. Love you Pizz! I always will...
Anthony Ausgang:
In the early 80s, the Zero One and La Luz de Jesus were the only galleries showing art that would later be called Low Brow, but there were cafès and restaurants that were also willing to give “alternative” artists a chance.
I first met Pizz in 1985 when I was hanging a show of my paintings at a sympathetic 50s revival diner; the paintings from the previous show were stacked by the door and I was stoked to see work that I could relate to. These paintings were exactly what I was looking for: Monsters, hot rods, and chicks in varying stages of undress in lurid colors So, in walks this dude with black road grease on his skinned knuckles from working on his car, talking at me before I’d even said hello. We became allies after that, and I would see him at art openings looking like a reg’lar surf beatnik but out talking everyone like the Italian opera star he was.
In 1994, Pizz and I took the train from Los Angeles to Seattle for the opening of the Kustom Kulture exhibition at COCA. As we headed north, the people getting on the train were progressively more provincial, consequently some of them found Pizz’s appearance vaguely unsettling and potentially threatening. His black sunglasses, black clothing and black beard really threw one group of yahoos for a loop, and every time we passed them on our way to the bar car they would say stuff like, “Are you guys beatniks or fagniks?” or “Look, its Johnny Crash.” Well, since we were stuck on the train for another twelve hours, I asked how we should deal with them and Pizz just smiled and snickered. So, the next time we passed the group, they said, “You beatoffniks going to Canada to marry some Eskimos?”, and Pizz stopped by the guys sitting on the aisle and said very slowly “Y-e-a-h”. Then the most god awful, nauseating fart stench suddenly permeated the air and the dudes began choking and holding their noses, waving their hands in front of their faces, gagging on the foul air. As we left the car Pizz said to me, “That should shut ‘em up”, and it sure did.
So we finally get to Seattle; I began looking for my buddy I was staying with and Pizz made a phone call. Eventually my friend appeared and it turned out he was carless, that we were taking the city bus. Well, I got on that dirty fucking bus and looked out the window just in time to see Pizz taking off in some bitchen car with a hot chick at the wheel; that’s just how he rolled…
Robert Williams:
Panter was the father of punk rock art, but The Pizz was right behind him. He had a strong personality, a tremendous presence. Not everyone liked him. If you were sensitive he could come across as abrasive. But he had a poetic nature. He was mentally a cut above the people he hung around with. He felt more comfortable with them. Me, I try to drag my trash up to a higher level, he wasn’t like that.
