Rick Turner

Rick Turner grew up in San Antonio, arrived in Austin late in 1968 and immediately immersed himself in the counter cultural psychedelic society that had already grown roots.  After publishing a book of drawings entitled 'Austintatious,' Rick, along with Kerry Awn and Tommy (Tommy Bee) Bauman, received the seminal commission to paint the vendors’ 23rd street market mural.  Although Rick contributed poster work for most of the major clubs, his focus at this time was airbrushed wall paintings and performing with the band Sons of Uranium Savages as part of the 'Shrovinover Security Arm'.  Rick never established a connection with the cosmic cowboy/alt country sensibility, so when hints of something revolutionary began arriving from London, he embraced punk rock.  He began designing leaflets for radio personality Rev. Neil X and posters for the clubs willing to showcase punk.  Rick always worked with lithographers who could achieve the crispness he enjoyed from his collages of old engravings.  Many projects were completed with his partner and Sluggo! editor Debra X-It, calling themselves Drastic Graphics. By the beginning of the next decade there was a strong feeling of change in Austin.  As punk was moving to hardcore, the Armadillo was gone, many in Rick's circle were relocating to either the East or West coast, and he decided to investigate the art world of New York and the 80's east village/downtown scene.  Though he continues to paint, print, and draw, he claims he has never experienced anything close to the flowering of imagery and the resultant communities of friendship and love that so defined the Austin of the 70's.