NIAGARA – PUNK AND POP ART

KKSD’s header is sampled from a painting by Niagara.

Niagara is a punk rock musician and a painter. Combining an illustrator’s hand with some collage and pop iconography, Niagara’s style began to take shape in earnest during the early 90’s as she was beginning to show in small exhibits and cafes around the Detroit area.

Her first exhibits “All Men Are Cremated Equal” (1996) and “Faster Niagara, Kill…Kill” (1997) were breakout shows which garnered her regional praise . “The Niagara Girl,” who appears in many female guises, would come to represent feminist swagger with drop dead gorgeous looks and an equally dangerous demeanor. Hard-boiled, tough talking gals who would rather dispatch a man than put up with any of his antics. Her bold and colorful post-pulp comic strip countenances of femme fatales in various depictions of malfeasence was culturally solidified by Callie Khoury’s Thelma and Louise, which shares a kindred spirit with Niagara’s subjects, along with pin-up girls like Bettie Page and the bad side of 40’s and 50’s film icons such as Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall and Jane Greer.

Here’s a few samples:

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