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When people ask me about my art I tell them that I’m an operational crazoid - my own terminology for a multimedia conceptualist. Because my graphic work is so narrative and my written work is so graphic I don’t make a distinction between writer and artist. And because my artistic endeavors have allowed me to straddle the line between fine art and commercial art, I’ve also chosen to make no distinction between the two.
My parents were responsible for my mutant classification. My daddy was a frustrated artist, and my mother seemed to be the writer of the family. They started my reading career with the Bible; my favorite books growing up were Genesis and Revelations, which somehow inspired me to become obsessed with science fiction.
This led me to become fascinated with machinery, and subsequently, automotive technology. Though my teenage interest in sports cars may have been typical, my rabid studies of the infamous car customizer Ed “Big Daddy†Roth (who combined cartoon and horror imagery with automotive design) profoundly affected my outlook on life. When my high school art teacher told me that my painting projects followed a surrealistic theme I looked up Salvador Dali, and went on to study other artists and movements (especially Dada). Around this time my old man also gave me a copy of “Man and His Symbols†by Carl S. Jung, which was a crafty move on his part as he was unwilling to finance my model car purchases.
By the time I attended Roosevelt University (under the often un-encouraging tutelage of Donald Baum of the Hairy Who movement) I had decided that the medium that would allow me to graphically express my ideas (with a text component), was album cover art. I specifically wanted to do art for the musicians that were inspiring me with progressive, mind-expanding work. I attempted to contact Frank Zappa, Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, and a new band, Funkadelic.
I ended up with a correspondence with Zappa, an interview with Sun Ra, and an album cover assignment and long career with George Clinton/Funkadelic (No contact with Hendrix, due mostly to his death).
George Clinton’s band Funkadelic shared my perspective; they were expressing the black Midwestern urban experience by drawing from sources not usually associated with black artists (in their case rock guitar and psychedelia, in my case, white “lowbrow†graphic artists like Roth and Robert Williams, as well as fine artists like Dali). We began a collaboration that lasts to this day.
These album covers are the work I am best known for. Because of the gatefold LP size (two 12†x 24†panels), Funkadelic’s prolific nature, and the complete artistic freedom the band and (with a notable exception) the record label gave me, I was able to bring my artistic fantasies to the masses. The covers allowed me to combine numerous techniques, including painting, collage, comics, text-based artwork, and pointilistic marker art. In the subsequent years I’ve been fortunate to be hailed as a innovator in album cover art, as Rolling Stone magazine has been generous with accolades, naming 1973’s “Cosmic Slop†and 1976’s “Hardcore Jollies†as two of the “100 Top Album Covers of All Time.†Quincy Jones’ Vibe Magazine named those same two pieces, plus 1978’s “One Nation Under A Groove†to a similar list, as did The Source magazine, which added 1981’s “Electric Spanking of the War Babies†(particularly rewarding because this is the album Warner Brothers forced me to censor) and 1987’s “R&B Skeletons in the Closet.†In 1998 the art magazine Juxtapoz named three of the aforementioned pieces to their list of the 500 greatest album covers of all time.
I received RIAA Gold and Platinum awards for many of these albums (the award is based on sales), but I also was individually honored with the Album Cover of the Year award at the 1988 New York Music Awards for “R&B Skeletons in the Closet.â€
In addition to album covers I also have done text and graphic work for a number of publications, including a series of illustrated music reviews in The Village Voice from 1984-1988. I have done some animation, most notably a series of 30-second cartoons for MTV in 1989. I have also been profiled and interviewed in a number of publications including Wax Poetics, GQ, Seconds magazine, and Darius James’ book That's Blaxploitation.
My output was considerably slowed in the 1990s when hypertension and kidney problems ambushed me and almost killed me. As a single father raising an adolescent boy, and as a son caring for a mother whose health was in decline, my physical condition put my family in an interesting state of dysfunction. My health and family became overwhelming priorities, but I still managed to do some pieces for the underground press, appear in a handful of gallery shows, and self-publish a one-off magazine called Zeep (the latter to inform people that the internet rumor of my demise was premature).
With my condition stabilized, my son in college, and my mother’s passing, I am now positioned to refocus on my work. Though my high blood pressure resulted in macular degeneration (blurring my sight) I’m coping with the situation with what I refer to as third eye vision. I have just completed a work for a show at the Hyde Park Art Center, I am in a few major shows in 2007, and I am preparing for solo shows in New York and Chicago in 2008, and at least two books of my work are scheduled. I am excited to rise again!ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE.....PEDRO BELL
