by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Cult artist R.K. Sloane died last year, and Albuquerque tattoo artist Leo Gonzales is hosting a tribute to Sloane on Saturday, the anniversary of his death.
It'll be held at Stay Gold Tattoo at 123 Yale Blvd. S.E.
"We're asking everybody to dress as clowns," Gonzales said. "You don't have to, but anybody that comes dressed as a clown gets a print. That's the incentive."
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Sloane's painting career spans comic books, T-shirts and CD art for bands like Guns 'N' Roses. He liked to paint anything he could get his hands on, including motorcycles and guitars - a few that Slash of Guns 'N' Roses used during his performances.
He was most famous for his work with Rat Fink Comix.
Gonzales said there will be about 30 of Sloane's original paintings at the tribute.
"There's going to be roughly another 30 or so pen-and-inks," Gonzales said. "There's going to be three guitars that were painted by him, a Harley that was painted by him and a bunch of various lamps and sculptures that he did."
The exhibit will be from 6 to 10 p.m. Afterward, attendees are invited to the Launchpad for another tribute show for Sloane.
"Everybody here at the shop and people from out of town and friends and people who knew him have done artwork that's in memory of Rick," Gonzales said. "That stuff is going to be shown at the Launchpad. There's also going to be bands. Every band that's playing will have members that knew Rick."
The Launchpad tribute will feature the Eric McFadden Trio, Black Maria, Beefcake in Chains and Dope Riddle. Gordy Anderson, the guitarist for Black Maria, once posed as R.K. Sloane at a Guns 'N' Roses video shoot in Albuquerque, where Sloane lived in the '80s and '90s.
"Guns 'N' Roses was in town shooting the video for, I believe it was 'November Rain,'" Gonzales said. "They invited R.K. Sloane to come to the video shoot. Rick, at that point, was very agoraphobic. He never went out of the house. So he sent Gordy Anderson - who's the guitar player for Black Maria - he sent him to the video shoot and he posed as R.K. Sloane.
He said Sloane liked to fool journalists, too.
"They would call his house to do an interview, and he would put his friends on the phone and have them do the interview as him and make it as outrageous as possible," Gonzales said. "They'd talk to them about how he starts to crave human flesh when he runs out of paints and things like that. And all these crazy stories surrounding R.K. Sloane surfaced, and a lot of it wasn't true. It built him up as this enigmatic figure. Nobody knew anything about him, but he was supposed to be like this crazy serial killer creep painting in his house and collecting dead babies."
Gonzales said Sloane was one of the friendliest people he knew, but he was scared of the public and that manifested in his artwork.
Gonzales said he was a fan of Sloane's before he moved to Albuquerque in '92 and inadvertently met Sloane's son.
"One day, I was getting tattooed at the friend of a friend's house," Gonzales said. "And I noticed there was a bunch of R.K. Sloane prints and posters up, and I said, 'Wow, where did you get all this R.K. Sloane stuff?' and he was like, 'Oh, that's my dad.'"
Gonzales became friends with Sloane, and they collaborated on a painting for an album cover. He said it was a high point in
his career.
The art for the tribute show at Stay Gold comes from Sloane's friends.
"Through the years, I've bought stuff off of him," he said. "His son has a bunch of stuff. His ex-wife has some stuff. There's a tattoo artist out in Arizona who's coming down who bought a ton of shit through the years, so he's bringing a bunch of stuff. We tried to track down as much as we could and bring it together to try to pay tribute to somebody who was a huge inspiration to all of us."
