Artist in Profile
SCOTT GUION Portrait of a punk-playing painter By Dana Delworth You’ve likely seen his work: the fences surrounding the House of Blues recording studios in Berry Hill, covered with smiling, mandala-like images of Nashville’s musical DNA; Hieronymus Bosch-esque album covers for Galactic and Hurray for the Riff Raff; the oh-so-Instagrammable mural on the side of Fanny’s House of Music in East Nashville, depicting a panoply of women taking the rock ’n’ roll lead from Sister Rosetta Tharpe forward. What you may not know: The artist, Scott Guion, lives among us, and we’re getting to see what he hears. Guion moved to Nashville over a decade ago, after a short-lived, post-Katrina return to his native New Orleans. He and his family now live in Inglewood and count among the proud creative contributors to the area, with Guion’s Tomato Art Fest submissions — surreal portrayals of usually disparate characters and elements joined together in a way that somehow makes sense — garnering high praise from attendees and judges alike. Take 2017’s “Best in Show”-winning “That’s all Folks,” which shows Barbie riding atop a Monopoly bill like a flying carpet, alongside G.I. Joe, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice, holding trays of food in front of a Piggly Wiggly grocery whose namesake mascot inexplicably watches television with Archie Bunker while Jesus, holding an automatic rifle, looms in the air. Not only does Guion take it all in, he has a way of making a statement that addresses all the world’s ills and ridiculousness simultaneously. It might come as a surprise, after taking in his meticulously detailed work, that Guion happened into a field that has given him national renown by accident. Early on, Guion considered himself a “band guy” — he started playing in bands at 16, before he was old enough to get in the bars of late-1980s New Orleans. “The art happened accidentally,” Guion says. “The flyers and cassette covers became an art form in itself.” →
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theeastnashvillian.com September | October 2018