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Legendary singer Grace Slick, vocalist for the Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, is bringing her artwork to Virginia and Maryland this weekend. Date published: 2/7/2008
by dave smalley Grace Slick. The very name is iconic--the sultry voice in songs like "White Rabbit," "Somebody to Love" and "We Built This City." Slick's music career, in bands like Jefferson Airplane or the subsequent Jefferson Starship, or as a solo artist, led to a well-deserved induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an impressive ranking of No. 20 on VH1's "100 Greatest Women of Rock 'n' Roll." But Slick--still delightfully outspoken at age 68--has never been the type to rest on her laurels. She retired from music in 1989, at age 50. As she put it to The Free Lance-Star, "I don't like the way old people look doing rock and roll--I think they look silly. Rap and rock should be young people's stuff." Still, an artist is an artist, and in her post-music life, Slick began a new career--this time using a paintbrush. And she quickly earned rave reviews as a painter, portraying subjects ranging from white rabbits and Alice in Wonderland to fellow rock icons Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townshend. She'll be appearing at several galleries in Virginia and Maryland this weekend, all open to the public. For Slick, the transition from rocker to painter wasn't all that surprising. What mattered was the timing. "I used to draw," she recalled. But when she finished college, she said, "I went to work [singing]--that's what I was doing. "Jerry Garcia used to take his paints on the road--I don't do that. Either I'm being a rock and roll person, or I'm painting. I have one child, one house, one car, one job at a time, one man at a time the focus was music, so that's what I did." Even after the demise of Starship, Slick didn't plan on an official new career as an artist. Instead, during the aftermath of a broken relationship, she did some paintings of animals "to make me happy--just to put 'em around the house so I could look at a polar bear or a raccoon or whatever it was." An agent working on a biography of Slick happened to see some of the singer's paintings when visiting her house, and suggested she paint some of her peers in the music industry. At first, Slick was unconvinced.
Date published: 2/7/2008
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