SIX FINGERED BEAST

Gitane Demone, American singer/songwriter, began her career in 1980, contributing to 60 records (including early works with L.A.’s seminal death/goth rock band Christian Death ‘84-‘89) and is still recording and releasing albums with her own band Gitane Demone Quartet. Her collaborative (with German artist “N”) experimental opera “Despair” is under production for release late 2021. She’s currently recording with bandmate Paul Roessler for an orchestral project “Killing The Chief”.

For the La Matadora gallery show, Gitane created rough panels of figures she calls granite confetti entities of paper with built-up textures in gesso, India ink, and varied grey shades of the two liquids mixed, that can be felt Braille-like, or strapped up and flown like kites, though perhaps not in the murder winds of Joshua Tree. 

Rikk Agnew is an American singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and visual artist.

Agnew's music career spans more than 40 years. He has previously been a member of some of the most influential bands of the Orange County hardcore punk genre, as well as the highly influential deathrock band Christian Death. During his years with the Adolescents, Agnew became known as one of the best guitarists in the Southern California hardcore punk scene.

Agnew has also pursued a solo career and released his debut album, All by Myself, in 1982. He later released Emotional Vomit in 1990 and Turtle in 1992.

Jill Emery is a self-taught artist, living in the folk art/expressionism style. Originally from the LA-area, she played bass in her teens in various punk bands, eventually becoming a part of Super Heroines, Hole,

and Mazzy Star. 

Eventually she wanted to work quietly on her own just doing her painting. This is where her daydreaming could be put to use, exploring themes of life, death, spiritual twangs and animal advocacy to create a poetic outlet that also gave voice to her strong sense of social justice. Jill loves to do portraits of her favorite musicians or philosophers, maybe in a situation dreamt up - like Bob Dylan having coffee with T.S. Eliot’s cat. 

Monkey. The iconic frontman of the UK punk band The Adicts hails from Ipswich, UK and now resides in California. Growing up with early influences by Vision On (BBC 1964-76) and ignoring art classes in school, Monkey now creates and experiments with splashes, scratches, sparkles, sketches, scrawls and sticky glue onto all mediums. He offers bits and pieces of his history performing with The Adicts in international shows onto tangible art forms and draws inspiration from the endless ether of ideas that eternally pop in and pop out.

His advice is to “DIY! You wouldn’t let anybody else tell you that you can’t do something, so don’t tell yourself that." 

Monkey continues to tour with The Adicts but is currently working on an EP called 'Monkey With…' (a pandemic collaborative musical project), and is in the works to collaborate in the same manner with his peer group of visual artists and photographers.  

Fur Dixon started her music career as a young, wild rock ‘n’ roll bass player in Hollywood, playing on her first 7" single at 21 years of age. After forming the Hollywood Hillbillys, one of the only bands in history that counted live on-stage chickens amongst their band mates, legendary psychobilly band The Cramps became fans, luring her away and spiriting her off to Europe where she became the first bassist of The Cramps’ live lineup. 

Known for keeping a solid, hypnotic rhythm, rocking that fur-lined bra and the famous bunny tail, Fur exuded smoldering sexual energy onstage while playing somewhere around 69 shows on the band's Date With Elvis tour. Despite The Cramps asking her to remain as their permanent fourth member, Fur declined and left to once again focus on creating her own music.

She raised a child and played solo throughout New York in the '90s before taking a ten-year scenic vista into the Americana and folk music scene. Reclaiming her God-given, natural-born talent for playing rock ‘n’ roll, in 2015 Fur formed a new band, WTFUKUSHIMA!!, released her solo debut album in 2018 and began touring around the globe again for the first time in decades.

Sometime during that initial rock ’n’ roll relapse, she discovered a previously unknown passion for the visual arts, starting with photography and working in pastels, the latter of which proved to be a gateway to painting on canvas and working in sculpture. She began exhibiting her work in New England, New York and Los Angeles. Discovering this passion for working in new mediums has been part of a spiritual and artistic rebirth, a journey that is in many ways just at its beginning.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles in 2016, photographer/painter/sculptor John Nikolai taught photography and graphic design in Cambridge, Massachusetts at MIT while simultaneously photographing the New York City punk scene and working at CBGB. His photography has appeared on releases by The Damned, Public Enemy, Fur Dixon, and Gitane Demone Quartet, among others.

Once in L.A., Nikolai discovered colonies of homeless cats living in a hidden auto graveyard in Downtown, Los Angeles and learned that a cat poisoner was killing the stray and homeless neighborhood cats. He immediately began rescuing all the cats and kittens he could and began adopting them into good homes, getting the feral cats spayed and neutered, getting surgeries for those who needed it, providing food and daily care for the homeless ones and providing loving hospice care for those cats and kittens who were too far gone to recover from their injuries and illnesses. Several old school punk musicians who he’d listened to since childhood began adopting the cats and kittens and supporting his rescue mission with benefit concerts and “the rescue disorganization” Punks For Pussies emerged. The rescue became a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in late 2020 under the name Lifelines For Felines, Inc., while still operating as Punks For Pussies.

Though rescue work has allowed him little time for painting, Nikolai has obsessively photographed the homeless cats of the auto graveyard every day for years and a book is in the works.