Planet Dorshak Featuring Jerry Bennett!
Planet Dorshak featuring Jerry Bennett
Hanging through October
3003A Paseo in Oklahoma City
Pop Art is harder than you think. Taking existing icons of mainstream culture and re-imagining them in a clever way is a challenge. It takes a really unique artist who possesses both sharp technical skills but also the imagination to find new ways to perceive familiar characters.
So, let me introduce the first featured artist for Planet Dorshak, Mr. Jerry Bennett. Here is the thing you need to understand: you love Jerry Bennett. You have to. It’s a fundamental aspect of human nature. We eat, we sleep, we love Jerry Bennett. It’s science.
Jerry is a modern pop artist of the finest order, but also a wonderful human being with a laugh so boisterous and ridiculous that you just want to hug him to death. You’ve seen his images on social media and on t-shirts across the state. Maybe it was Admiral Ackbar in a Ghostbusters’ outfit proclaiming “It’s a Trap!” or it could have been ET holding Baby Groot. Though he does his fair share of classic pin-ups, Bennett’s specialty is the mash-up, treating cultural touchstones like Lego pieces to be clicked together in ways that are surprising for how seamless they appear. This is part of why he is a favorite on the comic convention scene.
Clever can only get you so far, though. Bennett also possesses the talent to back up his humor, turning a funny idea into a well-executed image with the professional chops that has made him an emerging talent in the comic book industry. His first love as an artist was pointillism, which still shows in his fine detail work such as his Jennifer Connelly piece from Phenomena where he produces her face entirely from tiny bees. But what sells his work to me is the faces. Bennett’s ability to project emotion is what makes the jokes work. In the eyes and the smiles, you see Bennett’s deep affection for the rich characterization of illustrated books like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and the simple, but emotive personalities of Sesame Street monsters. He understands how to capture what the public loves about the stories we consume and the characters we identify with. He presents them in a way that isn’t simple fan art, but instead fresh, fun, and captivating pop art. And that is why I love Jerry Bennett and you will too.
Planet Dorshak is an American POP Culture Art Gallery print and poster shop featuring bombsawayart.com, literatipressok.com, and studio to the ever elusive Bombs Away Art Co.
