by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

To some people, rock is a sound and only a sound, generated largely by bass, drums, guitar and a caterwauling frontperson. There are others, though, who recognize that the essence of rock - rock as a verb, a somewhat improper noun, an abstract principle and a way of life - can be perceived by the eye as well as the ear.

Take Marielyne Tarabulsy, Casa del Popolo staffer and occasional promoter. "I only put on one or two rock shows a year," she explains, "because it's a lot of work and I want to keep it fun. If I can't afford to put out a really good poster, I won't do the show. The poster is, for me, really important. When I did the Exploders, someone said to me, 'just do photocopies!' I couldn't. I want at least two-colour silkscreening, I want a good image - if I can't have original artwork, I want a graphic designer to take an image from the band, work on it and make it really stand out. I see a lot of just-okay show posters in the street, and they all sort of blend in together."

Like many, Tarabulsy looks back to the grand old days of the Fillmore in San Francisco circa '68, when the rock poster reached its arguable zenith at the hands of psychedelic wunderkinds like Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse and Victor Moscoso. In the '90s, grunge revisionists like Kozik and Coop countered the almost immediately tired ransom-note chic of punk posters. But their target was a collector market - most of their work never met brick wall and paste.

Recently though, in Montreal at least, the magnificent craft of the rock poster is back on track thanks to the likes of Dominique Pétrin, Johnny Crap and the Seripop crew. All use serigraphy to push the medium as far as it can go. "Even when you fuck up," says Tarabulsy, "silkscreening is an amazing medium. The mistakes can look so good."

High time for lowbrow

Tarabulsy's gone further still, though. Her annual Electric Art Derby exhibition at Casa del Popolo, now in its third year, brings together a couple of dozen locals - and a few out-of-towners - in a celebration of rock art. Their backgrounds vary, but it's all rock one way or another. There's the above-mentioned poster pack, there are the comics people (Billy Mavreas, Eric Braün, Rick Trembles and Ottawa's "next R. Crumb" Dave Cooper), there are graffiti cats like Timer and there's the tattoo set (Pol, Safwan, Arno, Katja etc.).

"I knew a lot of artists who worked in other mediums for money, but had their own personal creative outlet in paintings and stuff like that. They rarely or never had a chance to put that stuff up. I decided to get as many of those people together as possible. It was pretty much always the same style of contemporary lowbrow art. I thought there should be a yearly event that put this non-mainstream contemporary art on display - and also had a huge party to go with it."

The term "lowbrow" she uses is copped from Californian painter Robert Williams. He started out in the '60s, designing T-shirts for hot-rod hero Big Daddy Roth (he of Rat Fink fame) and drawing strips for Zap Comics before putting brush to canvas. His preferred subjects are hot rods, hot dames, horrid monsters and chrome, chrome, chrome - the kind of things that give the fine-art academic mafia aneurysms. These days, countless imitators litter the pages of Williams' own Juxtapoz magazine. But that's just the starting point for Tarabulsy, who hopes to eventually spin the EAD into a slick book and maybe even a tour - you know, like rock bands!

"At first I was really into the hot rods and the rock art, but then a lot of the artists I knew who were doing that were also doing other things. If they wanted to put up non-traditional hot rods or cartoon divas that they could never show at Place des Arts or the galleries in old Montreal, then they could. But if they're also experimenting with other styles, then I welcome that as well.

"As much as I love that style, it's part of the reason I started Electric Art Derby, I don't want people to be stuck to that - your chrome has to be in this style, your boobs have to be that size, whatever. I wanted people to look beyond what's cool in lowbrow art."

Heavy, horrific and handmade

Contributions range from posters, of course, to paintings, prints, drawings, even sculpture (Nina Logan's "Mutants") and, in the case of Pétrin, a creepy, eight-foot-tall doll.

"There's one thing, though. The Electric Art Derby is not computer art. I like the manual labour, that's why I like silkscreening. People are putting up paintings, sculptures, collage, drawings with markers and coloured pencils - but no computer art. I'm really manual, I'm computer-retarded and I encourage that."

One artist Tarabulsy nods to is her friend Jamie Minett - "a really good painter, lots of detail, aliens, skulls, monsters - something that you'd see on an Iron Maiden album cover. I want more of that next year. I know that there are a lot of artists like that in Montreal, really fine drawers and painters, going away from the hot rods and monsters towards heavy metal records from the late '70s and '80s. Aw, man, I love some of those. If I could get the guy who does Eddie for Iron Maiden, I would.

"When I was trying to tell the artists what kind of art I was looking for, I said, 'If you can give me something that you could see on a record cover, then you fit into the show.' What I started to realize this year is that it's sort of a combination of artists working for rock and, with the Dwarves closing the show, rock working for artists. The artists never get recognized as much as bands do."

Vernissage with DJ Shawn Central at Casa del Popolo on Saturday, May 3, 9pm, free. Closing show with the Dwarves and Maximum R 'n' R at la Sala Rossa on June 14

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