FRANCIE RICH specializes in satirical portraits of dogs, people and Barbies. Names for her works come from the obituary nicknames from the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper. She and artist husband, John Hodge also organize and lead European tours. They are a very clever couple!
My exuberance and zest for life is matched only by my bountiful lethargy, ennui, and abundant capacity for run-on sentences. I married my father and my husband married his crazy Aunt Sadie. The four of us are tripping the light fantastic even though two of us are dead. I am an anxious, insecure person with low self esteem but I have the ability to laugh at others.
I teach art history and my husband, John Hodge. John makes pottery and teaches pottery to rich menopausal women whom he refers to as his patients.
Hypo-Slavic Realism is a tradition dating back to late 20th / early 21st Centuries. The term Hypo Slavic Realism was coined on 4 October 2008 by its founder and only known proponent, artist, Stanko Stribog (one of the alter-egos of Francie Rich, check out the Pudiente’s under Misc. 2-D works). Not one to pander to the masses, he is pandering to Eastern Europeans with under-active thyroids and odd hair. The work is non-denominational (meaning it offends all denominations) and has no political leanings to the right of left. This stylistic period of art relies on gold leaf and models whose vocabulary does not include the words “self esteem”. Stanko’s father had a mustache and liked Gypsy music. Stanko’s mother did not have a mustache and detested accordions. His mother was classically trained in music and his maternal grandfather, from Belarus, was paper trained at night time. Stanko’s paternal grandfather, from Prague, had typical Slavic hair; it looked like St. Augustine grass that needed mowing. His work has offended the very people that he has painted, including high society, royalty, homosexuals, babies, media personalities, relatives, friends, black people, white people, Mexicans, and even dead people. He has been denounced and legally threatened. Basically these are paintings done while listening to Gypsy and Gypsy Punk music and adding mustaches to works that haven’t sold thereby breathing new life into the works.
BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (also studied one year at Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam)
MFA from California College of the Arts
Artist-in-Residence Fellowship Grant, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM
Services to the Field Grant, National Endowment for the Arts and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
Visual Arts Fellowship, Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts, Southeast Seven-11
Artist Fellowship, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC
Collections include: New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans, LA Prudential Life Insurance, Newark, NJ Ewing Gallery of Art, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith, Honolulu, HI Frederick R. Weisman, Los Angeles, CA Ann and Howard Barnett, New Orleans, LA The Residency Collection, Gallery 409, Roswell, NM Sheraton Hotel, New Orleans, LA McGlinchey, Stafford, Minz, Cellini and Lang, New Orleans, LA Ted Schachter, MGM-UA Telecommunications, Inc., Culver City, CA
