Tim Kerr

June 11 to July 10, 2022

If self-expression has no boundaries, why do people keep putting labels on it?

For those of you with scorecards, Tim Kerr's first art award was winning a fire prevention poster contest in elementary school. Like any self-respecting, artistic outcast in Texas, he moved to Austin after high school graduation where he has lived ever since with his wife Beth. He earned a degree in painting and photography at the University of Texas in Austin and studied the latter with Garry Winogrand. Tim was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant while at UT. He won a slot two years in a row for the new songwriters contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival during this time as well.

After college graduation, Tim became involved musically and artistically with the early stages of the DIY (Do It Yourself) punk/hardcore/self expression movement. The idea that anyone could and should participate in self-expression burst every door and window inside of him wide open. He was a key member in bands that have made recordings for such labels as Touch & Go, Estrus, Sympathy For The Record Industry, In The Red, Sub Pop, and Kill Rock Stars. Tim has also produced and recorded bands for all the labels above and more, both in the US and overseas. Journalists and critics have cited bands that Tim was a member of as having been a major factor in starting everything from punkfunk, skaterock, grunge, and garage; and all have played an important role in what is known, for better or worse, as the US indie scene today. The Big Boys, Poison 13, Bad Mutha Goose, Lord High Fixers,and Monkey Wrench are just some of the bands Tim was a founding member of not to mention that some of his visual art from those times is now in books depicting that period. He has shared bills with the likes of Grace Jones, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Fugazi, Black Flag, Africa Bambaataa, and X and has toured extensively both in the U.S. and internationally.

Tim has has shown work at PS1 in New York, 96 Gillespie in London, Slowboy Gallery in Germany, Outre in Melbourne, Australia, and Beams in Tokyo, Japan. He was honored to have been selected as the first artist for the Arlington Transit's Art On The Bus program in 2010. He has also been involved in painting murals in Texas, Nashville, New York, Alabama, and California.

Tim was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame by popular vote in 1996 which he says he is still honored, humbled, and confused by. His first band the Big Boys was inducted in 2017. The Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle asked to record an oral history with him in 2000 and he has donated a lot of his personal archives to the Austin History Library.

Through all of his life, he has never felt comfortable with labels and their restrictions. When someone confines him to one label, they do both themselves and Tim a disservice. In Tim's own words, “I'm not dead yet. I am still active and as proud as I am of all that has happened before, I hope I have not seen the best thing yet."