He arrived unannounced form another planet and quickly took over the illustration department, displacing the entire lineup of Eighties types who scribbled and scrawled countless "comics" and meaningless vignettes and little trading cards and so on
In his work he seeks elegant innocence; he attempts to simplify, but it's just too complex to be "comic art" - in fact it's influenced by children's books rather than comic books - and so it stands alone, hyper - juvenile sight jingles bringing order to the charming chaos of a vanishing visual vocabulary. STEVEN CERIO is ambidextrous and, incidentally, he draws, not illustrates - that is until big corporations like Nickelodeon and Disney make him do happy illustrations with which they subvert the minds of unsuspecting consumers. But there's more to it. Cerio has been influential as a percussionist for Avant-garde Rock ensembles like Railroad Jerk and Drunk Tank, and he currently propels the retarded psychedelia of LETTUCE LITTLE. And, to top it all off, he is the official Art Editor of this very magazine, wherein he grills "famous artists" about what they do and why they do it. Well-disciplined waves of drumming and drawing (and writing) fuse in Steve's fevered head, cross-referencing and coalescing until the pulsations become soundtracks to expertly-rendered scenes of happiness and cleanliness - in other words, both his art and his music celebrate the fact that nature always wears a big permanent grin.
1) Drawing: Ours is a fake "counterculture" that steals from Timothy Leary and Ronald McDonald with equal impunity. It is fed by a phony "underground" composed of lazy liars who believe their own hype. Cerio is not one of them; he is not caught up in that Low Art vortex of stupid ideas and tacky advertising. He is not an Underground Artist; he's not alienated in the clinical sense. His work is not angry - in fact, it is genuinely nice.
Jaded connoisseurs of contemporary Hate Art and Shock Journalism will search long and hard for a prurient angle to Cerio's work; they will find nothing. Perhaps the work's frantic intensity and high density tricks us into thinking we're being threatened. We are not; Cerio simply wants to show us lots of stuff at his own dizzying pace. Presumptions of his decadence might be fueled by ghost gas from previous group shows with those same comic types whom he eventually displaced. Maybe he simply replaces skulls and crossbones with bunny rabbits while the space in between shines perversely (in fact, his cute little icons are often strung together with sexy B&D-style ropes)
Bullshit. It's nice stuff.
To sum it all up: Due to the zine scene and desktop
publishing and the Internet and the relative ease of doing art and so on, a lot of amateur artists have been elevated to semi-prominence with in an ever-expanding network of mutual masturbators and perverted providers of preordained collector's items. Cerio has somehow bypassed that network, although there is much evidence that he has used it extensively for his own purposes - for example, there was his appearances in shows at Exit Art, C-POP, La Luz de Jesus and The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame to name a few, his posters for King Crimson, Moe, The Residents, Les Claypool and White Zombie, his work for A&M
Records, TheVillage Voice, Guitar World, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly, his graphics for CD-ROMs of The Residents (Disfigured Night, Bad Day at the Midway, Commercial DVD), and his comic (make that "kid's comic") called Pie (published by Wow Cool). Don't forget his award winning book "Steven Cerio's ABC of Drugs" published by Gates of Heck. (P.S. Steven is represented by Giger's masterful media manipulator, Les Barany.)
2.Drumming: Cerio is a drummer who dislikes traditional grooves, and so he must invent new ways to make sound patterns. There's still plenty of echoes of influences such as Terry Bozzio, Robert Wyatt, Drumbo and a healthy selection of Captain Beefheart's other
drummers - as well as Jazz giant Elvin Jones, and Art Rock pioneer Bill Bruford - but for the most part Cerio doesn't sound like anybody else. As a pivotal early member of Railroad Jerk, he provided a distinctly Beefheartian atmosphere - a rare treat in a world where drummers usually suck. But in Lettuce Little he has somehow reinvented the wheel, and by breaking all the rules he comes closer and closer to percussive ecstasy. Lettuce Little is experimenting and having fun and trying to figure out wither they should go for the gold or keep it sort of easy-going. He and collaborator Roger Kummert are currently sending tapes to Parisian diva, Laure Barges, who overdubs vocals. The music is a lot like Steven's art - happy, dense, and always evocative of speed.
3) The Future: Cerio is gonna start doing children's books. Through the majesty of the rendered image he would lead successive generations away from the condescending, subliminally nihilistic tone of today's kids's books. Clearly his subject matter lends itself to such endeavors; it sometimes seems a shame that his innocent abandon is wasted on sour, seen-it-all adult audience. And his technique is perfect as well - the clarity of line, the separation of compositional elements into various visual planes, and intensely contrasting colors all make his work easy to perceive and understand.
So there you have it - you can either look or listen!
