The following description comes from the event organizer.

Big Fan represents a collection of works on paper by Portland-based artist and musician Rose Lewis, encapsulating her paired obsessions with popular music and spirituality. The exhibition is curated and hosted by Josephine LaCosta. The opening reception will feature a ritual led by local astrologer Chloe Margherita. The exhibition will be accompanied by a zine that serves as both a map and explication of the work and an artwork in and of itself.

The drawings, prints, paintings, and collages in this exhibition literalize the idolatry inherent in the relationship between performer and fan by juxtaposing the iconography of popular music with the symbols of New Age spirituality and European occultism. We talk about worshiping our heroes and we describe famous musicians as idols. This reverent attitude has persisted even into the comparatively glamourless present, wherein the industry seems hell bent on convincing us that stars are just like us, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. We crave the tension that comes from a bit of distance, the star serving as an aspirational object to emulate or a prophet to be toppled in a healthy act of rebellion. “No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones/In 1977,” sang the Clash, just as they began setting themselves up as a replacement myth, the Last Gang in Town. The pieces draw on the artist’s eclectic taste in music, taking inspiration from musicians ranging from the culturally colossal–Paul McCartney–to the cult classic–Lazy Magnet. The occult imagery is inspired by artists and mystics who had what might be described as a punk attitude towards established religion, jailbreaking previously hidden knowledge or setting up more inclusive alternatives to existing structures. The exhibition’s setting is in keeping with the punk spirit behind the work: it is, literally, a house show.

Rose Lewis (b. 1990, Boulder, CO) attended a preschool directly adjoining her hometown’s oldest cemetery. She turned fourteen the day after the reelection of George W. Bush and received the UK edition of the first Clash album for Christmas later that year. These events, taken together, explain a good deal about her temperament and work. She has studied painting, printmaking, book arts, and Russian literature at Reed College, Portland, OR, verbs of motion at Smolny College, Saint Petersburg, Russia, and alchemy and tarot through the Golden Dome School. Primarily a painter, Rose’s work has also appeared on numerous record sleeves, t-shirts, and posters for bands of many genres. She has exhibited at the sadly defunct Portland punk club East End, the Hawthorne Fresh Pot, the Fantagraphics store in Seattle, the Edith Feldenheimer Gallery at Reed College, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Rose sings and plays guitar in the band Love in Hell.