The art of the Pizz INSIDE Some call his work lowbrow, but there's a steadily growing audience for it

Theo Douglas

Staff Writer There's a corner of the art world populated by beatniks, bikers, jet-setters, Tiki gods, hot rodders, Shriners, devilish schoolgirls and exotic dancers and these are just some of the subjects rendered in pen, oil and acrylic. In its darkest moments, the scene resembles a dank underground arcade where organic material grows out of control in the dark.

Long Beach artist The Pizz (his latest, longest-lived nickname) may be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Folks in this cloistered corner of the art world tend to bunker down in vintage homes that are crammed with knickknacks: African art, punk rock records, model cars and custom car parts.

The Pizz is seemingly no exception; his Spanish-style dwelling east of Redondo Avenue is a place from whence you might never leave, obscured as it is from the street by a huge hedge, eerily lit and fetchingly festooned with animal skulls, The Visible Man and Woman model kits and miscellaneous bric-a-brac. But The Pizz is a rarity in this corner of the art world: The man likes to get out.

Just ask him about jury duty.

"You know what? It" s really not that bad,'' the artist says in an interview at his home, just across the line into East Long Beach. "I dressed the part to get thrown off the jury. But it winds up like traffic school, where you make all these pals." '

But, he adds, "when you first get that (notice) it" s like getting the plague.''

Some might consider Pizz's artwork the plague populated as it is by scabrous hillbillies, evil-minded walking skeletons and wolves straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon.

Yet, there's a steadily growing audience for what's been labeled lowbrow art by some. The Pizz will sign copies of a new book of his work, "Atavistic Avatar," ' and posters he recently created for a gig by the Dynotones, at 7 p.m. Saturday at Long Beach's Starlite Room.

A book is a logical step for many artists, and The Pizz has been working toward this for years. A proud expatriate of the tony, hilly Orange County enclave of Villa Park, The Pizz makes what he calls "stupid money" ' from commercial artwork.

Self-taught, he broke away from the mainstream some time in the 1970s here, his confessional confab slows down working first for Ernie Ball guitar strings, then later designing T-shirts for surfing companies before landing at seminal counterculture art magnet Ed Roth Studios.

"This is just something I always did. I remember I was always drawing in kindergarten. In first grade, I used to get in trouble for wasting paper, like this one time I wasted a whole big sheet of paper on a big black octopus," ' he says.

When was that? And what's his real name? And, uh, if he remembers the '70s, then how old is he?

The Pizz cocks a jagged eyebrow when asked a hard-hitting question like this. "Undisclosed. Undetermined," ' he says as a chill wind blows through the dining room of his 1920s Spanish-style home. Then it's off to the races again.

His name, he says obliquely, came courtesy of a former girlfriend's father. "Like The Fonz," ' the man supposedly said. "The Pizz." ' Is that a contraction of his last name? Dead silence.

"It" s like Mark Twain. It's a nom de plume,'' Pizz says. "And it" s nice 'cause it makes you harder to track down.''

Actually, a fair amount of people probably know roughly where The Pizz lives; he's inhabited the same region of Long Beach for years, and his '58 Bel Air coupe is a familiar sight at the Veterans Stadium antique market and Friday's Farmers Market downtown.

But in personal detail and mythos and his nod to the underground, Pizz is much like Long Beach record label king Long Gone John, and West Coast Choppers owner Jesse James (both patrons of his art). Dressed all in black, from hat to sunglass, to goatee, to shoes, he, like them, has created his own reality.

"He is a certified cultural curio. I have been acquainted with Pizz for the last 25 years. It would be difficult to name any seminal art or street happening over that period that he wasn" t right in the middle of,'' artist Craig Stecyk writes in an e-mail interview.

Stecyk co-curated "Kustom Kulture," ' a 1993 exhibition of work by Pizz and many others that showed locally at the Laguna Art Museum and was credited by many with introducing hot rod and lowbrow culture to the masses.

"He has a tendency to embrace the lowbrow ethic, and I personally think that label is the kiss of death," ' offers Long Gone John, owner of the Long Beach record label Sympathy For the Record Industry, which broke Detroit garage rockers the White Stripes.

"If he wants to be the king of lowbrow, he could but I think that" s limiting,'' Long Gone John says. "I think his angular, beatniky stuff is the stuff I really like best. That" s where I think he really stands alone.''

A skeletal biker in a painting he did for Jesse James decorates the cover of his new book, but The Pizz says he finds his best influences in African, Tiki and Polynesian-style ephemera.

"To me, it" s always about figuration, he says, pointing out his fondness for drawing humans. "It could be simple or complex. But it" s always there.'' Maybe this is what consoles him during the tedium of commercial art assignments sketching, then making the trek to Kinko's for endless photocopying.

"No, I like going to Kinko" s,'' says The Pizz, whose commercial clients have included Sony PlayStation and the Cerritos Auto Square. "It gets me out of the house, and they" ve got all these different card stocks.''

Theo Douglas can be reached at (562) 499-1276 or by e-mail at theo.douglas@presstelegram.com