Bill Barminski

Bill Barminski (born November 26, 1962) is an American artist and filmmaker born in Chicago, Illinois. His work has been part of creative projects such as Banksy's Dismaland and The Cunning Little Vixen, a new production of the Leoš Janáček opera involving the Cleveland Orchestra.

Barminski moved with his family to Fort Worth, Texas, while still very young and it was there that he spent most of his formative years.

While attending the The University of Texas at Austin as an art major, he was a contributor of satirical cartoons to the student newspaper, The Daily Texan. The cartoon strip, entitled "King of the Pre-Fab", featured Dick Nixon, a used car salesman and campus gadfly. Despite repeated efforts by the student's association to have him removed, Barminski went on to create the underground comicbook, "Tex Hitler, Fascist Gun in the West". Author and cultural critic, Greil Marcus mentions this character in Artforum: "What's most remarkable about Bill Barminski's "Fascist Gun in the West" is how quickly and completely it pulls you into its twisted, yet utterly familiar little world".

After dropping out of art school in 1985, Barminski moved to Los Angeles where he continued to produce his hand-bound comic books. He began in earnest to paint. His first show in 1986 in a downtown L.A. gallery, Oranges/Sardines, created a minor sensation and resulted in modest sales.

His work caught the eye of record producer, Scott Arundale, who commissioned him to create the album cover for an Industrial/Tribal band, "Death Ride '69". The image of Elvis Presley as Jesus Christ was later acknowledged and reprinted in the Greil Marcus book, Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991), about the phenomenon of the Rock 'n' Roll icon in the years since his death.

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