Jack Russell makes linocuts about Texas, and a lot of them are jokes. He calls the work low-brow linocuts, and he means it as a description, not an apology. He grew up in Houston reading The Far Side, and it shows: one image, one idea, and a punchline that lands a second after you look.
The jokes come out of the place. Big Tex turns up as a haloed saint, as a sugar skull calavera, and as a toddler playing with a match, a dark nod to the 2012 fire that took the original. Jesus holds a Whataburger in Final Destination and pours coffee behind a late-night diner counter in Last Supper. Hank Hill stands on his propane tank, Nolan Ryan pitches from a giant hot dog, and a tiny Buc-ee's sits alone in the desert. These are the landmarks of a Texas childhood, carved with the care of a devotional image, which is half the joke.
Not all of it is played for laughs. Willie, Dolly, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb get straight, affectionate portraits. King shows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, and it is one of the most reverent prints in the set.
He found linocut in a class at Tarrant County College and started printing as a hobby in 2006. Each block takes two to three days to carve, in reverse, before he inks it and pulls every sheet by hand on hand-torn, tea-stained 140 lb paper. That paper gives the prints their warm, aged tone and soft edges. Each one is signed, titled, numbered and dated in pencil, and he has kept his prices within reach on purpose.
He works out of Fort Worth as Jackdaw Folk Art. Off the press he plays upright bass in the Whiskey Folk Ramblers and Crooked Bones, and he hosts the Liberty Lowdown, a monthly art market at Liberty Lounge. In 2023 he was the Featured Artist at Arts Goggle.
We carry thirty of his linocuts at one size and price. Each is an image of about 8 × 10 in on a 9 × 12 in sheet, and they look best dry-mounted in an 11 × 14 in frame so the torn edges show.
