Kris Askew does not dwell on the past, though judging from the overwhelming numbers of his drawings, paintings and comic sequences using 60’s and 70’s pop culture, you could be forgiven for thinking so.

“These are things that were here before me and also when I was growing up; what I like is that I am here now but I can remember” says Kris.

Two amazing aspects of Kris’s preoccupation with 60’s culture are his interest in once widely known personalities now obscured by time and his concern with reproducing minute details of the decade. In one drawing, Paul Kantner and Marty Balin of the seminal San Francisco psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane are seen as a dapper duo standing hand in hand, both sporting up-to-the-minute late 60’s fashion chic. In this drawing, his attention to detail, bejeweled headbands, paisley and tied died shirts, a maxi coat, fringed buckskin vest, batik bellbottoms, and moccasin boots serve as a tribute to the color-laden multicultural style of the era.

Paul Kantner and Marty Balin are not the only ones who benefit from Kris’s restagings. Sly Stone, Peter Frampton, Nicholette Larson, and Dennis Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas are but a few of those immortalized by Kris’s pencil. Kris also creates tributes to television and movie stars of the day. In an homage to television’s The Mod Squad, the series' 3 stars are portrayed. While Peggy Lipton’s hand-lettered name is recorded beneath her in garish pink and yellow, her two co-stars (Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole, for the record) remain nameless.

Underlying all of this is an artist who is gifted with an ability to draw beautifully crafted, witty, lurid, and outright funny representations of lives lived in an era that continue to resonate and inspire.