I’ve written a bit about and colored the work of Shawn Kerri before. I first learned about her–I believe–from Scott Shaw. Shawn Kerri is a comics creator, cartoonist, musician, punk rocker with an amazing history.

San Diego Comic Con 2025 Friends of Shawn Kerri panel

Celebrate the work of legendary cartoonist and San Diego local Shawn Kerri as panelists aim to shine a spotlight on her artistic legacy as a female cartoonist and larger-than-life figure of the 1980s underground art scene. Featuring Keith Morris (lead singer of Black Flag, Circle Jerks), Greg Hetson (guitarist of the Circle Jerks, Bad Religion), Scott Shaw! (cartoonist, animator), Brian Flynn (founder and owner of Hybrid Design and Super 7), Monty Messexx (the Atoms, DFL, Grand Royal magazine), Big Toe (Southern California–based Pop surrealism artist), Thomas Fernandez (Southern California artist for Santa Cruz Skateboard and tattooer), and Joyce Rooks (guitarist, The Cockpits, The Dinettes). Moderated by Brad Niemann (founder of Friends of Shawn Kerri). An exhibit of art by Shawn Kerri and artists’ renditions of Skank Man can be seen at the Art Show in the Manchester Grand Hyatt Ballroom.

thefriendsofshawnkerri.org

Transcript (partly machine generated, still in progress, if you have corrections please feel free to share) DRAFT

Brad Niemann

I’m really proud to get Brad Niemann . I’m the Friends of Shawn Kerri. I just wanted to take a moment to thank Dale Pleasence over there who put all this happen. I would imagine it’s a lot of work because I see why they appreciate it. We have a lot of people. I don’t want to take up much time, but I just wanted to give you a really quick introduction of what the Friends of Shawn Kerri is. If you’re not familiar with Shawn’s work, I wasn’t. A lot of I just didn’t know a lot of her work. He said we were bits and pieces. I came across this picture of Shawn here on the left in a book called The Art of Rock a few years ago. It just hit me really hard when I saw it. I just had this wave of emotion and memory because she was such an important artist to me as a kid. I just thought, Oh, my God, I forgot about Shawn.

Scott Shaw

I just felt like, I wonder what happened to Shawn Kerri.

Brad Niemann

I wonder, did anyone collect all the work that she did and all the amazing stuff, which I didn’t even know the extent of. So I started looking. I started asking around. I started asking people and hearing these crazy legendary stories about this mythical figure, Shawn Kerry. She pulled a full-size sword out of her pants at a germ show and chased some skinheads down the street. She tore apart the Ken Cinema with Radmar Prune and started a riot. She threw a brick through a top car window and at the St. Patrick’s Day Massacre show. I just kept hearing all these crazy stories. I said, Wow, do people know how crazy and interesting this woman was? Everybody started to knew this figure that Shawn drew called the Skanking Man that she did for the Circle Jerks . Growing up, we just loved this. Everybody that was into this type of music, more than anything, this figure, it lives on. It spoke to us because it was not just It was rebellious. It was fun. It seemed like, you look at that image, you instantly think like, I understand that view. I know what it’s like to be in that moment.

Brad Niemann

I started looking around and was like, Wow, She did a lot of stuff. She did so many flyers and record covers and just so much stuff. I was thinking, Wow, has anyone ever collected all this stuff? I was like, Oh, she did a lot for this magazine called Cartoon. I was like, Wow. I started looking like, She did a lot of stuff for this magazine called Cartoon. Has it ever been collected? So I started going through and I could never find any books or anything about genre. I was like, Wow, she drew for Hustler.

Scott Shaw

She was one of the few women working at hustler.

Brad Niemann

And I started looking like, Wow, she drew a lot of stuff for hustler. And most of it won’t get her canceled today. Most of it. And I was like, Wow, she did just so much stuff. So it’s just I started putting more and more stuff together. I’m like, There’s this huge body of work. It’s just like I started putting together books and books and more pages and pages, hundreds of pages. I thought, Why hasn’t anybody collected this? Why haven’t anybody celebrated this incredible woman? So I just started calling people, and I was surprised to find that there was this Internet mystery about Shawn Kerry that everyone thought Shawn Kerry had died. And Nobody knew how. She lived a rather reckless life. So there were a lot of crazy theories out there about what happened to Shawn Kerry. And I started asking around, and the overwhelming consensus was Shawn Kerry is dead. Shawn Kerry died. Some people told me they went to her funeral. Some people had remembered the day she died. They remembered talking to her mom after she died. So there was no doubt in my mind that, Oh, Shawn Kerry is dead. I just have to prove it.

Brad Niemann

My wife is a documentary maker. There. She said, You can’t tell this story until you have the end of the story. Just find out how she got it. So I started digging and I started talking with people. Everyone convinced me she was dead. I talked to a guy named Carl Snyder, who used to do a magazine called Black Market here in San Diego. She said, She’s not dead? I talked to her in 2003. He was making a documentary about a guy called Matt McRude, and went out with Shawn for a while. He’s a local San Diego legend. He said, At the time, she had had an accident. I didn’t want to throw her on camera. I didn’t want to embarrass her, but she’s very much alive. I just don’t know where she is now. So I thought, Okay, I’m going to keep looking. I guess I’ll keep looking, but I’m going to prove that she’s dead. I don’t believe crazy Carl Snyder. So I kept looking and looking. I went door to door in PV through all the old addresses. I wouldn’t recommend doing that. I went to the home where her mom had died, and they would speak English or I’m sure Arabic, so I don’t know what they spoke, but they did try to tell me that someone had come to visit Shawn’s mom before she passed, a woman that had help, and they believe it was her daughter.

Brad Niemann

I’m like, Well, maybe she’s alive. I could find her dad’s death certificate. I found her mom’s death certificate. I found her little sister’s death certificate. I just could not find Shawn. Finally, I called the funeral home where her mom had died and I was like, I just want to know Is there a next of kin listed for this woman? He said, No, no next of kin. That’s it. I proved that Shawn Kerry is dead. And as I was hanging up the phone, they said, Oh, wait, there is something here. What do you mean there’s something here? They’re like, Well, I’ve never seen this before. It’s not a next of kin, but it’s someone with a conservator. I was like, What is that? I had never heard of that? And I said, Wait, is the name Shawn Maureen Fitzgerald? Yes. I was like, Holy shit, she’s alive? Really? By then, I was able to like, you can just go probate court. There are conservator cases that are open, and I found the active conservator case for Shawn Maureen Fitzgerald, which is Shawn Kerry’s actual name. She’s alive. From there, I was able to track her down.

Brad Niemann

She’s living in a home in El Cajon, California.

Scott Shaw

Very much alive.

Brad Niemann

She did suffer a traumatic brain injury, so she does have, I would say, memory issues, but she is very much alive. She’s very happy. She is very taken care of, and the mystery is more or less solved. But what isn’t solved is her legacy. Why is her legacy not celebrated more? That was something. I started talking to people to form this nonprofit called and friends of Shawn Cary. One of the first people I talked to was Scott Shaw, who knew Shawn pretty well in her early days before she was Shawn Cary.

Scott Shaw

Hi, I’m Scott Shaw. I I’ve been a cartoonist for over half a century. I grew up in San Diego. I went to Crawford High School, and one of my friends there was John Pound. John Pound created the Garbage Kill Kids, and he’s done an awful lot of other great artwork, too. He got tired of being known for that. So he now does digital fine art, which is interesting, but not nearly as much fun. We did a lot of underground comics together. That’s how I got started in the business. But John called me. I wanted to come down to see him. I moved up to Los Angeles in 1976 because I was getting a lot of work as a cartoonist in San Diego, but that was still I still had to work at the school library and the job because it just wasn’t enough to live on. John called me up and he said, there’s somebody I want you to meet. And he was the assistant to a teacher named Joe Niery. Joe was very well known around San Diego as being not only a great artist himself, a fine artist, But also a really great teacher.

Scott Shaw

John was his assistant. I went down. They wanted me to talk a little bit, too. And there was this very young woman in this class. She was probably 16 or so. And after the class was over, she showed me her work, and it looked like, what if Chuck Jones and Jack Davis had a baby? There was a She had an energy in her work. There was fun in her work. There was a sense that she really knew what she was doing. When I was 16, I was doing comics and stuff, but it was pretty amateurish compared to her And fortunately, I got better. And fortunately, we became friends. And she told me that she really wanted to live in LA because that’s where there was more work experiencing. She wasn’t even starting to work professionally, but she knew that was where she wanted to be. So I helped her out. I, first of all, told her about the expenses in LA. It was a little more than San Diego. I was living in Van Nuys, which is a pretty cheap area in Los Angeles, in San Fernando Valley. So I thought, I’d already brought Dave Stevens up from San Diego.

Scott Shaw

I had another fellow who I can’t remember his last name, Patrick, somebody, but he had done underground comics, and I got him there. It was only a 12 apartment homes in the big building, but a third of them were cartoonists, suddenly. I signed off for her, but I knew that she was going to be serious. I gave her a list of numbers and addresses and people to talk to because By that time, I moved up. I ran a comic shop, but that led to me starting to work not only in more underground stuff, but also mainstream stuff, mostly stuff for kids. I gave her these lists, and within about two months, as you just saw, one was left out. She had the most interesting span of freelance work I’ve ever seen, especially for a newbie in the business. First of all, she was a gearhead, so she was really good at drawing cars, which most people, our cartoonists, have trouble with. And she knew exactly what she was doing with that. That was Peterson publications. Those were magazines that weren’t comic shops, but you could find them in almost every supermarket. It was not aimed like…

Scott Shaw

There was another magazine called Drag Cartoons. It was more for guys that had cars and had their own dragsters and stuff. Cartoons was more for kids that were 14, 15 years old. They didn’t have a car yet. They didn’t have a license. So it was more silly fantasy of how cool it is to drive. But she put a real oomf into it, and suddenly it felt more like for gear heads like her. She also was working for Hustler, and pretty rough stuff. But at her age, I was impressed and mystified at the same time. I was like, You know more than I do. But the third job that she had, and this is a capper because it defies the Hustler thing, she was also writing and doing layouts for overseas Disney comic books, and doing them all freelance at the same time, jungling. She was doing quite well. I need to find in the story. She did me a nice acrylic painting of Godzilla. I knew I liked Monsters. From From there, she started to bloom and got a lot of people’s attention. Quite honestly, when she became fascinated with the punk culture, I really didn’t have much more to do with her than occasionally see her because I’m an old hippie, and frankly, punk stuff wasn’t for me.

Scott Shaw

I guess you can understand why. I have nothing against it, but it wasn’t something I was pretty we’re interested in. But I was certainly proud of what happened with her and how she became an icon. .

Greg Hetson

I’m going to hand down the camera and give everybody a few minutes because I know we have a short time and everybody want to give everybody a chance.

Brad Niemann

Now, Big Toe, you knew her at the other end of this. You didn’t know Shawn Kerri, you knew Shawn Fitzgerald.

Big Toe

Yeah, well, I knew of it. I knew Shawn. I’m Big Toe and I’m a degenerate from the LA, Orange County area. I grew up, I guess, assuming in the same culture, Jack Davis and Chuck Jones, and also Cargay, and grew up going to shows in Hollywood in the early ’80s punk rock shows. I was very familiar with Shawn Cary’s work for both those places. She was a big influence on my art. Then after she died, I found out subsequently from my friend John Loher, who was here, that we were crewing together with her on a tall ship in San Diego called the Dauntless. I got a picture. Yeah, there she is. This is a T-shirt that I did for the boat, which is fun. But real nice, chill lady crewing with us on the boat. We had some harrowing sailing stories and some harrowing party stories that I’ve heard from John that I can recall later. But yeah, just another side of this person who apparently wasn’t sleeping because if she’s doing all this work and then also crewing on this This old 1922 Americas Cup, ’23? ’27 Americas Cup boat. Man, how many lives did that woman live?

Big Toe

Has she lived?

Brad Niemann

Well, interesting recently, Shawn never really made much money in art, but the main source of the incident when she was a tuna fisherman. She was a BT tuna fisherman of all things. She worked on a boat where the guy told me that most guys quit after one year because it’s just too hard. She did nine seasons. She would go out on the boat for the whole season and get clean from all the various other activities she participated in. Then she would come home with all the pocket full of money, get back into the trouble.

Big Toe

That explains why Racing sailboats can be terrifying, but I never saw her. She was unflappable. That explains why? It’s a tough moment.

Brad Niemann

I think Greg gets in. We all know from the Concertl Jury’s other band. I can’t think of a better pairing of an artist and a band and try to sum up what it means. This fanking guy is so synonymous with your band and the energy and the message of it. I don’t know how you remember how it all came together, where or how.

Greg Hetson

I do not remember I don’t remember the first time I saw any of her work. It might have been that you do any of the side files. You’ve heard of Keith? He might remember, but some germ stuff. But I just remember when we got the drawing, to me, it really was like a composite of all the kids in the pit. It seemed like the perfect fit for our band. Like you said earlier about there was fun to it because we just did a good time party You can feel that, I feel.

Brad Niemann

When you look at this, Can’t you, man, you feel that.

Greg Hetson

Yeah, it’s just like, Let’s have a good time. Go in the pit and have a good time. It’s some good music.

Brad Niemann

You guys have been all over the world now. I’m sure you’ve seen that little guy probably on a jacket and shirts all over.

Greg Hetson

Tattoos, yeah. Some good ones, some bad ones. Sometimes the bad ones are better.

Brad Niemann

Did you guys ever tell her or anything a flyer, like for the circle of her and say, Hey, love doing none in the classroom, schooling a bunch of kids?

Greg Hetson

No, she had complete rain from what I remember. She just would come up with stuff. We’re like, Hell, yeah.

Brad Niemann

Did you know her well and much, or was she around?

Greg Hetson

I saw her around a lot at shows, and I was familiar. She was doing cartoons, or cartooms, and some for Hustler, but I didn’t know all the other publications, and I have all the whole backstory. It was just one big scene of party-ness and music, so it’s a little fuzzy.

Brad Niemann

A lot of fuzzy in a crew, I thought. Speaking of fuzzy memory, it’s Monty. Oh, yeah. I know you knew Shawn pretty well, and your family, Adam, Shawn did some incredible work with that I’ll bring up here on the screen. I’m going to hear some of her stuff now that she did for you.

Monty Messexx

Yeah, I’m on to my side. Shawn and I were friends in early ’80s. I grew up in Hollywood and was in the punk scene, and I was this fan of Adams. I woke up in the early ’80s, too, for the reasons that you’ll probably understand by the time I’m sharing this information. But we were dear friends. I don’t remember where I met her, to be honest, but I think it was probably at this club, Club and Cafe de Grand. I was probably about 18, 17, 18, and we really came together. I don’t know how, but we definitely came together over drawing these flyers and stickers and just the story that I guess is, I have this really good crystal meth. I mean, blow your head off crystal meth. Shawn drew I would go to her house, and she actually was right across the street from my junior high. We would do drugs and drink beer and smoke cigarettes, and she would draw all these things. She’d do a bunch of flyers for us. I’m a person who likes to save shit, so I saved pretty much all of this and have one of the flyers in the Punk Rock Museum in Vegas, the DOA one.

Monty Messexx

It’s the original drawing. I just wanted to also just give a shout for Brad. I’m going to give him a round of applause for doing this. I’ve always valued all this stuff. Oh, yeah, here, there’s war on 45 PA, DOA. If you see in there, it says, Thank you, Monte, on the far left in the morass. That was all about crystal men. Anyway, I really appreciate it, and it’s going to be here. I’ve always valued all the stuff that she gets to the Adam and the circle jerks. I wonder where she was in the ’90s when I was in another band, and I couldn’t find her. I’m glad that you’re going to be all together and giving her some of the exposure and the praise that she really does for her.

Speaker 7

If you She had a chance to see all of the punk rock flyers that she made. She loved all of the bands that she did already. I mean, Part of our deal with her was there was no money exchange. She never asked for money. What she asked for was our friendship, and it was so easy to be friends with her. Monty was asked where he first met her. We were talking about this coming down from LA, and I had completely forgot about where I had met her. I met her in San Diego. She was a member of a young person’s outstanding, outstanding organization. Called Phona, which is an abbreviation for Friends of No One. Now, some of the members, we know Mad Mark Ruud, who is another artist, and they were fun to be around. But I met her down here. Now, I spent a lot of time with her up there. Basically, the same thing that Monty was saying, it had to do with drinking and smoking and doing drugs. While we’re doing this, she’s drawing. She’s working on something for cartoons. It’s not like it’s a work studio. It’s her living space. She’s doing it on the kitchen table, the dining room table.

Speaker 7

One of our bonds was the music that we listened to, the deal The deal that we had with her was she loved us and we loved her. Wherever we played, if she was around, she was a part of the crew. She show up when we’re loading equipment in, she wouldn’t lend a hand. It would earn her a couple of beers upstairs or backstage or what have you. Amazing artist.

Scott Shaw

You can see President no one appear heavily in the film of the decline of Western civilization while these guys are playing.

Brad Niemann

They’re all the guys causing all the trouble in the crowds, all the San Diego crew that came up while that was being filmed.

Speaker 7

That would be the one gal that jumped up and got in leaving space, and he ended up punching.

Brad Niemann

It was Tracy, one of the Friends of No One. I think there was a time where you saw them in a liquor store, too.

Speaker 7

Okay. This is a good one because I’m standing in the liquor store. I’ve made my purchase. We were down here playing a show, I forget. Was it Adam Street or one of those places? The convenience store is right across the street. I’ve made my purchase. I was quite happy. I was almost on my way out the door when this guy that looked like something Like Frankenstein, or Frankenstein Conquers the World, or War of the Gargantuas, because we are at Comicon. It could be a horror fest, too. But anyways, this guy is so big and so intimidating. It’s like, I’m just going to stand here. I’m not going to get in this guy’s way because he’ll step on me. I watched this guy walk to the back to the big beer showcase, the big refrigerator. And he reaches in, he grabs a twelve-pack. He turns around, doesn’t even bother to close the door, comes walking towards me, makes a quick ride, and goes out the front door. I look back like wondering, how could something like this happen? I noticed that the guy who’s in the store watched all of this take place and didn’t bother to say anything because I thought this guy was so intimidated.

Speaker 7

I’m not calling the police on this guy because he’ll meet me in the parking lot one of these nights and tear me limb from limb. The Brand of no one, yes. Friends of no one.

Brad Niemann

An active member. That was Keith Morris, by the way, the lead singer in the circle there. He’s Rookes, next, who has a totally different take on Shawn because you were in a band with Shawn.

Joyce Rooks

Yeah, was there a band with Shawn for a short while? The Cockpits. I joined the band, I think late ’77, ’78. She had this car. I think it was a ’56 Chevy.

Brad Niemann

It was purple and silver, and she had sprawled on the outside of it, the cockpit.

Joyce Rooks

We took a bunch of pictures at the airport. This is during the time after the… I can’t remember the flight number, but it was a PSA flight had to crash.

Greg Hetson

Flight 182.

Joyce Rooks

Dorio, who was the leader of the band, she first called the band Cockpits, and then she was like, Jane playing in the cockpit, so it wasn’t so scandalous. Then we dropped that and it became a Cockpit. I played with her I remember a couple of gigs before she left the band, and I was trying to find out how they hooked up with her. Dorio and Jolie met her at a show, I think at the North Park Lion Club, and became friends, and talking about band and music. They took her on as a drummer. Dorio tells stories about how she would go to her parents’ house. They were creative people, and were cat dancers. They said they had this big piece of plywood in the dining room, and they would cat dance on it. It was all really rhythmic. They figured out where she got her rhythm from and able to play drums. But yeah, it was just really a fun time when we played together. It was a great day. Then we lost track of her. And then, years later, I grew up in LA, but I lived down here since my boyfriend had the time, and my husband lived down here.

Joyce Rooks

And then I moved back to LA for a while, came back, and I just wanted to open a little gallery, a bookstore in Encinitas, and we met Mary Cleaner. And Mary found out that I was playing with Shawn, and she freaked out. And I didn’t know that she had this following that you She was cold. She goes, Yeah, she worships Shawn Kerri. We just thought that she had maybe died. We heard that she had had an injury. We didn’t know anything about what happened to her. But It’s just great to find out that she’s still around and all right.

Brad Niemann

We’re just happy that she’s taking care of it. She could actually play the drum?

Joyce Rooks

Yeah, she could. Yeah, she could definitely.

Brad Niemann

Her dad I was a dance instructor, but he ended up driving a great home bus.

Speaker 5

Oh, yeah.

Brad Niemann

He was down down there. Then Thomas, I wanted to turn it over to you to talk a little bit about her impact on artists today and what Shawn means to what you’re feeling. Sure.

Monty Messexx

I’m Thomas Fernandez. I’m an artist.

Big Toe

I do graphics for Santa Cruz skateboards. I tattoo, play music, lots of nonsense.

Monty Messexx

I got into punk pretty young, like middle school or elementary school, like a friend’s older sister giving me a burned CD with dead Kennedy’s and circle jerks, and hearing a lot of that music and just something otherworldly, just not really anything you’re exposed to at an early age. You can hear the fun, you can hear the rebellion in it, but it wasn’t really until I started seeing artwork that went with these bands that really hammered home this idea of what this was, this lifestyle and attitude and culture.

Big Toe

A lot of early punk I think the punk art is definitely pretty dark and brooding and aggressive, but a key component, I think, to punk is humor and satire and fun. Shawn’s work is just so perfectly that.

Greg Hetson

You can see it’s a genuine love for Jack Davis and Mad magazine.

Big Toe

Those were from an outside perspective, obviously, what inspired her to draw and make art.

Monty Messexx

That was the stuff that spoke to me a lot and really made that type of art and music feel more accessible. I don’t know.

Big Toe

I think the influence of Shawn is just so in Calvary There are so many pieces of our work that are so iconic that so many people have no clue were done by Shawn. I mean, even just seeing some of these, I forgot that she did that bad for his poster, which is one of the all-time greatest light pieces of art, period.

Monty Messexx

So, yeah, it’s really cool that there’s this group and Friends of Shawn Kerri really doing the Lord’s work and really bringing this back into the public eye and archiving it and bringing Shawn the respect that she should and so rightly deserves.

Brad Niemann

It’s funny to me that you said, going on before the Internet, I just assumed there were all these guys in LA at the time drawing all these amazing wires. Guys, I didn’t think there was a woman doing this, right? How could she? But to find out this all came from the same person, it’s pretty incredible when you put it all together. It’s like, wow, they’re pretty amazing. And this is just a handful of wires.

Monty Messexx

Yeah, not even scratching the surface.

Brad Niemann

It’s crazy. And then, Brian, I wanted to turn it over to you. I know you got a couple of little things you can share with us.

Scott Shaw

Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting where we are now.

Brad Niemann

Never the road back to expect to get to where you are. We talked about the toys, but the same thing like getting into… I was the next generation to show it in 84. It was like a little band Anyone like, Oh, those are the old guys. This is crazy. But within it, while we’re at Cap-Con, most of these people you can talk to, they grew up on tracing and redrawing artwork that they saw on comics.

Scott Shaw

That’s how they got into it.

Brad Niemann

For us, it was like a skateboard graphic, a punk rock graphic. With skateboard graphics, you have the very like, BCJ, it’s Jim Phillips, it’s John Lucero, and Us Head. But then when you get it to the punk rock, it was like, Hiny, Nez, it was Shawn Kering, Madnar Groot, Puzz Head, and his screen. That’s all you have. So the amount of time that we have, I would sit at home as a kid trying to learn how to draw by copying this stuff.

Speaker 7

It was like, fourth generation, so we were copying this I would let her on to me in the mail in Texas. What’s this?

Big Toe

But it’s like, Shawn was always that thing where you…

Brad Niemann

To a degree, I mean, it’s falling into that zone where you’re like, it becomes this visible thing of you don’t know where these drawings came from, but there’s so much association of what you mentioned, the bad brains one, where the Germans ones, where you’re like, These are the most iconic graphics that no one ever thought about the person that drew them or wrote them. I need to like, swivel. You don’t know? It all tight faces. I never imagined it came up across.

Speaker 7

I grew up on all this stuff.

Brad Niemann

Here we are years later, and I go through my world is a working graphic designer. Then I do a thing on the side, making a magazine about collecting toys.

Scott Shaw

Then I’m a nerd, and that turns into making toys. Then it ends up being my business.

Brad Niemann

But then what do we do? Is we go back to the stuff that we love and we grew up on to make toys of. That’s where we ended up years ago with making Skank Man from circle Jackson, going through King’s Road for everyone here.

Scott Shaw

But at the same time, when I got to the same thing, I was like, Oh, Shawn Carrie has been dead forever. We had no idea that she was still alive.

Brad Niemann

It wasn’t until the toys were long gone that you actually, somebody got in touch with her and said, Hey, Shawn is still alive. Sorry?

Speaker 7

That was me.

Brad Niemann

Yeah. I can say to a couple of people, it would have been so cool to I’m in.

Scott Shaw

I’m done all the time.

Brad Niemann

That would have been awesome. Yes. She does appreciate it. She has a couple of them, and she likes them a lot. You actually have some original work with Shawn. You got from Tesco B from the meet them.

Big Toe

Yeah.

Brad Niemann

So a while back, I wasn’t organized enough to get it to you. I have to. It’s basically the same money. It’s these, isn’t it? That’s what it’s called.

Scott Shaw

They’re almost identical, but they’re not identical. So what it looks like But at least the theory, the work of the theory is that she went and did another set of drawings to send Tesco to use Touch & Go magazine, and that he never actually used it. The amount of original art that he had that he never used for Touch and Go was I was like, Oh, here’s some original . It just never got viewed.

Brad Niemann

But it’s the same thing. It came out of nowhere. I’ve never even seen the ability to own it for the job. It’s a shanty area for and then this thing popped up.

Scott Shaw

But they are pitch perfect. They’re just not exactly like the shade, something like that.

Brad Niemann

But it looked like she was like, Oh, I need to do another version of these.

Big Toe

So she just reviewed them. No, under under under. And the drive work just straight. It’s pretty amazing.

Brad Niemann

Amazing. You mentioned Mabé Hernández from an art course scene. The other name I would add is Raymond Pettybone for both of you.

Scott Shaw

Well, Raymond goes without saying at this point. He’s just like, Oh, would you like a $20,000 drive? He’s doing high.

Speaker 7

He’s got books.

Brad Niemann

He’s doing fine. It’s funny when I always think of the L. A. Scene, Raymond Pettybone as the inn and yang to Shawn, and he’s interestingly, you were involved with the big band that time with Black Flag and Circle Jerk. So you’ve seen it’s really interesting, the pairing of Raymond Pettybone with Black Flag. You couldn’t imagine a better pairing than those. And then you have you guys with Shawn and to see, do you feel that the music… That they’re reacting to the music? I know Raymond was there from the beginning with Black Flag, and Shawn came a little bit later, once you guys had started. But do you feel that they were bringing together, bringing to life the music in a way, or do you feel like it just happened, just worked out all right?

Speaker 7

I believe in the flow of the universe, which is very hippy-dipp. Certain things happen for a reason. Greg and I hitting up Raymond for artwork to use for the circle jerks. Raymond, just like Shawn, loved the bands that he did artwork for. I don’t know if he loved the Foodfighters, but that had to be a payday for him. Have he done all of the flyers and the album artwork that he’d done for no money, just for the love of the music and the love of the camaraderie amongst all of the people. Raymond was also one of the first bass players in Black Flag. That’s how ridiculous our situation was. He didn’t know how to play bass. The scenario at that time was, you play whatever you can play whatever noise you can make, and we’ll learn as we go along. The thing with Raymond was the same thing with Shawn. They loved the bands. I’ve recently found myself explaining to certain malcontent the people that say, Well, the circle jerks, the skank man, you guys, you’re millionaires. You’ve sold hundreds of thousands of these T-shirts with this design on them. You owe Shawn Kerry millions of dollars.

Speaker 7

And that’s not the way the deal went down, because when she drew the drawing for us, we didn’t know what the fuck was going to happen. We didn’t know that we were going to get in a van and drive around for four months, trying to find places to play and coming home with $150, $200 in our pockets. We, just up until recently, learned that we can pay our bills selling T-shirts. This is not Metallica. Cold players.

Scott Shaw

She sells $80 T-shirts.

Brad Niemann

Just to follow up with my Greg, I think you knew the fate of the backdrop that she painted for you. I’d read Did she actually paint that or was it printed out?

Greg Hetson

I’m pretty sure she painted it. We were playing a show, I think it was somewhere on Long Island, and our road crew guy at the time loaded everything. He put it on top of the trailer because he wanted to put it in last because he didn’t want it to get fucked up. Then we, Everything’s loaded. Let’s go. We drove off and never saw it again. But I heard someone actually found it and has it.

Brad Niemann

Really?

Greg Hetson

That’s what somebody told me, but I can’t remember who. Maybe that’s another, some more folk who are.

Brad Niemann

Here it is, a picture of it for everybody that’s not familiar with it. I’d love to open it up to questions here and just have an open conversation with anybody that wants to ask anything. There’s a microphone, too.

Scott Shaw

If you want to just walk over the mic and feel free to jump in.

Brad Niemann

Besides the Skank Man, did she actually come with a logo with a backwards E?

Big Toe

I’ve always wanted that.

Brad Niemann

Who came up with the actual backwards E on Jerricks?

Greg Hetson

That was someone else, another kid from the scene.

Brad Niemann

That was the same scenario, right?

Speaker 7

I think his name was Doug Drog.

Greg Hetson

Yeah, he showed up with a bunch of buttons, and it was that font, except for… It’s a circle, so it was a K. For a circle, and we just switched it to C and then started using it. Very organic.

Speaker 5

I went to Mission Bay High and sat next to Shawn for, I think, two years of art classes. I don’t know how I didn’t know this person. When I knew her, she would be, Well, you saw the picture of her in high school, the high school photo. I mean, that’s who I knew, and I’m a very sweet person. I was there when her sister passed and was there with the family a lot. This is all really surprising. I didn’t learn about her until last year at our high school reunion. A mutual friend came up and told me that she changed her name and he That’s just fascinating to me. My main question is, first of all, the Friends of Shawn, John Kerry, is this a group that others can join in? Can I be a part of it? I don’t know anything about it. Also, I do have a picture that she painted for her sister that she did. I don’t know.

Brad Niemann

It’s a very tragic story about her sister, which explains her. She had PTSD after her sister’s death, which really led to a lot of the drug abuse and the wild.

Speaker 5

Because I didn’t know any of that at the start.

Brad Niemann

Yeah, but I would love to talk to you afterwards. I mean, the Friends of Shawn Kerri is a nonprofit we’ve set up to try to help Shawn in any way we can. Shawn is a conservator, as I said. She has a difficult financial situation. She doesn’t have any money. She’s a ward of the state in the sense. She can’t technically earn any money because then she wouldn’t be eligible for the care that she needs. What we do is try to put that money aside whenever we raise money. I just recently raised some money to save a mural that she had done here.

Greg Hetson

Which is at the Art Show.

Brad Niemann

Which is at the Art Show? That’s right. Thanks, dad. But we try to just use it to do anything we can do to make her life better. I try to go once a month. I bring her chocolate. She likes dried fish.

Speaker 5

The tuna Fisherman stuff, that was way weird. I have no idea.

Brad Niemann

No, she was a drummer.

Speaker 7

I was told by her last boyfriend where she was and what was going on, and that she was a ward of the State of California, and that there was a conservator, and you couldn’t just show up and say, Hi, Shawn, how are you doing? It’s been 35 years. So I’m talking with her boyfriend, And I’m telling him about our situation where we had actually started to put aside money for her. And he said, No, that doesn’t work. That is not going to work because she will never see the money. The conservator is the one who’s in charge of the money, which means being somebody that works for the state of California, the money probably ends up going to the state of California. We’re already paying $8,000 a year in taxes. Why do we need to give more money to the state of California?

Brad Niemann

Well, it’s a really difficult situation, and I I don’t know much about conservators or conservation law or whatever they call it, but I know if the person that’s in charge of Shawn does not let her have visitors, I just show up. I sit with her on the porch. She’s not allowed to have visitors.

Speaker 5

I know what you’re going to say, Jeff, right here. But we Do you have cards to sign for Shawn because Brad is allowed to go see her, so if you can see that we did pass him through again or once, but we’ll do it through again or come find me so we can bring him to her. Then we’re going to try at the end to say a little thing so maybe we can do a clip for her. Those are things that we can give to her.

Brad Niemann

She doesn’t need money. She’s well taken care of, but she doesn’t need… She really likes… We did a fan mail drive. She really liked that. Every time I collect her work, I bring her one I’ve done four volumes of these for her so far of Shawn Keri work, and it’s just page after page after page. There’s a library out there of her work. This is half of her cartoon’s work. You can do one of these for Punk Rock, you can do one of these for Hustler. You can do one of these for comics. Probably not Disney. She did about 20 stories for Disney, though. She didn’t do the artwork for Disney, but there is tons and tons of work. People out here that have like John knew of collections of stuff that she did privately for them. Tons of stuff out there. Hi, I’m Hannah, and I went in blind to this, and I just loved every story you guys told, and I particularly liked yours, Joyce. I was just wondering if there’s any recordings of the cockpits. I thought that was a really funny name and where you could find that.

Joyce Rooks

Yeah, there’s not really any recordings of the cockpits. They’re all like dinettes. There’s a video on YouTube that you can see. We played at the Western Front up in San Francisco, and that was at the Def Club in Mabouge. There’s a whole thing of that that you can look up, dinets. I think it says at the Def Club. Very cool. Yeah. That’s as close as it would be. Yeah.

Brad Niemann

Sounds good. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Where are you playing Saturday Night, Joyce?

Joyce Rooks

I’m playing at the Silo Room with David Jay and Paul Jenkins from Blackheart Procession. I think it’s sold out, but Yes.

Brad Niemann

Yeah, it’s okay. Let’s go to the next one.

Speaker 5

Silo rooms is really cool, then you down here. Yeah.

Greg Hetson

Hi.

Brad Niemann

Sorry, I have to start here.

Monty Messexx

My name is Wayne.

Brad Niemann

First of all, thank you all for coming very much to this panel. This is fantastic. I got into punk rock in fourth grade at Catholic school by my best friend, Dustin.

Monty Messexx

I had no idea what punk rock was, and ever since then, I’ve been in love with it.

Brad Niemann

So this has been fantastic. My big question is, where can I find all her work?

Speaker 7

Is there a place that’s cataloged online or something or anything?

Brad Niemann

Not yet. I mean, it’s all over the place. We are trying to put together a book. That’s our next project or multiple books, especially the porn stuff from it. It’s its own little volume. But we are gathering it. I’m reaching out to a lot of people that have original work to try to scan it, to also write stories like Monty, where you have this context, everything that was happening. It really helps to put it all together. But just stuff comes out of the woodwork. When I first met Shawn, she does have memory issues. But I was asking her about her first job. She said, Oh, I work for edits. I was like, What is edits? What does that mean? I went to this testing company in San Diego, and they were Oh, yeah, we remember Shawn. We have all the stuff she drew for us. Her first job, she would ride her bike from PB all the way to this place and draw for this testing company about what vocational job you could have. She did hundreds of drawings for them when she was 16 years old. Her desk is still there. They’re like, Yeah, we love Shawn.

Brad Niemann

She’s great. What’s she up to these days? Then she said, Oh, and I worked for a T-shirt company. I said, Oh, really? Which one? She said, I don’t remember. There’s tons of stuff out there. We’re doing our best to reach out to as many people as we can. I talked to the guys that took over cartoons, and they have every issue. We’re scanning all that. She was there from ’78 to ’91 doing at least three or four pages every other month. So covers. I mean, it’s just a ton of stuff. She worked cracked magazine. She did a bunch of stories. She did GI Joke for them.

Scott Shaw

She did a lot of stuff for commies for Mars.

Brad Niemann

Yeah, Commies from Mars was a big one for her. We were both in the same cocaine comic. That’s right. Was that DiCaprio? Was he part of that?

Scott Shaw

George DiCaprio, Leosa Dad. He was a distributor of underground comics across He’s gone to Southern California.

Monty Messexx

Ten minutes. Now he’s got it. Also, just to your question, there recently was a publication of a lot of her punk rock art by a publishing company called Kill Idols. It’s Shawn Kerry. If you Google kill your idol, Shawn Kerry will come up. He did a series of different punk rock artists, Brian Ray Turquide. That’s out there.

Brad Niemann

I run the Friends of Shawn on Instagram. I try to post stuff there all the time. I just found that she did a DOA album that they rejected. She did the artwork for Wreck the Party, that album. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. They picked some other It’s a weird photo of them messing up a turkey dinner. It’s like she could draw these bands. If you see the one she did of the Adolescence, you’re like, That is definitely the Adolescence. She could just capture the spirit of these guys so well. The way she drew DOA is just like, How could they have not used that artwork? Finding all that stuff out there, it’s just unbelievable what’s out there. To find people that knew her in high school. There was a mural at her high school that she drew of a field hockey player. That 40-foot mural we just saved is pretty incredible, too. We’re hoping to put that at the Comic Con Museum. Isn’t a bunch of the art is at that art? Yes, at the art show, which is at the- Art Show at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.

Monty Messexx

Yeah. So you can go in there, it’s free, and there’s the piece of the hope.

Brad Niemann

We got three of the 18 pieces. We took the… We cut the drywall right out of the wall to save that.

Scott Shaw

By the way, Frank Zapper went to Mission Beach High School.

Brad Niemann

Wow. That’s quite a… It’s an amazing thing. Scott, you’re an expert on San Diego cartoon. I’d say you’re the foremost expert. I I would say on San Diego cartoon.

Scott Shaw

Well, at some point, I don’t know what’s going on now.

Brad Niemann

It’s pretty remarkable that you and her and Dave Stevens all ended up in the same place. John Pound. I I don’t know if you know who Dave Stevens is.

Scott Shaw

He was the creator of the Rocketeer and one of the best pin-up artists ever.

Brad Niemann

Like Shawn, he really loved Betty Page, and Dave Stevens actually tracked down Betty Page and was able to get her the rights to her image when she was basically destitute. I think she died a millionaire because of Dave Stevens. He was a good man. We got time for maybe one more. Anybody else? I’ll just leave it to the panel if there’s anything anybody else wants to say or add about Shawn, her legacy. Again, we’re doing our best to get the word out. If you knew Shawn, please stick around. I’d love to talk to you. She’s still very much a mystery. I think a lot of people didn’t know her very well, and a lot of people that did have pretty hazy memories of that time.

Speaker 7

Well, and you would also look at the name Shawn and figure That’s some guy sitting in some room somewhere. And that was also part of her mystique, which was really cool.

Brad Niemann

She also had another pen name, which is D-Lotted, which is, if you know the drug D-Lotted. That was her for the porn stuff, so she really enjoyed that substance a lot. That was her other secret pen name. If you see that in hustler anywhere, that’s Shawn.

Big Toe

I was just sent a text this morning from a My friend who owns a tattoo shop down in Florida, and he just acquired three original Shawn Carrey paintings from a tattoo shop that closed just over here on 10th and Broadway, Lucky’s. Oh, wow. I think he saved a few pieces that might have just ended up in the trash or something.

Brad Niemann

Oh, my gosh. That was towards the end of her career. Cartoon stopped in 1991. That was her last job. She had an opportunity to work at Brennan’s Stimpy, which unfortunately, she was not not able to fulfill because of her drug use. That was the end of her career. But she did spend a lot of time in these tattoo places like Avalon. She would just show up and ask if anybody needed any work, and she would just sketch out stuff for people. She even went down to Crystal Pier. There’s a couple of T-shirts that she did for them down there. She would just show up and say anybody wanted a design, and she was basically door to door.

Speaker 5

Then also on that one, we have the owner of Avalon right here.

Brad Niemann

Oh, wow. Mike Sotie. Yeah. So Shawn did a picture of him tattooing the skin cut. She did a great piece for you. And then the outside art show. Also in the art show, yes, that’s right. So please check that out. It’s amazing to see her stuff in real life. And she did a shirt for John Lauer over here, which is over there, which is what was in that drink? It’s called the Shark Attack.

Scott Shaw

Okay. 151 in Myers.

Brad Niemann

But yeah, check that out over there. That’s her drink of choice, I guess. But I wanted to thank everybody for coming down here for doing this for Shawn. I’m really appreciate. Thank you all, you guys. Thanks for coming. I think we wanted to try to do a video hello to Shawn that we can bring to her. Is that right, Tim?

Speaker 7

Sure. Right over here.

Brad Niemann

If everybody- So on one, two, three. What is it? Hey, Shawn.

Speaker 7

Hey, Shawn.

Brad Niemann

Okay. One, two, three. Hey, Shawn.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Great. Thanks so much, you guys.

Brad Niemann

You, everyone. No, you’re welcome.