Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks

Locks’ exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration.

The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space functioning like improvisational jazz and the other like a stripped-down, urgent punk track. Locks pushes back on easy analogies, but embraces the underlying idea: that both bodies of work are driven by different modes of attention and response.

A major thread is process. Locks describes an almost anti-archival system of working, where stacks of Xeroxes, prints, and sampled sounds are mentally cataloged rather than digitally organized. This produces a practice grounded in rediscovery and accident, closer to crate-digging than database searching.

Equally central is pedagogy. His decade-plus engagement with incarcerated students becomes a generative force, not a side project. The “homework” he assigns becomes his own studio method, expanding into the work shown here and into related musical output like List of Demands.

Throughout, Locks positions his work within a lineage that moves fluidly between comic books, punk ephemera, Black radical print culture, and contemporary art. The result is a practice that refuses clean categorization, operating instead as an ongoing negotiation between sound, image, politics, and community.

Names Dropped 

Duncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/
Ryan (Peter Miller) — http://ryanpetermiller.com/

Damon Locks — https://damonlocks.black/

Goldfinch Gallery — https://goldfinch-gallery.com/
Lumpen Radio — https://lumpenradio.com/

Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project — https://pnaep.org/
Stateville Correctional Center — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateville_Correctional_Center

Artists / Art References

Charles White — https://www.artic.edu/artists/23067/charles-white
Raymond Pettibon — https://gagosian.com/artists/raymond-pettibon/
Emory Douglas — https://www.moma.org/artists/13246
Kerry James Marshall — https://kerryjamesmarshall.com/

Music / Punk References

Bad Brains — https://www.badbrains.com/
Minor Threat — https://dischord.com/band/minor-threat
Government Issue — https://dischord.com/band/government-issue
The Clash — https://www.theclash.com/
Siouxsie and the Banshees — https://www.siouxsieandthebanshees.co.uk/
The Damned — https://www.officialdamned.com/
Big Black — https://touchandgorecords.com/bands/big-black/
Naked Raygun — https://www.nakedraygun.org/
Black Flag — https://sstsuperstore.com/collections/black-flag

Comics / Illustration Influences

John Byrne — https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/byrne_john.htm
Neal Adams — https://nealadams.com/
George Pérez — https://www.marvel.com/comics/creators/126/george_perez
Marshall Rogers — https://www.lambiek.net/artists/r/rogers_marshall.htm