> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Five Decades of Subverting the Icons of the South - URL: https://hyperallergic.com/five-decades-of-subverting-the-icons-of-the-south/ - Published: 2015-05-28T02:36:39.000Z - Updated: 2025-11-24T16:15:36.000Z - Description: NEW ORLEANS — Motorcycle racer, evangelical performance artist, illustrator of Southern myths, and giant snake creator, Jim Roche is a difficult person to pin down. - Author: Allison Meier - Tags: Art, New Orleans, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Review, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2) ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden10.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless noted) NEW ORLEANS — Motorcycle racer, evangelical performance artist, illustrator of Southern myths, and giant snake creator, Jim Roche is a difficult person to pin down. A five-decade survey of his work, [*Cultural Mechanic*](http://www.ogdenmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, examines Roche as an explorer of the strange and spiritual South. If you’re unfamiliar with the Florida artist’s work (as I was), stepping into the galleries of the Ogden is overwhelming. There are sculptures, photographs, drawings, ceramics, and assemblages, all displayed salon style. A separate room hosts a mini show-within-a-show called *Jim “Dr. Curve” Roche: Corner Worshiper*, which displays the products of Roche documenting, by hand-drawn cartography, his favorite motorcycle courses. (In the region Roche may be best known as a longtime Florida State University professor, from 1973 to 2011, but he also is a European motorcycle aficionado and still holds the time trial record for the 1000cc unlimited twin class of La Carrera Mexican Road Race.) The larger exhibition doesn’t do much to guide you, allowing you to bounce from one colorful piece to the next: from trippy 1970s drawings of his mythical Loch Ness Mama monster, with multiple breasts for a head atop its striped body, to a hallway full of his 1980s *Road Crosses*, which feature painted slogans based on homemade evangelical markers and the vernacular environment of [W.C. Rice’s Cross Garden](http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2019?ref=hyperallergic.com) in Alabama. ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden13.jpg) Installation view of Jim Roche’s ‘Road Crosses’ ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden3.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ with a sculpture of the Loch Ness Mama ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden16.jpg) Installation view of the show-within-a-show, ‘Jim “Dr. Curve” Roche: Corner Worshiper’ There’s a subversive, psychedelic edge to it all, as Roche both embraces and plays with the backroads culture of the South. Wall text points out that the *Road Crosses* were made when Reagan-era politics were rising under the banner of far-right Christianity — one cross reads in painted letters: “Why not / Life is brief / S.O.S. or D.O.A., R.U.O.K? / Death is sure / Live for / Jesus?” In one of Roche’s many odd moments of fame, he even appeared on a TV outside the cell of Hannibal Lecter [in *Silence of the Lambs*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97BEH2DnnLw&feature=youtu.be&ref=hyperallergic.com) as his preacher persona, “Brother Jim,” waving a Bible filled with what looks like hotel ephemera in front of some crosses. Other major and curious milestones of his career rise up from the colorful chaos of the exhibition, like his massive “Don’t Tread on Me No More Y’all: Piece” serpent that slithers across the floor, a satiric take on the [Gadsden flag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden%5Fflag?ref=hyperallergic.com); it last appeared in the 1976 Venice Biennale, and now has a new relevance as the Tea Party movement [has adopted the flag](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125184586&ref=hyperallergic.com) as one of its rallying icons. That piece followed Roche’s 1974 solo installation of DIY pink flamingo lawn ornaments and assorted natural and manufactured Southern ecology at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which was in turn preceded by his thesis show being shut down at the University of Dallas due to his scandalously curvaceous *Mama Plants* ceramics. The exhibitioncan feel as overstuffed as Brother Jim’s Bible, drawing your eye all over the place, but it’s certainly not boring. No artist stays the same over five decades, yet *Cultural Mechanic* shows a creator who has consistently been fluid in his work, while maintaining a personal mysticism that both embodies and reacts to the predominant religion and customs of the South. ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden11.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden9.jpg) Jim Roche, “Two Hundred Years Keeping Animals Down, done Brought Da Snake crawlin back around, Flashing Symbols for One and All; Don’t tread on Me No More Y’All: Piece” (1976), graphite and color pencil on paper ![Jim Roche, "The Eyes of Florida" (1980), Graphite and color pencil on paper (Collection of the artist, courtesy Ogden Museum of Southern Art)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/culturalmechanic22.jpg) Jim Roche, “The Eyes of Florida” (1980), graphite and color pencil on paper (collection of the artist, courtesy Ogden Museum of Southern Art) ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden14.jpg) Installation view of Jim Roche’s ‘Road Crosses’ ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden12.jpg) Installation Jim Roche’s ‘Road Crosses,’ with planning drawings at left ![Jim Roche, "Crabeye" (1977), graphite on paper (Collection of the artist, courtesy Ogden Museum of Southern Art)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/culturalmechanic21.jpg) Jim Roche, “Crabeye” (1977), graphite on paper (collection of the artist, courtesy Ogden Museum of Southern Art) ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden4.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ with drawings from the 1970s ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden5.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden7.jpg) Drawings featuring the Loch Ness Mama ![Installation view of 'Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic'](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/jimrocheogden1.jpg) Installation view of ‘Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic’ [Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic](http://www.ogdenmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (925 Camp Street, New Orleans) through July 12\.*