Paul Senior went to the Rand Holmes retrospective art exhibition held March 17-18 on Lasqueti Island, BC. and took photos and wrote about the show.
Since I started buying undergrounds as a young geek in the early 1980’s, I was aware that the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers had a Canadian cousin, Harold Hedd. He was drawn by one of Canada’s finest comic artists, Rand Holmes. In the late 1960’s and on into the early 70’s, Rand drew for the Georgia Straight, a weekly underground newspaper in Vancouver, BC. Harold was featured in a tabloid-sized reprint as well as his own comics from Last Gasp. Rand also did covers and editorial cartoons for the Straight, commercial art and many short comic works.
For the last twenty years of his life, Rand lived and worked on Lasqueti Island {lah-SKEE-tee}, population 250. The same size and shape as Manhattan Island but with 1.4 million fewer people, it’s accessible via a passenger ferry {which does not take vehicles} that departs from the nearby marina of French Creek on Vancouver Island. If the weather is cooperating.
Rand Holmes died March 17th, 2002 and his family and friends organized a retrospective art show at the community hall on the fifth anniversary of his untimely death. This is probably the last time this work will be together like this, it will likely go on tour and some will be sold.