Pedro Bell was an American artist and illustrator, best known for his elaborate album cover designs and other artwork for numerous Funkadelic and George Clinton solo albums.
22 Facts About Pedro Bell
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Pedro Bell's work was preceded and partially inspired by Sun Ra and was a precursor to the modern graphic novel and the Afro-punk movement.
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Pedro Bell said that he gained his artistic talent from his father, whom he described as frustrated artist; and his mother, who wrote and played the piano.
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Pedro Bell attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he said he was exposed to the Black Power movement and met activist Mark Clark.
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Pedro Bell donated artwork to the Black Panther Party and participated in a protest, which led to his expulsion from school.
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Pedro Bell attended Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he took art classes and studied with Don Baum.
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Between late 1969 and early 1970, Pedro Bell heard Funkadelic on the underground Chicago radio station WXFM for the first time.
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Pedro Bell began writing illustrated letters to the band and contacted their manager, Rod Scribner, in order to send him drawings and college-newspaper writing samples.
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Pedro Bell additionally created and mailed what he called "psychedelic envelopes", but since Funkadelic bandleader George Clinton was under investigation at the time by the RCMP for his involvement with the Process Church of the Final Judgment, the envelopes were investigated.
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Pedro Bell was hired to produce artwork for the band, beginning with local show posters, promotional items, and press kits.
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Pedro Bell moved on to album artwork, where he built a mythology that included slang, nicknames, and otherworld concepts that eventually became part of the artwork and liner notes of the Funkadelic records.
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Pedro Bell often came up with nicknames, which he called "tags", for people.
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Pedro Bell worked to reflect the band's atmosphere of its music and stage performances in his work, for which he used markers and felt-tipped pens because the fumes of the paint he used were too toxic, and he often traced the markers with acrylic due to issues with color separation from the printing process.
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Pedro Bell said he created the original pieces on three foot square panels, and often would only have the record title, and would not have heard the music before creating the album artwork.
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Pedro Bell therefore held regular jobs, including working in a bank and then a post office, but retained his association with the P-Funk family by often wearing day-glo wigs and psychedelic-inspired outfits.
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Pedro Bell additionally collaborated with Clinton on album cover artwork for Clinton's 1980s solo releases, but their relationship became further strained after Clinton began to collaborate with Prince.
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Pedro Bell had his own studio that he named Splankwerks, and in 1988, he created a cartoon for MTV called Larry Lazer.
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Pedro Bell said that among his artistic influences were artist Ed Roth, especially how he incorporated cars into his artwork, and the work of cartoonist Robert Williams in advertising that appeared in Hot Rod magazine.
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Pedro Bell cited Frank Zappa, Harlan Ellison, Hunter S Thompson, Iceberg Slim and Tom Wolfe as influences.
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Pedro Bell read extensively about dinosaurs and Godzilla, and studied Latin.
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Pedro Bell struggled with health and poverty issues for much of his later life.
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In January 2010, the Black Rock Coalition held a fundraiser called "Miracle for a Maggot: Funkraiser for P-Funk Graphic Artist Pedro Bell" to help Bell.