Madeleine Rumbach ’22 designed the touchscreen with mentorship from digital design professor Bryan Leister. The touchscreen project was executed by a handful of CAM alumni. Visitors to the Emmanuel Gallery can take a glimpse into the reunion and the numerous artists who draw on the spirit of Rat Fink as they create. This summer, students, staff, and faculty from CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media (CAM) traveled to the 20 th annual Rat Fink Reunion in Manti, Utah, to capture the story of Roth and the proliferation of art he inspired. “He’s like the Michael Jordan of custom cars and graphic t-shirts.” “Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth is key and crucial in so many different genres,” says Cody Braithwaite, Roth’s son. Roth’s counter-culture art spread to many corners of American culture, including t-shirts, custom cars, skateboard designs, and even fine art. The exhibition, on display through November 17 th, pays homage to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the creator of the anti-hero Rat Fink. Colorado High School Music CompetitionsĪ touchscreen currently set up in the Emmanuel Art Gallery tells the story of Rat Fink Revolution: It Started With a T-Shirt, Now We’re Here.“But I’ve never seen such a division of mankind. Rows of classic cars were parked outside the church and Roth’s coffin was festooned with pinstripes.“The car guys did their best to be on their best behavior,” Hafen laughed. Roth’s Mormon friends were on one side of the church and his L.A.crowd was on the other, Hafen explained with a laugh. Church members as well as his hot rod-era friends attended the funeral. “He knew how much his art was worth to me.” “I can still picture Ed eating a bag of burgers while I’m going through his personal archive of artwork,” Hafen remembers. Most of the artwork he remembered from his childhood had been redone after Roth converted to Mormonism, but he did walk away with the refrigerator door the original Rat Fink was painted on, as well as Mud Truckin’, which Roth signed. “I had very specific things I was looking for,” he said. When Hafen traveled to Manti to choose some of Roth’s art, he went with a shopping list. Hafen traded a sapphire, gold and diamond ring for some of Roth’s artwork. Hafen couldn’t quite understand the concept, so Roth sculpted his idea out of clay and drove it to Hafen’s shop. Then Roth met Ilene, and sent Hafen more sketches. “He could be no one else and that proved too much for her.” “He was still Big Daddy Roth,” Hafen explained. Roth sent him sketches, but the engagement didn’t work out. When that marriage ended in divorce, Roth began frequenting singles dances and met a woman he wanted to marry. He married his third wife and moved to Manti, Utah. Midlife, Roth began re-examining his situation and subsequently joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Rat Fink t-shirts were extremely popular then, and still sell well through hotrod websites. Roth’s most widely recognized cartoon character, Rat Fink, was the monster-like antithesis of Mickey Mouse. He received 1-cent from each kit sold and in 1963 earned $32,000 in royalties. The Revell toy company produced model car kits from Roth’s designs. With the advent of fiberglass construction, Roth began designing and fabricating fantastic one-of-a-kind hotrods. He studied engineering in college, but building cars is what interested him most. Roth grew up in California and had an affinity for both fast cars and drawing grotesque cartoon caricatures. He gave me his card and called me about a month later.” When they met, Hafen gave Roth his card and told him, “I build lots of custom design stuff. The image and name of the design, Wasted on Wine, didn’t fly with Hafen’s mom. He remembers the shirt he wanted but wasn’t allowed to purchase, a Beatnik beret-wearing ratrod with a goatee holding a bottle of wine. For sale on the back pages were t-shirts with Roth’s idiosyncratic cartoon designs. Like Roth, Hafen’s specialty is custom design. Hafen owns Charley Hafen Custom Jewelers and has known of the Big Daddy and his artwork since he was a boy. “I thought, ‘Whoa! That’s Ed Roth!’ when I saw him,” recalls the Salt Lake City jeweler. Charley Hafen met the celebrated artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in 1996 when Roth was hawking his signed silkscreened drawings at a car show.
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