Modesty, thy name is Grace Slick.

For someone who defined a generation through classic songs with Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship, and as a solo performer, Slick is remarkably unimpressed with herself.

“Being a Supreme Court Justice is unusual for a woman,” she says. “Being Speaker of the House is unusual. Running for president is unusual.”

But fronting a rock band? Not so much.

With her husky laugh punctuating a lengthy telephone interview from her home in Malibu, Calif., Slick further avers that she has a limited vocal range (“Four notes—all of them loud”), she’s a klutz onstage, and she never liked her three No. 1 hits.

Thank God the girl can paint.

That’s what she’s been doing for nearly a decade. And her work is about to come to this area—at the Wentworth Gallery in the King of Prussia Mall on May 19 and 20.

Slick left the music business behind in 1989 because, as she explains in another bit of self-deprecation, “I felt stupid on the stage all during my 40s, so I got out when I was 49.”

Her new vocation grew from a troubled relationship. “I could always draw,” she says, “and I was living with this guy—bright, funny, good-looking, like a male model. But he was bipolar. I couldn’t do anything about that because I’m not a psychiatrist. But in order to make me happy, I started painting animals–because they make me happy. And my friends came over and said, ‘Wow! You ought to do that professionally.’”

The relationship ended but her new career blossomed. “I figure it’s a suitable thing to do when you’re older,” she says. “You don’t have to look like anything. I can be a fat, old, white-haired lady and do that. You don’t have to look like Britney Spears if you’re a painter.”

While carving a niche for herself in the art world, she downplays her role in the history of rock. She does concede that she was part of a movement that glorified the lyricist.

“Before the ’60s,” she says, “pretty much everything was about some love thing. Either ‘I love you very much and aren’t we happy?’ or ‘How come you don’t like me anymore?’ Varying versions of that. But we wrote about anything–everything you can think about. It opened the arena to the lyricist. I didn’t open it up, a whole bunch of people did.”

The success of her most famous hit, “White Rabbit” (sometimes mistakenly identified as “Go Ask Alice”) remains a mystery to her.

“Why ‘White Rabbit’ made it I have no idea,” she says. “It’s a Spanish march talking about Alice in Wonderland. What is that? I mean, that’s goofy. But it was appealing, I guess, because it was like Bolero, which was very popular, and Louis Carroll, who was very popular, and you put ’em together and kind of semi rip ’em off, and you’ve got a hit.”

Slick identified with Alice, she says, “Because the same thing that happened to me happened to her. She was brought up in Victorian England; I was brought up in the ’50s. Both periods were very straight, very rigid about what you’re supposed to be doing. My mother wore nylons every day; she had matching earrings and pin. The old man gets up every morning, wears a three-piece suit, hat, goes to the train, takes it into the city. The old lady cooks the dinner, waits for the man to come home, has a drink ready for him.

“But, all of a sudden, when you’re very young, you follow your curiosity. Alice follows her curiosity and goes into Wonderland, which is pretty much like going into the ’60s from the ’50s. Going into a rock ’n’ roll band is like going into Wonderland.”

Today’s rock and pop scene is much different from the one Slick entered in 1965 as the lead singer for Jefferson Airplane. “Now,” she says, “you have to have a good body, you gotta dance, you gotta change your clothes every five minutes, you have to have flashing lights, exploding chickens onstage, and whatever. All we did was show up. You just wore whatever you had on that day.”

Another of her hits, Starship’s 1985 anthem “We Built This City,” was named “worst single ever constructed,” by Blender magazine in 2004. Slick agrees, more or less.

“I don’t know if it’s the worst, but it’s right up there,” she laughs. “It was written by a British guy about the clubs closing in L.A., and who cares if the clubs close? And it was sung by a group from San Francisco. Just for starters, there isn’t any city that was built on rock ’n’ roll. L.A. was built on oil, orange groves and the movie industry. So I don’t know what he was talking about. It went to No. 1, but it’s a dumb-ass song.”

In fact, Slick didn’t care for any of the three No. 1 hits her bands produced.

“‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ was about ‘We’re going to be together forever.’ But I don’t believe it. You’re horny now, and you think you’re going to be together forever. It’s hormones that are telling you that.
“And then there was ‘Jane’—‘Jane, Jane, Jane.’ Oh, please. But luckily, I didn‘t have to sing that.”

She watches MTV and VH1 and stays somewhat current with the music scene. She calls Christina Aguilera “a real good singer,” but her favorite is a band from Austin, Texas, called Del Castillo. “Unbelievable band,” she says. “They’re all Spanish-American. They are blues, or Cosby, Stills and Nash doing mariachi. The drummer and the lead guitarist are amazing. They’re fabulous.”

Comparing her music to her art, she says, “It’s the same person doing them, so there’s some of the same construction going into them. But my art is not so bizarre as my music. My art is a little more accessible, primarily because it’s simple, in-your-face with brilliant colors, like elaborate cartoons.

She says her paintings “relate ideas that I have so that hopefully, when you look at them, you go, ‘Uh-huh, I know what that means.’”

She wants to create the same effect that Democratic presidential-hopeful Barack Obama has on her. “Politically, I’m just a little bit to the left of a Sandinista,” she says, “but when I listen to Barack Obama speak, something just fits right. When he talks, unlike a bunch of other people, he sounds sane, and I’m real fond of that in my president.”

In a final burst of bluntness mixed with modesty, she says that some critics have claimed she’s not really an artist. “Frankly,” Slick says, “I don’t give a s--t, because people buy my stuff.”

— Grace Slick’s paintings will be shown Saturday, May 19, 6-9 p.m., and Sunday, May 20, 12-3 p.m., at the Wentworth Gallery in The Court (King of Prussia), 406 Mall Blvd., King of Prussia, Pa. Call (610) 337-8988 for more information.