Joey Mars

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1963 and raised in the Western Massachusetts town of Wilbraham, Joey Mars spent his childhood watching C-5 cargo transports circle overhead on their approach to nearby Westover Air Force Base. The enormous aircraft inspired him to imagine the worlds that might exist beyond their wings. When it came time to choose a vocation, Mars rejected the conventional flight path and turned to art. He painted the hulls of boats to earn a living, but what he really wanted to paint was pictures.

After serving sentences at the Vesper George School of Art and the original Art Institute of Boston, Mars entered the unruly center of the city’s alternative-rock underground. He created flyers, advertisements and posters for Green Street Station and Bunratty’s before producing the extraordinary poster run for the 1991 Priviet Series on Lansdowne Street. The concerts captured a Boston music scene on the verge of breaking wide open, with bills featuring Pearl Jam, the Lemonheads, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Buffalo Tom, Bullet LaVolta, Come and dozens of others. Mars later became president of the Worcester Artists Group, while his unmistakable visual language led to projects involving Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Tea Party Concerts and Live Nation.

After the birth of their daughter, Hanna, Mars and his wife, Judy, settled near the water on Cape Cod. Provincetown provided a natural home for his psychedelic characters, pop-surrealist paintings and fiercely independent sensibility. His most visible Cape Cod work appeared at Shop Therapy, where the enormous Cash Money Aliens installation transformed the exterior of the former Star Theater into a thirty-three-foot-wide transmission from the world of Joey Mars.

His artwork soon escaped the gallery and traveled through concert halls, record stores, head shops, festivals, T-shirts, stickers and merchandise distributed around the world. Collaborations and licensing agreements with companies including Liquid Blue, PolyGram and Not Fade Away introduced Joey Mars characters to an international audience. By the 1990s, his work had become part of the visual vocabulary of underground music, psychedelic culture and the emerging pop-surrealist movement.

Motherlode became home to two of Mars’s most ambitious transmissions. Bug Brain Sushi unfolded as a daily art adventure throughout 2015. The following year, Mars launched Cash Money Aliens, a sprawling series combining comic-strip characters, political observation, dialogue and poetry into a surreal chronicle of the Trump era. Completed in 2019, the full project remains archived on Motherlode.TV.

In 2026, Mars carried that world off the page and into physical space by building the portals for Camp Provincetown’s Missing Time Outsiders Festival. Constructed from repurposed telephone booths, the portals became both public artworks and working gateways between the festival’s exhibitions, performances, stories and locations—another instance of Joey Mars turning an imagined universe into a place people could actually enter.

The transmission continues through Mars Fest, Joey’s evolving celebration of art, fashion, music, performance and vintage culture. Bringing together exhibitions, wearable art, live performance and the surrounding creative community, Mars Fest extends the world of Joey Mars beyond the gallery and turns it into a shared experience.

Cash Money Aliens

Three-Eyed Bill, Wally the Cat and Franky Cyclops navigate back alleys, dumpster fires, political unreality and time travel on a budget.

Bug Brain Sushi

Highlights from the daily Joey Mars art adventure that ran throughout the 2015 season of Motherlode.TV.

• The Interview
• Mars Fest