First Friday reception: Jeremiah Teutsch: "Memento, Murray."

When he’s not creating spot-on illustrations of newsworthy figures or playing electric bass, fiddle, and banjo in the folk-garage quartet Wolverton, local artist Jeremiah Teutsch often obsesses about death. “I sometimes find myself wishing there was really a drug like Dylar,” Teutsch writes in his artist statement for “Memento, Murray.,” referencing the fictional antidote for thanatophobia (fear of death) Don DeLillo introduced in his novel White Noise. Riffing on a genre that’s served as a mortality check since ancient times, Teutsch’s new solo exhibition explores death and preservation through a traditional vanitas (a painting typically containing skulls and other deathly symbols) that nods to painters of the Dutch Golden Age. As a morbid bonus, the Lubbock native is also “presenting a funeral” — just to make sure people get it right when he dies.