HOLYOKE – A walk around the Taber Gallery at Holyoke Community College quickly reveals that artist Gary Hallgren loves twisting and turning pop culture inside out.

His new retrospective show at the gallery highlights pop culture icons and such comic strip stars as Dick Tracy, Dagwood and Blondie, Nancy and Sluggo and even a well known mouse.

Nancy is seen in a cubist rendition for instance. There’s a comic strip done in the style of the Blondie strip with President Ronald Reagan in the Dagwood role and his wife Nancy as Blondie.

In one painting, Dagwood’s dog Daisy is seen tearing a mouse apart. The caption reads, “Dagwood, come quick Daisy's caught a mouse. “The rodent in question is very familiar.

He depicted a scene for the classic science fiction strip “Buck Rogers” in the style of its first artist Dick Calkins. Hallgren added fabric to the depiction of airships in a dogfight for a genuine 3-D effect.

“I was just paying with stuff,” Hallgren told Reminder Publishing of the “Buck Rogers” piece.

Looking around the gallery, Hallgren said with a deadpan delivery, “I didn’t know I was such a fun guy.”

Hallgren lives in Granby, but was a native of Washington who moved to California in the early 1970s. By 1971 he had joined fellow artist Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Shary Flenniken and Ted Richards in a group called “the Air Pirates.”

Releasing three editions of an underground comic book series that parodied Disney cartoon characters, the artists were the subjects of a lawsuit, which eventually they lost. Hallgren had settled in order to move forward with his career.

Becoming a sought-after illustrator, his work appeared in Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and Premiere – and also National Lampoon, Mad, Marvel Comics and many others.

Among his current assignments is working on the art for the comic strip “Hagar the Horrible.”

His interest in “Nancy,” came from an invitation years ago to submit six weeks of finished strips when United Features Syndicate was looking for a replacement for Ernie Brushmiller, the creator of the strip.

Although Hallgren did not get the job, he became fascinated with the “sublime symbolism” of the strip as well as its minimalist qualities. He started playing with the characters, which undercut the expectation of people who know the comic strip.

When asked if the exhibit contains a favorite piece, Hallgren asked if he could have five favorites. He said he liked the logo he did with the Air Pirates as one of his favorites as well as the “I am the Pontiac,” comic book page he did for the underground “El Perfecto,” which was a fundraiser for LSD advocate – and Springfield native – Timothy Leary.

He explained that Doug Kenney, one of the founders of The National Lampoon saw the piece that led to work for that publications. Editors of the New York Times saw Hallgren’s work in the Lampoon and hired him to work for the newspaper.

“Pop art can be about more than art or culture,” Hallgren said in an artist’s statement. “It can be about that most universal of themes: the human condition. Familiar newspaper comics characters can carry much symbolism on their black-and-white backs after being infused with the gravitas of easel painting.”

Taber Art Gallery director Amy Johnquest said, “Gary’s bold designs, distorted realities, finished and unfinished surfaces, canonized humor and joy of painting are clearly present in this exhibition’s selections from his expansive body of work,” said.

The Taber Art Gallery at HCC is open Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. during regular school sessions. It is free and open to the public and located through the HCC Campus Library lobby on the second floor of the HCC Donahue Building, 303 Homestead Ave. The exhibit is now on display through Feb. 21.