“Definitely not your grandmother’s quilt,” observed a prim (if gamely black-clad) Jane Pauley, introducing a recent CBS Sunday Morning segment on the outrageous textile art of Ben Venom. And, unless your grandma happens to be Siouxsie Sioux or Joan Jett, that would be an understatement.

Lunging tigers, screaming eagles, grinning death’s heads and other “assaulting imagery,” as Venom calls it, abound in the pieced wall hangings and garments he’s been crafting out of recycled fabric for a decade now. Initially inspired by punk and heavy metal music, they’ve evolved over time to also draw from motorcycle clubs, mysticism, folklore, paganism, old German playing cards, Sailor Jerry tattoos, and other disparate places at “the fringes of society” – always with a broad wink of dark humor.

“I take myself seriously,” says the artist, “but I’m a little bit unserious about being serious, if that makes sense.”

No More Mr Nice Guy growls one of his quilts, a phrase borrowed from the 1973 Alice Cooper hit. “I’m a huge fan of his. Interestingly enough, he's extremely religious, a contradiction in itself. I like stuff like that, these very opposite ends of the spectrum,” Venom says. “That’s kind of how I look at my work. I describe my art as a collision – good versus evil, masculine versus feminine, Christianity versus the Devil. I see Alice Cooper clearly riding along that line, too. I think it’s interesting when you take opposing forces and combine them in a piece of artwork or an idea.”

Venom, whose real last name is Baumgartner, is in fact a nice guy, in conversation very much the polite Southern gentleman. “My mom would be proud to hear that,” he quips. A native of Georgia, he grew up skateboarding and hanging around Atlanta’s punk rock scene, absorbing the aesthetics and DIY work ethic of those subcultures. In 2006, a year before getting his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, he saw an exhibition at the de Young Museum featuring the Gee’s Bend Quilters of Alabama. “I was blown away by the quality of the work these women were doing for over a hundred years. Different things spoke to me. They were from the Deep South, like me. They were using donated recycled fabrics, [which became] really important to me. And I liked the idea that the work was also functional.” A painter and screen printer up to that point, he began sewing quilts out of old band T-shirts, denims, and other worn-but-cherished garments people would donate, a practice he continues to this day. “Another way I look at my work is that it’s a big collection of memories. Everyone's unexplained stain or rip is now on view in the form of a functional piece of artwork.”

Today Venom and his wife, photographer Megan Gorham, live and work in the heart of San Francisco’s fabled Haight-Ashbury district. “We are literally in between the Grateful Dead House and where Charles Manson lived around 1967,” he says, adding that the Hells Angels occasionally roar down their street. Wait, so his creations spring from the ultimate nexus of love and flowers, darkness and mayhem? Perfect.