My full Flatstock 16 preview will be coming shortly, but to whet your appetites I wanted to first post an interview with screen printing extraordinaire Andy MacDougall.
Starting in 2006, Andy MacDougall of www.squeegeeville.com, and www.tmiscreenprinting.com began setting up printing demos at Flatstock. Andy resides on Vancouver Island, but works with printers all over North America and contributes written material to a variety of trade magazines. In 2007, he was elected to the Academy of Screen Printing Technology for his work promoting screen printing, only the 2nd Canadian to join the international group. A lifelong interest in music and posters drew him to the gig poster movement in 2003, where he discovered there were hundreds, if not thousands of others like him all over the world. Some of his earliest posters date from the early 70′s mostly for bands he was in. “We may have sucked, but we had the best poster!” After spending a few decades printing commercial work, he has returned to what he loves: making art and posters, teaching people how to screen print, and fooling around with equipment design. He is also the author of Screenprinting… The Basics, a modern tome of screen printing info and how-to’s. There’s no one better to talk about the demos at Flatstock, so I caught up with Andy over email and asked him a few questions about the printing this year.
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Photo by Craynol
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past year, you know that an election is coming up. You’re probably familiar with the players involved; they’ve been hoofing it across the country for months, stumping for votes, parrying debate questions and fending off (or courting) reporters. As we creep ever so slowly toward the nominating conventions, things are taking shape. While Senator John McCain has all but sewn up the Republican nomination, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still fighting it out in Ohio and Texas, although Obama seems to be pulling away.
Both Democratic candidates have relied on strong and distinct bases. Clinton is still winning the majority of registered democrat’s votes, while Obama’s appeal is strong among moderate independents. The race and gender factors have been widely discussed. Both candidates have raised millions of dollars. But in the last few months, Drymount! has observed a new source of vocal, and visual, support for Obama—artists appear to be throwing their support behind his candidacy, especially in the form of a few highly visible art campaigns.
Perhaps this is because no artist wants to take on Hillary’s over-familiar cheekbones and chipmunk smile. Kidding aside, though, Obama’s message of change has really resonated within the artist community, and I’ll take a look at a few of the more compelling works that have come out in his support.
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I had the chance to visit the University of Maryland last week for the opening of Sweet: The Graphic Beauty of the Contemporary Rock Poster, and let me tell you, if there is anyway you can make it out to the show, I highly recommend it (at least check out last week’s interview with the show’s curator John Shipman). As I slowly paced the gallery gazing at poster after glorious poster, The Debate kept popping up in my mind. What debate you might ask? It’s that age-old debate within the gig poster community (that is if the gp community is old enough for age-old debates):
What Makes a Good Gig Poster?
It is a nearly impossible question to truly answer, but faced with so many prime examples of the medium I decided to do my best to set out my own blueprint for excellence in poster making.
Follow the jump for my poster criteria.
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The biggest rock poster show to hit the East Coast in a long while kicks off next Wednesday, February 6th. Sweet: The Graphic Beauty of the Contemporary Rock Poster opens at the University of Maryland Art Gallery with a number of cool opportunities.
First and foremost is the official opening of a show featuring such poster luminaries as Rob Jones, Burlesque of North America, Jay Ryan, Todd Slater, Strawberryluna and a host of other amazing talents. Not only does the show feature beautiful posters, but there is also a site-specific installation by Jesse LeDoux, “display[ing] the versatility of the screen printing technique.” As well as unique signage designed by Philadelphia artist Tim Gough.
But perhaps more exciting for the collectors among us is Sweet Booth, an all day poster fair, with contributing artists selling their wares. Artists appearing at Sweet Booth include Mike King, Patent Pending, Guy Burwell, Strawberryluna, Hero Design and Tim Gough.
Follow the jump for an interview with show curator John Shipman and a complete listing of the artists involved.
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One of the things I want to cover on Drymount! are big poster releases, so all the loyal LMB readers are well informed. That coverage is going to begin today with a huge release by Drowning Creek Studio.
Owned and operated by the formidable team of Jeff Wood and Judy Gex, Drowning Creek has been designing amazing posters for a wide variety of bands for over 10 years. Their specialty, however, is jambands, and over the years they’ve done posters for everyone from Phish to Widespread Panic to Umphrey’s McGee. Today’s release is heavy on the jamband material as well. Jeff’s prints are stunning in person and need to be seen to be believed.
Straight from DCS:
Umphrey’s McGee NYE ’07 – We hear this one was a hit at the show…. wish we could have been there to hear the music! A limited number available and limited to 1 per person order. These copies are also remarked with Jeff’s Flying Eyeball sig. Rest of the edition Sold Out at the show.
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Today I’ll be heading to the opening of American Handscape, a new show featuring the art prints and posters of Judge and Gina Kelly. I couldn’t be more excited.
It’s not every day that a poster gallery show opens in Brooklyn, and this one features two extremely talented artists. I’ve been keeping an eye on Judge’s work for a couple years. She’s done a ton of fantastic posters for Neko Case, among many other great bands, and she contributed an amazing poster to the Screens ‘N’ Spokes show last year. I’m just now becoming familiar with Gina’s work, and having seen her poster for American Handscape in person, I’m really looking forward to seeing more. I caught up with Gina and Judge and asked them about the show, “covering” each others work, and their poster process.
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First off I want to thank everyone for checking out the first Drymount! post last week and for all the support. Justin and I both thought this column would be a good fit on Live Music Blog and I’m glad you folks seem to agree. I did see a very important question continue to pop up in the comments — “Where can I find more?”
I’ll do my best to answer that most basic question with a rather long winded answer.
FINDING POSTERS
Gigposters.com
The first place I would tell anyone looking for gig posters to go is the namesake website, Gigposters.com. Run by Canadian Clay Hayes, Gigposters.com is a huge database of 83,170 posters (and counting). The database can be searched by band, artist, venue, and city, and it is probably the best place to find out if a poster was made for that show you went to last month. For example, a quick search for posters in Buffalo will bring up a ton of great Hero Design Studio prints, but also 25 pages worth of posters for concerts in Buffalo.
Despite that vast resource, Gigposters.com is perhaps more valuable for its very active forum and the tons of valuable information in it. For the dedicated searcher you can learn everything from how to set up your own screen printing studio to the best way to get your own poster gigs. You’ll also learn more than you ever wanted to know about bacon, get your fill of lolcats and quickly find out what Frank Kozik thinks about Hillary Rodham Clinton. Basically, the Gigposters.com forum is a bit of a minefield, full of great info from the artists themselves and twice as many snarky comments (those can be fun too).
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We’re starting today off with a new column on the site, and we’re welcoming on a new blogger to the team named Sam Verrill. He approached me with an idea to do some posts on the concert posters that tons of bands are starting to sell at their live shows, and I thought that sounded like a good way to feature some new content on the site. Plus, I’m pretty sure art is cool and stuff, or so I’ve heard. LMB, meet Sam. Sam, meet LMB.
Welcome to Drymount, a recurring column I’ll be writing for the Live Music Blog covering posters and related art in the gig poster community.
I was always a t-shirt buying concert goer. I’d try to pick up a tour shirt at almost every show I’d go to because, let’s face it, I liked wearing my musical tastes on my sleeve. But Pearl Jam helped introduce me to the wide world of gig posters. How great to be able to buy relatively inexpensive art featuring my favorite bands. It must have touched a collecting chord with me because I was quickly consumed by the whole scene. I quickly went from buying posters only to shows I saw to buying posters to any bands I liked. Pretty soon, I became drawn by the art itself, and I’m now ready to buy anything with a beautiful craft and design.
In 2007, I took my first steps towards contributing to the community. I organized the first annual Screens ‘N’ Spokes art show to benefit the National MS Society’s City to Shore Bike Tour. 20 fantastic artists created amazing, bike inspired posters for the show in Philadelphia. Hopefully this column will get me more involved and I’m hoping to convert a few of you. I’ll be reporting on recent trends, the art of screenprinting, the American Poster Institute’s Flatstock conventions, noteworthy poster series and introductions to other areas of the web for more info. I’ll also be doing interviews with artists to give you more insight into their background, influences and process.
But I wanted to start the year with a look back at 2007. For me it was a great year for gig art with tons of gorgeous work printed, and since it’s the season for top ten lists, I decided to compile my own…
So without further ado, welcome to the wonderful world of gig posters and enjoy a look back at 2007…
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