Man in Black

I was approached by the Nave Gallery to create a poster for the concert series accompanying their upcoming art show, “The Beast In Me” – art inspired by the work of Johnny Cash. Jenn from the Nave worked tirelessly to coordinate a 4-city tribute series of bands playing Cash songs, all in benefit for prison literacy progams.

These posters will be available at all four concerts, as well as through the Nave Gallery. A portion of proceeds will go to the same prison book programs affiliated with the concert series.

I’ll be manning the sales table at each show so be sure to stop by and say hello if you’re able to make it out!

8 April 2010, RISD Auditorium, Providence, RI
9 April 2010, The Elevens, Northampton, MA
10 April 2010, P.A.’s Lounge, Somerville, MA
28 April 2010, Space Gallery, Portland, ME

full schedule here.

I took some pictures as I worked on the poster and put together a process post – unfortunately they’re just off the iphone so quality isn’t amazing but it should give you some idea of what goes on behind the scenes – enjoy!

Started things off with a loose sketch at full size – I had just picked up some linoleum and was eager to put it to use as I hadn’t carved anything by hand in years, so I decided that the main element would be curved text cut from linoleum.

Then started working out the main text onto the linoleum block. You can see in the picture that I almost forgot to lay things out backwards. Total pro.

Text drawn out (backwards!) with some wood type for reference:

Starting to carve into the linoleum. I purchase it in large sheets that get cut down and mounted to wood for printing. You can also see an outline of an ornamental shape I was considering drawn out there that I decided not to use in the final design.

Fully outlined.

All negative area carved away, trimmed down and ready to mount.

Putting the linoleum aside for a minute, I began work on the background. One of the things that struck me when discussing the concert series with Jenn from the Nave Gallery was the fact that since all of the bands would be playing songs by the same person, there had to be coordination between the bands as to who would be covering which songs. Thankfully there was about 50 years worth of material to choose from. I chose to create the background of the poster from layers of text, spelling out some of Cash’s numerous song titles throughout the years.

This picture shows one layer roughly laid out on one of the oversized galleys that I use for poster layout.

And the second layer:

To print the background, I started with a solid block of linoleum to frame out the piece. Coverage on this layer was fairly light as the addition of the text layers will add up to a nice texture with a good amount of depth.

The first layer of background text in a slightly darker red than the original layer:

I forgot to grab a picture of just the layered text, but it is still quite visible in this picture, which includes the addition of a white star, hand carved from wood during a previous project.

You can probably guess where the color scheme is going – red, white, and…blue ink on the linocut locked up in the bed of the Vandercook SP-20.

Five layers of ink at this point!

For ease of setup I printed the linoleum block and the informational text in two separate passes – here’s the lockup for all the info at the bottom of the poster. 4 venues + over 20 bands = a lot of lead.

And of course, the final product!

wood type wednesdays

AS220‘s Foo Fest is an annual outdoor concert outside the venue in Providence, RI. The fest had a whole slew of bands last year and AS220 asked different artists to create and print posters for the individual bands playing the fest. I was lucky enough to get paired with the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, and I created this design using four layers of fluorescent inks printed with wood type.

Most of the stuff that gets printed around here is on flat paper or cardstock – I do some bags or envelopes here and there, cd/record packaging, you know the deal. So, when the fine folks at AS220 said they were sending up a hundred blank pizza boxes to throw into the print run for the Foo Fest poster I was doing, I was pretty stoked. The boxes were used at the Nice Slice pizza shop as promotion for the show, and the posters were sold at the show along with the posters featuring the other artists involved.

The poster is available for purchase in my etsy shop here.

wood type wednesdays

Another oldie – printed on my first press, a hand-inked Showcard press, back in 2003. As you can see the details of the event had not been completely solidified at the time of printing.

Middlesex Five Year Anniversary

It’s taken a moment to get around to posting this but last month I had the pleasure of designing and printing a suite of products for the five year party at Middlesex. I was originally approached about producing a poster, but the project grew to include a mini-poster/handbill and drink coasters.

The text on the poster was printed using vintage wood type and a custom polymer plate for the Middlesex logo, while the background image was created by printing directly from a 12″ vinyl record that was mounted on a piece of wood to type height. With some makeready finessing, the resulting print retained the grooves from the record.

Rough grain wood provided the background for the lower area of the poster.

In preparation for the mini-poster and coasters, each part of the poster was printed separately at full size in black, then scanned and reduced to create the polymer plates used in printing the smaller items. Notice the halftone pattern (small dots) in the recreation of the record image – while letterpress generally lends itself to solid lines and areas, halftone patterns can be used to provide detail not possible from vector or line art.

The coasters were cut with squared corners and bound into packs of ten with a custom paper band featuring the Middlesex logo. The packs were given out as souvenirs at the end of the night.

on display

I’m going to have a couple pieces in the POST THIS! rock poster show at Space 242 opening on December 11th. The openings are always fun (thank you Harpoon) but remember to RSVP on the website and show up early because they kick everybody out at 8PM!

and…

“Welcome to the Human Race”, my series of wood type monoprints is currently on display at the Sherman Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. Stop by for a coffee and check out their new all-local market around the corner!