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| The Art Of Music: Rock Poster Icons |
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| Visual art has always walked hand in hand with music, for good or ill. An in-depth look at the artists that help shape the scene by JT. |
Visual art has always walked hand in hand with music, for good or ill. Whether it’s the graphic authoritative cartoon images of classic rock fare such as Pink Floyd, or the hotrod and pinup iconography of Rev. Horton Heat, the two are often inescapably linked. After all, who can think of The Sex Pistols without immediately summoning to mind their classic logo?
While rock poster art and underground music can inevitably lead to a chicken-and-the-egg debate, few would be so bold as to downplay the relevance and power of promotional imagery. By capturing a specific theme, be it classic or cartoon, successful flyers both entice and repel. In a world where devils romp with nuns, funny paper pigs cavort with serial killers, and the cultural icon muse reigns supreme, the soundtrack of The Melvins, Swans, Nick Cave and Ministry seems almost too fitting.
This section is our attempt at recognizing the important contributions the visual art world has made in the realm of underground rock. By no means a comprehensive list (our hats go off to Winston Smith, Coop and untold others), we’ve done our best to highlight some of the most diverse, and in our minds, relevant artists in the field today.
Derek Hess
Instantly distinguishable by his trademark thin line, detail-oriented style and human figure muse, Derek Hess has created over 100 concert posters for a variety of bands including The Cows, Nine Inch Nails and Soul Coughing. His work has appeared in major galleries throughout the nation, and Hess has the additional distinction of being one of the few underground artists to have a portfolio in the permanent poster art collection of The Louvre in Paris.
Hess was commissioned to create a variety of pieces for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s opening exhibit Three Decades of Heavy Metal, and his art has been featured on the cover of numerous national magazines, ranging from Punk Planet to Newsweek.
JT: How did you come to draw for a living?
Derek: Well, initially, for a living, I was booking a club in Cleveland. That was while I was attending art school. I needed to promote my shows, so I started drawing flyers. At the same time, I was studying printmaking and learning how to lay things out graphically. I was doing 3-4 shows a week, so it really gave me a lot of opportunity to figure out how things should look.
Eventually I was able to make the jump to silkscreening posters by getting myself a business partner. I couldn’t financially afford it myself; I was losing too much money on the shows. (Laughs) Never book shows if you’re a fan! So that’s how I got started. Somewhere in there, I also dropped out of school. (Laughs)
JT: (Laughs) Oh yeah?
D: They had me speak to the kids there recently, and the college had a new president. I went up to the guy right before I went on and said ‘should I tell them about how I dropped out of school?’ and he freaked. (Laughs) Of course, he didn’t want me to do that.
JT: Why did you drop out?
D: Well, I was booking shows, chopping chicken wings and landscaping, so something had to drop off or I was gonna fall apart. I felt like I had enough schooling by that point. As I see it, you don’t really need a BFA degree in fine arts as much as you might in applied arts. Of course, the new college president might beg to differ! (Laughs) I knew what I was doing by that point, so school fell off.
JT: Your work seems to utilize a lot of earth tones, a lot of different green, gray and brown. Why do you avoid using flashy color schemes?
D: I’m put off by the bright stuff, it doesn’t attract me. I know that’s the point of it, to attract, but it’s too oversaturating, too instantly gratifying. I feel like a lot of things in our society are like that now; show me the violence, show me the sex, ok, what’s next? So I use the muted colors and try to draw you into it. I think one of the reasons it works, is because it’s not really done a lot. I also think that my background, coming from an environment like Cleveland, contributed.
JT: I thought it might be derived from necessity, since most DIY concert flyers are black and white….
D: Well, that certainly didn’t hinder my progress with the style. (Laughs)
JT: Your most notable work often deals with the human form. What keeps you coming back to that topic?
D: That’s my passion, since I was a little kid. I’ve always loved drawing the human figure. When I was going to school, I always focused in on the life drawing classes. They would tell me ‘you don’t need any more of these, you need to focus on this literature class you failed out of three times!’ (Laughs) I would just keep taking life drawing over and over. If that’s what you’re pursuing, you can never really get enough of it. There’s always more to learn. I just gravitate towards it. We’re all humans, so it gives me something to relate to.
That’s also why I tend to do more male figures, that’s what I am. I don’t want to pretend that I know what’s going on with a woman’s mind. I’m not that much in touch with my feminine side. (Laughs) I mean, I am a sensitive artist with good communication skills, I’m a good catch, but…(Laughs) I basically know how men operate, that’s why I concentrate on that.
JT: A lot of your work has a recurring theme of mythology or theology, specifically your use of angelic creatures…
D: It’s been an ongoing thing, trying to figure out how I feel about spiritual matters. I believe that there’s a reason why we’re all here, but that we’re not really in tune with why. That’s a strange way to put it, but I believe in the karma thing. It gets into the concept of hearing that little inner voice, which is why I have a lot of scenes with angels whispering in the ear or hitting someone over the head. If you ignore those voices and do your own self-will, you’re kind of going against the flow and the end result usually sucks. If you let things flow, you tend to end up getting where you need to be.
JT: Was there a specific point when things really took off for you artistically?
D: Well, in 1995 I was able to live off the art. It was a fairly quick trip, since I started making posters in 1993. But I was also riding the music crest. Music changes about every three or four years, so I was riding the wave of all of those Touch & Go bands, those Amphetamine Reptile bands. Concert posters were coming up again at the time, so I fell right in with that. I had done enough footwork to learn how to print, to learn how to draw, that I was able to jump at the window of opportunity.
JT: How often do you work with models, given your fascination with the human form?
D: Not very often. I’ll use my hands sometimes. I have a mirror in front of my drawing board. I’d love to work from models, I just don’t very often.
JT: Do you pull the prints for your posters yourself?
D: No, they’re printed in Detroit. I do all of the film separations myself by hand, but I let them do their thing. We are very like-minded; they speak my language there. I think we’ve only turned down one batch of posters ever from them, they’re top notch.
JT: Have you ever been approached by a band to do a poster whose music you hate?
D: (Laughs) Yeah.
JTA: How do you handle that?
D: I have my business partner handle it. (Laughs). He knows how I feel about most bands. The other side, of course, is that he bitches about some of the one’s I wanna do. We’re business partners and have to invest x amount of money to get things printed. You’re not gonna sell them all at once, but you need to have them move to have cash flow, to keep that roof over your head. So I don’t get to do everything I want, but I also don’t have to do the things I don’t want to do. It all evens out in the end.
Jermaine Rogers
Utilizing a unique line-art technique, the work of Jermaine Rogers has become virtually synonymous with the field of rock poster art. His odd assortment of crazed critters (including his trademark fanged bear) co-mingle with historical icons, rendering a world where fact and fiction collide.
Largely self-taught, Rogers’ influences can be traced through a veritable timeline of pop culture. From the televised world of Sid & Marty Krofft in the 1970’s to the Graham Ingels inked E.C. comics of the 1950’s, Rogers incorporation of vast style and scope gives his work a flare that is all-encompassing without crossing the line to derivative.
His art has graced posters for a huge assortment of the rock underground elite, including Radiohead, Bauhaus, Modest Mouse and Helmet, and his silk screens can be found in galleries throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. A friendly and generous person by nature, Rogers’ supremacy within the art world simply cannot be disputed.
JT: How did you get into the world of rock poster art?
Jermaine: Initially, it was just doing flyers for friends in bands. Everybody has the kid in school that can draw, and I was always into music. I was raised by a hippie mother and a father who had a strong appreciation for soul and blues, so I was always around music. I had a natural talent to draw, and it seemed a natural fit. In the late eighties I discovered Kozik, and he really showed me a lot. The further along I went, the more styles I discovered. It just kind of blossomed.
JT: I’m amazed by the size and scope of some of your work. Do you prefer large mediums to small?
J: It depends on the artwork. I’ve seen some powerful artwork that is 11x17. It’s all about the imagery. Working in a larger medium can be good for obvious reasons; bigger is better in a lot of people’s minds. But sometimes, in that space, you lose the tightness of the idea.
I kind of weigh it out. Some posters are ok at 24x18…but for a poster about someone like Morrissey…to his fans, he’s larger than life. The poster has to be large.
JT: Your work tends to highlight historical figures quite a bit.
J: I do a lot of reading. What I’ve discovered is that the things that appeal to modern people are usually the same things that would have appealed to people in ancient Egypt, just in a different scenario. History is great; it gives the viewer something to instantly connect to.
If I put someone like Kurt Cobain in a poster, usually people have hours, or even years, of emotion tied into his image. So that can be half the battle won.
JT: Do you ever intentionally place figures like that in extraordinary confines, just to provoke a reaction?
J: (Laughs) Yeah, just to screw with people. I like to play with ideas that people have been socially taught. No one has to tell you, for instance, that you’re supposed to love your mother. It’s taught through action and through society. A lot of social teaching is good; a lot is obviously bad. So I like to take those things and screw with them.
For example, say you take an image of someone like Jeffery Dahmer and put flowers around it, with a caption that reads ‘all of god’s children are beautiful’…people are going to freak out. Sometimes that works to grab attention, and when it comes down to it that’s what the poster is supposed to do – promote the show, grab that attention.
JT: When did you start working full time on your art?
J: Well, I was working full time at a museum in Houston. It was a great job, in a certain sense. It was good money, a health plan and security, but I just wasn’t finding fulfillment. One day I came home from work, and there was a commercial on television for the Army. The narrator said ‘you’ve read the stories of other people’s lives, now start writing your own’; it was for the Army, but it really hit home for me. So a few weeks later, I quit my job at the museum and started to pursue it full time.
The first year was rough, doing things just to eat. But I started to slowly get some national notice, doing things here and there. By about mid-1999 things had taken off.
JT: Do you feel that your steady growth was a result of bigger bands requesting your work, or more your own tenacity in pursuing them?
J: It was both. It was a straight up hustle. I was constantly on the phone, and doing stuff for free. The first year, most of my posters were done out of my pocket. I’ll do a poster for a venue, and then they’ll sell it. If it sells out quickly, the next time they’ll pay you a little bit; it just kind of spirals. Bands will see work you’ve done and start to associate. It feeds on itself.
JT: Is your current focus still on rock posters?
J: Primarily, although I’ve also been doing some painting. I can get more money for a single painting, plus I love the medium.
Right now I’m trying to incorporate painting into the poster work. I did a poster at the end of last year for Coldplay, and it looks like a gallery painting. I just want to get kids to stop settling for what they’ve seen for the last 15-20 years. It’s ok to have a painting for a System Of A Down show.
I’ve also been collaborating with two other artists for a series, we’ve done an entire tour worth of posters for Queens Of The Stone Age. We’re trying to set the trend for other artists to see that the future is a pulling together of the artist and the band. For a long time, you would have the artist and the band separated by all of these people in suits. We’re trying to break down that barrier.
JT: How did that work? Did you each do individual posters, or did you collaborate on each one?
J: There were about 35-40 dates, so we immediately split up the three most highly visible dates. After that, we all just kind of picked cities, and everyone was given total creative control. On the last one, we all collaborated.
JT: Was that difficult?
J: You’d think it would be, considering that we all have our own distinct style and that we might be uncompromising. But we work well together. We were like brothers during the collaboration.
JT: Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?
J: I would say to…
A: Join the Army?
J: (Laughs) No! This will sound clichéd, but…stay true to what you’re doing. If you really believe in what you’re doing, someone will get it. Don’t try and be another Kozik, be you. It may be a situation where you have to convince people that what you’re doing is right; but if you stay true to your vision, it will happen.
Jason Cooper
Raised in the bible-belt range of Mississippi, Jason Cooper’s religion-heavy artistry should come as no surprise. What may be, however, is the context of such imagery; oftentimes erotic, oftentimes outrageous. Having established himself as a stand out talent within the field, Cooper’s art has graced posters for the likes of Henry Rollins, Built To Spill and The Misfits, as well as unforgettable works for Lords Of Acid.
Recently establishing his own Black Heart Studios, Cooper’s notoriety seems to be far from slowing.
JT: Can you tell us a little about your introduction to the art world?
Jason Cooper: Well, I was a skateboarder in the late eighties. I was really big into the skateboard art, even though I didn’t know that much about the process. I had no idea that it was a silk-screening process. I started working at a T-shirt company a few years later, and that’s where I learned about silk-screening, and the poster process.
I did research into some alternative art magazines, e-mailed some people, and eventually landed a job doing a Donnas poster. That was the first thing I did. Since then, it’s really been a team effort between me and the company Drowning Creek.
JT: Have you always drawn with your trademark cartoon-ish style?
J: Pretty much. I started off drawing Kiss and werewolves when I was six. I used to draw monsters on the back of my sister’s book reports. (Laughs) She would turn them in with ink creatures all over the back of them. It got me into a little bit of trouble, but it kick-started my later career. I took some art classes in college, about two years worth of graphic design, but it wasn’t really teaching me what I wanted to know. It was pretty stagnant, so I dropped out. I basically learned everything on my own.
JT: I’ve seen some of your work around as tattoo flash. Is that something you’re pushing more these days?
J: I do some custom work, we’re planning on doing some more limited edition tattoo flash. That’s definitely one of my future projects.
JT: What’s your main focus right now, artistically speaking?
J: My main focus is on poster art. I started off doing erotic art, so I’m starting to revisit some of that. The Lords Of Acid poster was kind of my way back into that. Michael Manning is a huge influence on me; I love his poster stuff. I also love religious art. I’m not a religious person, but I love the iconography.
JT: Your work does have a tendency to involve devils and nuns…
J: Yeah, the catholic art. Also the hindu art. I’m just fascinated with the rituals and everything that goes along with it. It has been becoming more of an influence as I go along. Maybe one day I’ll find the connection between religion and erotic art. (Laughs)
JT: Obviously some bands, like Lords of Acid, have a natural sex-vibe going for them. Have you ever designed a poster for a band that freaked out over the art you’ve drawn for them?
J: (Laughs) Yeah, Cake. I figured, for a band named Cake, that I would have a naked chick jumping out of a cake! She had tassels, a bomb in one hand and a candle in the other. They said ‘not gonna happen’. It never did happen. I’m not a Cake fan, so fuck it, who cares?
JT: Do bands seek you out a lot more these days?
J: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been working with this band Dead Boy and the Elephantmen, doing all of their art. They’re based out of Louisiana, one of those situations where you go to see a band and get blown away. I begged them to let me do their stuff, and it just kind of spiraled from there. I felt like my drawing style didn’t really fit their sound, so I’ve been trying to do more theatre-style pieces for them. I’ve been going for that old, classic look.
JT: Your art tends to lend itself to rockabilly, hotrod-style bands like Nashville Pussy or Reverend Horton Heat. Do you feel like your style just naturally heads that direction, or do you tend to cater to what the client wants?
J: It kind of happens both ways. I think, by this point, that people have realized that I’m gonna draw the lowbrow stuff. I’m the guy people come to for the tits and the skulls. (Laughs) They dig it, and I dig doing it, so it works out perfectly. (Laughs)
Not everything I do is like that though. I’m a huge Built To Spill fan, so I really try to go all out for stuff like that. I tried to capture some of the vibe from their album Perfect From Now On, kind of an Eastern-vibe, on their poster.
JT: What were some of your other favorite bands to do work for?
J: The Lords of Acid was a thrill, and the Type O Negative was pretty fun. They have the whole goth girl thing going on, so that was fun. I love their first album; I used to listen to them.
JT: Do you approach a lot of bands about doing their art?
J: Well, being from Mississippi, I don’t get approached by a lot of bands. Most bands don’t come there, and wisely so! (Laughs) I contact a lot of bands by e-mail. The internet has opened up a lot of doors for me.
JT: Do you sell a lot of your work online?
J: Yeah. I also sell a lot at the Flatstock poster shows. Credit card sales on my website are the main thing. I have some collectors who keep coming back. I honestly don’t see what people like about my work. (Laughs) I mean, I like it when I’m drawing it, but then I’ll look back at it and critique. Every artist is his or her own worst critic, I guess. When someone says they like my work, it feels good to hear it but I have a hard time believing it. (Laughs)
Frank Kozik
Few artists within the rock realm are as instantly recognizable as Frank Kozik. His incorporation of pop culture graphics with conflicting, oftentimes violent imagery has yielded some of the medium’s most distinct and unforgettable pieces. His art has graced countless record covers and tour posters for artists as diverse as Beck, George Clinton and Boss Hog, and his numerous book collections are constantly in demand.
Kozik’s record label Man’s Ruin took the music fascination one step further, releasing records from The Bulimics, Dozer and Fu Manchu during its five years in existence. Currently dabbling in everything from fine art painting to toy design, Kozik’s mastery seems more important than ever.
JT: Can you give us a little background about how you got into drawing?
Frank Kozik: There was never a specific moment when I made a grand decision or anything. I was drawing for fun; people slowly started paying me and then one day I didn’t have a job anymore. It was a slow thing; there was never a plan.
JT: Are you self-taught?
F: Completely. I’m a high school drop out, man.
JT: Your work has a tendency to highlight cultural figures, most notably Hitler, Manson and JFK. What led you to the iconic fascination?
F: I tend to use archaic icons, a person who’s original meaning has been lost or altered by time. I would never do a Bush thing, that’s totally stale to me. I’m just attracted to certain types, I’m not sure why. I don’t really think a whole lot about what I do.
JT: A lot of your work also utilizes bright colorings…
F: Yeah. I did a lot of that in the older days, I’ve moved away a little bit from that now. Back then, we were stuck with black and white copiers, so once I got a printing setup I kind of went crazy with it. It was purely done for showing off purposes. These days, I do more of a mix of everything. I don’t do that much rock stuff anymore. After twenty years of posters, and thousands of music pieces…I’m now more interested in toy design and painting. I’m doing a wide range of things, even some clothing design.
JT: How was your experience running Man’s Ruin?
F: It was both positive and negative. I’m proud of what we did, but the reality of it is that music distribution in America is fucked up and corrupt. The label failed because of distro problems, and independent distribution is even sleazier than major label distro. That’s what’s really killing it for a lot of bands right now. If you’re a small band, you can do ok on an indie until the minute you start selling a decent amount of records. At that point, the indie can’t handle the demand, so you have to go to a major. But you can’t go to a major, because they demand all of this insane placement money.
The label grew insanely quickly for three years, and we sold a lot of records. We sold too many for our independent distributor, so I was forced to go to a major. That didn’t work, because I didn’t have their $40,000 a week for radio play and shit like that. So they ignored us, and it all fell apart. It’s a shame. We had great bands, we always got positive reviews, I still get people looking to buy the records…so we had great content and a willing audience, just no way to get it to them. You can only lose money for so long.
JT: Does it exist on any level now?
F: No. It is bankrupt, gone…all rights have reverted back to the artists.
JT: Your work is well known for dealing in extremes of contrast, like cute and fuzzy bunnies wielding butcher knives…
F: Well, you have to have a balanced existence. They can’t all be evil; they can’t all be cute. You need to mix the two; it’s like salt and pepper.
JT: Have protesters ever targeted you?
F: I’ve only been hassled by left wing, P.C., Maximumrocknroll dicks. I’ve done the sickest shit, and The Man has never fucked with me. No christians, no republicans. I’ve only been actively censored by supposed punk rock liberals. They’ve dubbed my work as pro-corporate, bigoted, fascist, non-vegan…you name it.
JT: Do you see a revival in the field of rock poster art?
F: Yeah. The scene is insane. Guitar rock is making a comeback of sorts these days, so it seems like people are starting to care again.
JT: How have your books been selling?
F: Great. They sell and sell and sell. We keep reprinting.
JT: How often do you actually do new rock posters these days, with all of your other interests?
F: I’ve averaged about 250 posters a year since the early 1980’s. These days, I do more sporadic things. I do some work for Levi, I have a couple of my own clothing merch deals in Japan. I try and do lots of little deals, I think that big deals are bad. I have at least thirteen small merchandising deals in various markets. This way if one dies, another goes right up, and at the end of the year you have a decent sum.
JT: Having been in the game so long, has your desired medium for poster art changed? Do you use computers more?
F: I’ve been using computers since the day I got my hands on them. Having a computer allowed me to compete with anyone in the world. It has allowed me to make $10,000 in a day sometimes. The computer is the best thing to happen to the industry, and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid. I still draw stuff; I just scan it in and send it out. You can’t send a mechanical separation to a client. It doesn’t work that way anymore. I’ve always embraced any new technology that has come out.
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