One of my favorite parts of this music festival each year is Flatstock, an exhibit of some of the best concert poster designers and printers. A preliminary trip is always needed to get oriented with the setup, but I’ll definitely be back to dig deeper and meet more artists. Yesterday – in the 10 minutes I way there (they were closing down for the day when I arrived) – I already found something SPACE-related!

Two Arms, Inc. is a small print shop in Brooklyn, NY. Though all their work on display was impressive, I was immediately drawn to a posted with an illustration of the United States with each state as a book shelf, with a ladder leaning up against it. In small text above it read “Sketchbook Project.” Yup, the one that is coming to SPACE later this month (March 30)! I hope we get some of these posters to promote it!

I’ll be back today to check out more art!

24×36 on cream paper / Official poster for the documentary Best Worst Movie
reg. edition of 350, var. edition of 180, offset edition (27×40) not for sale but used as promotion
5 Color Screenprint with metallic inks / Printed by D&L Screenprinting
Some posters are still available at the movies website.

Poster done by Kris Johnsen @ Emblem Studio in Portland, Maine.

This poster was super fun to make! I started out just drawing cassette tapes in my notebook while at the same time was thinking of ideas for upcoming shows at SPACE, and it just clicked together, Ted Leo=Fun good times! so I chose to make a grid formation of old tapes, which are all based off of real tapes I found in a box at my work. I eventually changes some of the information on the tapes to fit the show, Ted Leo & Screamales references, and maybe one local indie band one in there as well. You’ll have to see these in person to know what I’m talking about!

First few drawings of tapes which eventually led me to hand drawing all of the band text. This is harder than it looks, mostly just trying to pick the one that works best.

Way more photos after the jump!

After the poster was all layed out in Photoshop I printed out each color layer on to paper and oiled them up for the burning process. This poster is a 3 color screen print, printed on 4 different colors of paper. Ink colors are Black, Light blueish white and Orange/red

The photo below is the blue layer transparency.

Some detail in the tapes. Which appear on the poster in exactly the same size as a real tape. You could hold up the original one right on top of the printed one!

With a lot of the blue layer I mixed in white onto the screen to get a little gradation of color rather than just a flat color. I really like this effect, I’ve been doing it on the last few posters I’ve done, I feel like it makes them all just that much different from eachother.

I use old discarded posters for text prints. It creates crazy layers of imagery. I have a whole stack of these kinds of prints.

Orange Layer! Lots of white in this one.

And the last layer of black detail.

There is an edition of 35 of these posters and will only be available on June 19th at SPACE Gallery for the Ted Leo And The Pharmacists show with Screaming Females. Click here to buy tickets, which you will need to get in advance because this show will sell out!

On the heels of our wildly successful Johnny Cash Night in ’09, The Nave Gallery,Band In Boston, Rhode Island School of Design, and Space Gallery have organized a series of Johnny Cash tributes New England-wide to benefit prison book programs and celebrate the Man in Black. Join us for an evening of tribute covers by Portland musicians Christopher Teret, Jesse Pilgrim and the Bonfire (with many special guests!), and Caleb Aaron and the Thrill Pills, spanning the entirety of Cash’s discography from Sun Records-era barn burners to gospel tear-jerkers. Proceeds from this event will benefit Volunteers for Hancock Jail Residents, which has operated a jail library program since 2001 and also purchases books for Maine’s prisoners as funds allow. More info at www.jailvolunteers.org.

This poster was created by Michael Dacey at Repeat Press Somerville, MA. who you might recognize from a recent solo show at Corduroy Boutique in town. Michael will have these posters for sale at the Johnny Cash night April 28th, so please stop by and grab one while you can! The rest of this post is taken from Michael’s Repeat Press Blog.

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 programs.

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! full schedule here.

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.

More process shots after the jump!

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!

Click more for process shots from the making of the poster!

A few different colorways were made so there will be a few choices!

This month’s posters are for Dead of Winter and Stand With Haiti. Dead of Winter is a 3 color screen print designed and printed by Kris Johnsen. Stand With Haiti was designed by Sean Wilkinson and is a 2 color screen print, also printed by Kris Johnsen.

Here’s some process shots of the Dean of Winter poster being created.

On October 20th we had one of our all ages shows with Negative Standards, Ye, Pinko & The Action Boys & A Primative and Savage Land. Was a really awesome night, our 2nd show inside of the Swoon installation. We also made a screen printed poster for this show, Illustration done by Ahna Galatea, Printing done at Emblem Studio.

3 Color Screen print done on various types of paper, Very Bright!

New poster just finished for the next ALL AGES show at SPACE Gallery with Nightmare Of You, Destry, Fly Upright Kite & Colors. Poster is 25in-10in. Printed on thin chipboard and a few on white poster board. 3 colors.

Here is a link to the show page.

Poster printing and design done by myself, Kris Johnsen @ Emblem Studio

Oiling up the paper with the images printed on it. Each color is a different layer.

Our exposure unit in not in a filthy basement anymore! Pickwick Independent Press is getting all together and that is where I will be working. Its in the same building, just alot nicer and cleaner, plus a bunch of new presses are being added to the space, check them all out on Pickwick’s website! They are accepting applications now.

First layer of yellow.

The yellow layer was drawn and stretched for the size of the poster.

This is all you need when you print posters! and the occasional sandwich.

I started to mix the 2 red’s I was printing with, so no two posters are exactly alike, some came out alot darker than others, but I really like the different reds in the print.

You can see the different shades of red here.

New washout sink is amazing!!!

Last layer of black. Notice the smiling Target gift cards I use for placement holders. They work prefectly!

Last steps of cutting the rest of the paper and signing and numbering all the posters.

This Friday, September 12th, Mark Robinson brings his latest pop project, Cotton Candy to SPACE to open up for Death Vessel at our big post-Picnic show. Robinson was the founder of Teenbeat Records and lead orchestrator for the oh-so-worthy-of-your-listening-band Unrest who’s recorded output ran a diverse gamut before settling on a formula of nearly perfect jangle-pop (for some real genre-bending diversity, seek out some of Unrest’s early records, like Malcolm X Park or Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation). Teenbeat records were one of the pacesetters for the early 90s DIY movement, releasing lovingly packaged singles and albums including Unrest’s last album Perfect Teeth in a 7″ boxed set format. Robinson went on to front other great projects like Air Miami, Olympic Death Squad and Flin Flon.

On Sunday, September 20th, Chain and the Gang drops hard on the SPACE stage. C+tG is fronted by also legendary DC frontman, Ian Svenonius who’s gifted the worlds with scene-shattering The Nation of Ulysses, The Cupid Car Club, The Make Up, Weird War, The Scene Creamers, a solo album under the name David Candy, a book of essays and a totally fascinating internet talk show, Soft Focus on VBS.tv. This is the man who brought Performing back to indie music. Chain & the Gang also features Svenonius’ West Coast counterpart, Calvin Johnson founder of K Records and member of Beat Happening, The Halo Benders and Dub Narcotic Sound System, his will be a facemelter.

DC represented (now we just need to get Bad Brains in the house).

This poster is a 4 color screen print, the image comes from a page out of my sketchbook originally done with coffee, acrylic paint and micron’s. The image was drawn again for the poster and to be able to separate it into different colors. Also a different layer of spray paint splatters was added as well.

I use the computer to separate each color and print out the layers.

Images printed out on paper then oiled.

The first layer of half the posters were printed in gold. The other half in baby blue. There is an edition of 52 of these posters.

Red layer.

I used 6 different colors of paper for the backround, So there are alot of different variations of this poster. Only 2 dark blue ones!

Sometimes awesome dogs named Capone come and distract you!

Thanks to Jess for coming and helping me out!

The black layer printed on the mylar that helps me register the prints.