In a little room, right up a flight of stairs in his Hampden house, sits Jordan Bernier's screen-printing enterprise. His set-up consists of a table he built himself, a couple of hot lights, inks, oils and paper, and it is here that Jordan produces some of the finest, most ubiquitous, functional street art in Baltimore.
It is Baltimore's diverse yet integrated music community that is so unique and local concert posters are perhaps the ultimate testament to that. Local promoter Devon Deimler explains, "One design style isn't exclusive to one type of band; like all these band names will appear on all these different types of flyers because the shows mix around a lot."
Poster artist Lesser Gonzalez stresses this sense of community saying, "It's been really hard for them [the media] to grasp that not everyone is doing the same thing here but we are all really stuck together." Posters are just one illustration of how the art and music communities are united in Baltimore. The art is indelibly tied to the music. "It's all one thing, it's all one event, like you get your invitation, that's sort of like a flyer and you come to the party, which is the show, it's all one thing," Deimler said.
The time and effort that go into local posters is evident from first glance. This is part of the appeal says local poster artist Nolen Strals. A nice concert poster means that "like the people who are booking it, obviously they think it's worth that extra effort ... The audience has the same reaction to it, like this isn't going to be your average show."
Strals is credited by so many of the local artists as having been their inspiration to start making posters, and his technical wizardry is apparent in his work. When Strals first began making posters for the Ottobar as a student at MICA in the late '90s, he said there were maybe a handful of screen-printed posters, but that most were done by photocopying and few were hand-drawn. Strals is notorious for making his flyers by hand but concert posters can be made in a variety of ways. Some are made digitally using design or photo-editing software. Posters can be screen-printed or they can be photocopied at your local Kinko's. Many concert posters may only appear as online versions. Shaun Flynn, a local artist (as well as the drummer for the band Wzt Hearts), prefers hand-drawn illustrations with the band names obfuscated and barely legible.
Outsized heads and bubble letters give City Paper illustrator Alex Fine's posters a caricature quality. Okan Arabacioglu, who also does illustrations for the City Paper, has a very polished, computer-meets-old-world-ink look, while work of Jordan Bernier draws on influences such as Islamic art.
Another local artist, Justin Lucas, has created his own signature style of hand-drawn flyers, featuring what he describes as "really simple images, like the kind you would find in a dictionary." They are usually line drawing illustrations of animals or of nature scenes, which convey the kind of old time folksiness of his band, Madagascar.
Screen-printing is usually most artists' ideal printing method, because of the quality of print as well as the versatility of poster size and color. However, there are only a handful of people with access to screen-printing facilities. MICA students tend to be an excellent resource, due to their access to the school's equipment and a number of local promoters employ them for this purpose.
Most printers and poster-makers charge around $40 to $60 for a run of about 40-50 posters, which is little more than the cover of supply costs.
Alex Dunderos is a MICA student but runs his own printing company out of the Hour House building. He explains that financial matters are "definitely the trickiest part, because obviously there's bills to be paid, and there are a lot of expenses ... and when I'm dealing with friends it makes it extra tricky."
There is also a handful of MICA students who are in bands themselves, and became involved with poster making by default. The members of the band Witch Hat do all of their own posters and due to teir poster success, they even started making posters for other bands.
Drummer Noel Freibert says, "A big part of the Baltimore scene is kind of fueled by this mass of art students here. People go here and they learn how to print-make, and once they graduate, they have that knowledge with them."
Almost everyone involved had either gone to MICA as an undergraduate or graduate student, or is currently enrolled there.
Kali Ceisemer, a current senior and illustration major, did popular posters for a Dan Deacon and Videohippos and the Charm City Roller Girls concert. Ceisemer got started in poster making through a class she took at MICA.
In the course, instructor Rebecca Bradley assigned each student a show at the 8X10 Club and they had to create the advertising. The owner of the 8X10 liked Ceisemer's poster so much that he asked her to make another, which happened to be seen by someone from the Roller Girls. That poster was then seen by someone at the Lo-Fi Social Club, who asked her to do a poster for the Dan Deacon show. And so it goes.
Deimler and Matt Papich of the promotion team and record label Wildfire Wildfire are behind many of the most prominent posters in Baltimore. Their style is bright and in-your-face, borrowing and inverting the punk-rock aesthetic into a lighthearted upbeat invitation to party.
As Deimler explains, "A lot of times a good flyer is about picking one image ... you put a rainbow gradient and then you're set to go."
There is this constant tension in the concept of the concert poster: Is it art or is it an advertisement? Strals experienced this conflict while he was still studying at MICA.
"I started turning in posters and stuff for my independent study and my advisor hated it. He was like, 'This isn't art, this is advertising.' And I said, 'I'm not trying to say that it's art, I'm saying that it's commercial art; it's advertising and it's design and it's illustration, and I don't have a problem with it being that.'"
One way in which posters or "commercial art" may differ from "fine art" is in their accessibility.
Dunderos explains, "T-shirts and posters, through the way that they've been used, really are spreading a message that tends to be more of a one-liner or more of a shock effect."
Part of what classifies a concert poster as commercial art is that it advertises the basic information of an event, the date and time. However, some local posters don't even bother to provide all of the event information, while in some posters it may not even be legible. Deimler says that concert posters may even include a sort of "code language."
She says, "These [posters] are all for a pretty informed audience already ... you don't have to lay everything out, because they'll find out, they know where to go."
Code language has become prevalent on local flyers because of the questionable legality of some of the events.
Papich of Wildfire Wildfire is credited with having originated the little "YE$" on the bottom of posters to denote that the show will cost money, though it would be illegal to write out the amount on a flyer - because many of these shows happen in people's homes or in local warehouse spaces, where they may not be legally allowed to charge for shows as they do in a more legitimate venue. Lately many of the local flyers have started to include the phrase "One Fugazi," to denote that the show will cost $5.
It seems that concert posters to a lesser and lesser extent serve to inform the public about shows. Word of mouth and MySpace are how most people in Baltimore seem to find out about concerts.
Dunderos explains the phenomenon, saying, "The way that information is conveyed nowadays is really technology driven, the backlash of that is that people want something tangible ... people really do value something printed and the time that is spent on something, in that sense, [a poster] is kind of like a fine art, you can hang it on the wall, and you can have it and cherish the same way as like a painting."
Elena Johnston is a local artist who is putting together a book on Baltimore concert posters.
She describes the posters as, "The visual interpretation of the show, of that moment." After the show has come and gone, all that is left is the concert poster hanging up on someone's wall. However, the poster as an enduring artifact has to be contrasted with its short lifespan hanging out in public as an advertisement for an upcoming show.
The poster, the art, the ad, will one day be all that is left of the events that comprise Baltimore's pulsating music scene.
Johnston's book will be titled Paper Kingdom and will be available this spring. Her Web site is www.elenajohnston.com.
