Visual Art

Pictures from Hell Mark Ruwedel Blue Sky Gallery, 1231 NW Hoyt St I had always pictured hell as a modified version of junior high, but with no girls, no weekends, and the faculty being comprised entirely of my immediate family. It turns out that, as usual, I was way off base and that hell is […]

When an artist plunks a rotting deer carcass in the middle of a small gallery, people will inevitably be turned off, and for some artists, this reaction is reward enough. If the audience doesn’t like the installation for whatever number of plausible reasons, the artist responds “fuck ’em,” and convinces himself that he is too […]

Mike King Paper, Scissors, ROCK PNCA Opens Oct 3 Mike King is a longtime Portland designer whose show, 600 Smash Hits ver. 2.0, is up at PNCA in conjunction with Paper, Scissors, ROCK (see feature pg 10). When did you start making poster art for bands? I first did posters when I was like 14 […]

Up to now, TJ Norris’ new gallery, Soundvision, isn’t very Portland. It’s New York or San Francisco, or even Berlin. The gallery’s, ahem, vision of coupling visual mediums with audio installation and performance is one that hasn’t had much of a home in Portland. Nonetheless, it sits alongside the other galleries that line Everett just […]

Next to the music, nothing more immediately conveys the fuck-all spirit of punk rock than show poster art. It’s cut-up, it’s pasted, it’s haphazard, it’s urgent and rebellious. And, more recently–as a response to the very anti-punk proliferation of graphic designers whose sole purpose is to sell product–it’s beautiful, or painstaking, or challenging. Poster art […]

I spend a great deal of time trying to ascertain the music’s and band’s personalities, and then attempt to accurately reflect them visually. ART CHANTRY is a freaking legend. Practically the inventor of punk poster art, Chantry moved from his longtime home of Seattle to St. Louis two years ago. Chantry is notorious for rendering […]

I kind of operate with the idea that if it’s attractive, interesting, and looks different from what else is out there, then it’s going to draw you in. JEFF KLEINSMITH, whose recent work includes the awesome Hot Hot Heat album art and a Sigur Ros poster, has been designing posters for 12 years. He started […]