For a Breeders show, Casey Burns drew a couple of bunnies. For Le Tigre, he drew a haughty tiger with matching mustache and beret. Besides being a member of local band The Nein and a Chapel Hill resident, Burns is a prolific poster artist; he has been for the past 12 years.
"It's a great way to mix both my love of art and music and to kind of use my creativity to produce something that will get my art out there for people to see," said Burns at SXSW's second annual Flatstock fair. Flatstock is an international conglomeration of 80 fellow poster artists trading their knowledge of the trade and, of course, hawking their band-emblazoned wares to musically-attuned passers-by.
In preparation for each poster, Burns explained, "I'm drawing either from photographs that I took or photographs that I found and, basically, I'm just trying to capture the spirit of a band. I definitely interact and try to get a feel and a sense of the band."
Then, it's just a matter of transferring image from thought to paper.
As part of a music industry that all too often prides commercial over aesthetic value, the poster art movement is surprisingly grassroots in nature. Using a printer in the basement or borrowing one is the main means to mass-produce their posters. "Very few of these people gathered here make their living off posters," said Burns. "We just have a drive to do it, a passion."
For those fans who didn't make it out to Flatstock this year, these musical tributes can be purchased at bands' concerts and, of course, internet sites like www.gigposters.com.
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