Naziosare

Ivan Manuppelli 

Guess Who? 

Mou 

 Colin Clark

Just got this amazing piece of work in the mail today from Abraham Diaz and Yecal Disaster of Ediciones ¡Joc Doc! in Mexico City.  All pages are screenprinted and risographed; the art is by 16 artists from around the globe.  Buy it here!

Fear of Punk//Fear of Art in Hamilton

Show #2:  We are excited to announce that Fear of Punk//Fear of Art will have a second installment in Hamilton, Ontario at Hammer City Records.  This exhibition will open during November's James Street Art Crawl on November 8th, beginning at 7 pm.

Tell the world you wouldn't miss it here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/1399765893594543

Hamiltonians:  For a taste of what the exhibition is all about, check out this great little piece written by Alison Lang of Broken Pencil that discusses the exhibition's premise and a few of the participating artists:  http://www.brokenpencil.com/news/fear-of-punkfear-of-art-at-zine-dream-6

Art Crawl Night: 

FEAR OF PUNK // FEAR OF ART 

Adam Kindred (Halifax)

Alex Ratcharge (France)

Alexander Heir (NYC)

Dustin McChesney (Minneapolis)

Emma Maatman (LA)

Erick Lyle (NYC)

Heather Benjamin (NYC)

Jill Pucciarelli (Olympia)

Leah Wishnia (NYC)

Matthew McGarry (Rochester)

Nathan Gattis (Chicago)

Paul D’Elia (LA)

Sam Ryser (NYC)

Shiva Addanki (NYC)  

Spoiler (Montreal)

Tara Bursey (Hamilton)

Weird Luke (NYC)

Yecatl Peña (Mexico City)

Curated by Ben Needham and Tara Bursey

Punk is everywhere.  From malls to museums, the influence and imagery of punk’s past has largely been absorbed into mass culture. Despite this, contemporary DIY punk rock sits firmly outside of the mainstream, and at both regional and global levels is stronger than ever. The visual culture that surrounds it is variably dark, threatening, chaotic, smart, funny, mysterious and questioning.

Fear of Punk / Fear of Art highlights the creative output of current punk artists, bringing their work out of its usual context while exploring intersections between punk rock, art and print culture. The purpose of the exhibition is to celebrate contemporary punk art while sharing it with a broader audience. The exhibition includes drawing, sculpture and printed matter that draws inspiration from horror, the occult, sex, despair, popular culture, art history and urban life.

FEAR OF PUNK / FEAR OF ART runs November 6-December 10

at Hammer City Records

228 James Street North (Basement at Rear)

Hamilton, Ontario

On Art Crawl Nights you can enter via bcontemporary gallery direct from James St North, or the usual entrance off the Robert Street alley located between Granny’s Place and the Classic Cafe Patio.

More Punk Art

Setting in to my new digs in Hamilton has been a trip!  Work contracts, back-n-forth travel to TO, (unsuccessful) job hunting and moving has more or less put a halt to art-making endeavors except for some punk rock-related bits and pieces.  This kinda makes sense considering the very last things I did before leaving TO were putting on the Fear of Punk show and popping of a quick LP cover for a friend's band.

A few weeks ago, I was asked for an interview for an incredible NYC-based comics anthology called Happiness, published and edited by the talented Leah Wishnia.  The interview will also include contributions from two of the four School Jerks-- I've done the art for all of their recorded output, and the interview is mostly about the work I've done for them.  Doing this interview gave me a rare opportunity to talk about my other "art-half" (the one that does art for punk bands) and reflect on how I started doing this this type of work.   I've included some of the interview text here (it's only a small portion of the entire interview):

Doing show flyers and album artwork grew out of my work making zines.  I remember being 17 or 18 thinking that it would be a really great job to be a freelance illustrator, doing art for bands both in and outside of punk that was not unlike the work I did for the zines I had been making for years.  This was before I realized how hard it was to get paid by bands that see you as a friend or acquaintance doing the band a favour!  When I was 18, I dropped out of art school and had a string of crappy jobs.  Doing flyers for neighbourhood bands and the odd flyer for performers and punk bands was less a way of making money than a way I kept an art practice going and got to know people while I just floated around aimlessly working retail, socializing, and trying to make an adult life for myself.

My first real job doing an album cover that was widely distributed was for the LP of a Toronto band called Action in 2003 or so.  They were pretty young and got signed to the label Punkcore from New York and were really excited about the prospect of touring and being on the same label as some of their favourite bands growing up.  The drummer Greg was my best friend at the time.  I was really happy to be a part of it because they were all friends of mine, we were all from the same suburb of Toronto, and it was such a big deal for all of us to feel like we were “making it” on some level-- they were under 20, and I was a couple years older.  I ended up doing their pin designs, t-shirt designs and the front cover, back cover and insert art for their LP.  This was my first taste of having a hand in shaping the entire visual identity of a band and at the time it was really rewarding and exciting for all of us to be doing something we knew a ton of people would see and hear. 

To be honest, ten years later, punk rock isn’t as much a part of my daily life as it used to be when I was 20, or even 25.  I have a pretty broad art practice that involves making art for punk bands but also sculpture/installation, publications and curating among other things.  I listen to way more 60s psych and hard rock than punk these days.  I am lucky to have developed my drawing skills at a really young age (I went to an arts high school where most students wanted to be animators for Disney!), so now I have this skill that I can basically pull out of my back pocket when I need to.  Most of the time it’s to draw a dripping skull or something grim for some punk dude, which is fine when I have the time.

(...)

I think Ben said it best in another interview when he said that while art has always taken a backseat in punk, it plays a huge part in how punk is understood by itself and the world.  Also, within punk, art (lyrics too) can be an introduction or passage to social and political issues that would be more difficult to understand through a textbook or a news source, especially for young people.  For example, when I was a teenager, the art of Gee Vaucher and Winston Smith (for Crass and the Dead Kennedys respectively) was a way for me to begin to explore radical politics. Punk art can be frightening, stimulating, exciting, thought provoking and (gasp) even beautiful.  Over the years, I’ve learned a lot from it, too.

Collage by Gee Vaucher

The Fear of Punk//Fear of Art show has been a great way to expand on the work for bands and connect with people who are serious about doing art work in and around punk rock.  Along these lines, I was also asked recently to do contribute a page to a screenprinted zine of fake comic book covers by punk artists, organized by another awesome artist, Yecatl Pena in Mexico.  My recent fixation on post-apocalyptic films produced this silly but fun comic cover based on the cover old comic book of mine, inspired by the record cover I did for Absolut at the end of the summer-- in progress!

Fear of Punk//Fear of Art

It has been a very long time since I posted anything here...!

So much to catch up on over the next little while, but I'll start with this-- Fear of Punk//Fear of Art came and went this summer, and it was both a blast and a huge success.  Thanks to all of the amazing exhibitors, to my partner in crime Benbis, James Binnie and Communication Art Gallery, Jesjit and Zine Dream, the bands that played our benefit show at the 460 (Hassler, Absolut and Spearhead) and all our friends for the support!

For more photos of the installation and opening night, take a look here.  And look here for a great feature on the exhibition that was posted on Broken Pencil's blog a week before the show opened.  We'll be following this exhibition up with a catalogue that will also serve as the first issue of an ongoing zine, so stay tuned for more info on that in the coming weeks...

Fear of Punk / Fear of Art

I am in the middle of pretty intense work towards this exhibition that my main man and I are putting on together.  I really could go on and on about the motivations behind this show, but for now I will just leave this post as a declaration of the fact that it happening in just under a month.

This is kind of an exhibition of international punk art, though the number of artists we could include was greatly limited by the space we secured-- a teeny gallery across the street from Central Tech.  The show features a great group of artists that could be simply described as 'punk' artists making artwork within and around punk rock music (though in a lot of cases, this description is only a small piece of the puzzle).  Fear of Punk / Fear of Art includes several artists from NYC, a few from  the midwest and west coast, Canada, and as far away as Mexico City and France.

Stay tuned for more info in the coming weeks!

***

FEAR OF PUNK / FEAR OF ART

Alex Ratcharge (France)
Alexander Heir (NYC)
Emma Maatman (LA)
Erick Lyle (NYC)
Heather Benjamin (NYC)
Jill Pucciarelli (NYC)
Leah Wishnia (NYC)
Matthew McGarry (Rochester)
Nathan Gattis (Chicago)
Paul D'Elia (LA)
Sam Ryser (NYC)
Shiva Addanki (NYC)
Spoiler (Montreal)
Tara Bursey (Toronto)
Weird Luke (NYC)
Yecatl Peña (Mexico)
and more.

Curated by Ben Needham and Tara Bursey

August 2-4, 2013
Communication Art Gallery
209 Harbord Street, Toronto
http://www.communicationgallery.net
Opening Party:  Friday, August 2, 2013.  7-10 pm

Presented as part of Zine Dream 6, an annual small press art fair
http://zinedream.com

Punk is everywhere.  From malls to museums, the influence and imagery of punk’s past has largely been absorbed into mass culture.  Despite this, contemporary DIY punk rock sits firmly outside of the mainstream, and at both regional and global levels is stronger than ever.  The visual culture that surrounds it is variably dark, threatening, chaotic, smart, funny, mysterious and questioning.

Fear of Punk / Fear of Art highlights the creative output of current punk artists, bringing their work out of its usual context while exploring intersections between punk rock, art and print culture.  The purpose of the exhibition is to celebrate contemporary punk art while sharing it with a broader audience.  The exhibition includes drawing, sculpture and printed matter that draws inspiration from horror, the occult, sex, despair, popular culture, art history and urban life.

For more information, contact ben.t.needham@gmail.com or tara@tarabursey.com

https://www.facebook.com/events/267288286747509/

Images, from left to right: Alexander Heir, solo exhibition poster design; Alex Ratcharge, Maximumrocknroll t-shirt design; Leah Wishnia, Garden of Earthly Delights screenprint; Heather Benjamin, Shut Up t-shirt design.

Art Page in MRR #356

My drawing for the Maximumrocknroll art page is now out in the January 2013 issue, #356.  Check it out!  More writing about it can be found here.  Big thanks to Bidi Choudhury for inviting me to do it!

School Jerks LP on Art 4 Punks

Big huge thanks to the very cool Paul D'Elia for posting about the School Jerks LP art on his blog, Art 4 Punks. Having a blog focus on the art and design of contemporary punk and hardcore is a noble pursuit that I cannot endorse enough.  Nice to feel appreciated, to say the least!  Also, thanks to anyone who has spoken up online and in person (locally, all two of you...ha, ha...) about how much they dig the art for this record and the previous EPs.

Also, I recently made the jump from Wordpress to Tumblr as a platform for an archive of the punk/rock/music related art I've done.  Check it out here, and dig deep for some seriously moldy oldies that will prove that I'm not as young and fresh as I look.

Barbed Wire Blooms

A few weeks ago, my teenhood dream came true when I was asked by someone at Maximumrocknroll-- world's most famous, long-running punk fanzine-- to contribute a drawing for their monthly "art page."  I was more than likely asked to do this as a result of the work I've done on all the School Jerks albums, most recently their brand new debut LP.

I waited until the 11th hour to start the drawing-- I was asked by MRR to contribute during what was possibly one of the busiest few weeks I've had in a long time with work, school prep, and other projects.  After breaking my brain trying to decide what to draw-- my brainstorm list included such grasps-at-straws as "cranes," "murder victims," "School Jerks outtakes," "Baltimore," "Google street view," "Kensington Market" and "mob scene"-- I finally settled on drawing American crime scene photographer Weegee's infamous snapshot, Their First Murder.

I first learned about Their First Murder a few years ago.  For those who don't already know the back story, for this photo Weegee for once chose to turn his camera not on a crime scene, but at a crowd who had gathered to look at one.  The photo depicts a range of emotions-- while a female relative of the victim cries, neighbourhood children rubberneck to catch their first glimpse of a dead man.  Shot during the latter half of the dirty thirties, the viewer imagines the gunshot victim as two-bit hood or mafioso-type.  Against the night sky, tenement housing looms heavily in the background.

To make the drawing sometime other than just a drawing of a photograph, I knew that the addition of a fitting caption of some sort would be key.  Initially, I wanted to have the caption relate to the children's reactions, tying them to the fact that punk-- to me, anyway-- has always been about confronting and embracing darker aspects of life as opposed to denying or turning away from them, as well as defying social conventions.  All of our lives, we are told to behave appropriately, and to not stare.  The children's reaction to the dead body in the photo is curious and essentially pure.

When I decided that all the captions I came up would sound a little too misanthropic for the good of the drawing, I decided to seek out a fitting quote instead.  The one I settled on is actually a portion of a poem written by a child in 1944 in the Terezin concentration camp, in what is now the Czech Republic under the tutelage of the artist-educator and possible pioneer of art therapy Friel Dicker-Brandeis.  I am glad this reference is obscure enough to prevent a heavy holocaust reading of the drawing, because that's was definitely not a part of my original intention-- the drawing is still of a bunch of kids in New York City shot by Weegee, after all.  The text is appropriate in that at its core is an allusion to creativity and resilience-- how creative acts are almost always concious or unconcious attempts at building an ideal world, against all odds.

Toronto Life

Two-colour Risograph prints on archival cardstock made in collaboration with JP King of Paper Pusher Print Works. These drawings will be on the upcoming School Jerks 12", due out in a matter of weeks.

1) Thanks, JP!  

2) Prints can be purchased here.

School Jerks 12" Art

I've been busting my hump for the last week on drawings for the School Jerks 12", which is due out very, very soon. I'm down to the last two drawings and am really losing steam...!  I'll be producing a 11"X17" 3-colour poster of all 17 or 18 drawings for the record in collaboration with Paper Pusher Print Works within the next few weeks.  Very exciting stuff!

School Jerks EP on Art 4 Punks Blog

Not much to report these days-- is it possible that I'm experiencing the dog days of summer in May? I've felt oddly bored and paralyzed lately, as though I've been hit by some form of post-school narcosis.

A few weeks ago the School Jerks EP got a nice mention on a blog that I follow out of LA called Art 4 Punks. Thanks for the props, Paul! Take a look at A4P for a peek at some of the more interesting examples of punk and hardcore record art from this side of 1981.

Here is a funny peek at the process of making the record covers. Ben spent two nights hand stamping 1000 covers in our living room as I (for the most part) watched on in amusement/amazement. While part of me isn't as happy with the overall result of this record over the previous one, it's still pretty awesome and there's been some nice feedback about it.

Three Towers

These are three pin designs I drew two days ago for my pals, the Modern Superstitions. Text will be added which will also be hand-drawn, and it looks like we'll only be using the bottom two after all-- the water tower and the hydro tower.

Modern Superstitions are the easiest band to do artwork for-- it is always a huge pleasure. The main reason for this is that both their lyrics and music are so damn evocative. The idea of bell towers and clock towers immediately came to mind when I first listened to the songs on their last EP. We ended up going with a stained glass motif as a slight variation on those ideas, but I was able to work with towers in this pin project, which I'm grateful for. These towers are definitely less majestic and more mundane and "local" feeling, which matches some of their songs and lyrics this time around-- Hometown, Loveless Town, etc.

The hydro tower is an ode to my own hometown, Scarborough (incidentally, also a loveless town!). The water tower is an icon associated with more rural hometowns. The idea is that the hydro tower pin be silver, and the water tower be a bronzy gold...we'll see if everything works out as planned!

School Jerks 3rd 7"

This glorious recorded artifact of the hardcore punk persuasion came out about a month ago, and the cover drawing is by yours truly. I hand-stamped the logo on about 200 of the 1000 copies that were made, too.

School Jerks' myspace can be found here.

Vladimir Nabokov's Alphabet in Colour

I came across this beautiful book yesterday afternoon in a bookshop near my house. It is an illustrated alphabet by Jean Holabird of Vladamir Nabokov's descriptions of the alphabet, inspired (is that the appropriate word?) by his Synesthesia. The text included in the book is quoted from Nabokov's Speak, Memory. The book is a really interesting meditation on the senses and the ways they can intersect with one another.

The following text was scooped from the Alphabet in Colour page on the Gingko Press website:

"For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird’s interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century’s literary greats is a revelation. Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. This book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov’s mind.

In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird’s grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov’s idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape. He saw “q” as browner than “k,” while “s” is not the light blue of “c,” but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. . . . Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for “w.”
In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, “the prince of Nabokovians,” points out that an important part of “Nabokov’s passion for precision was his passion for color.”

Hand and Rosary

Process shots of my work for the next School Jerks 7". Just finished it this morning!

Matthew as Stained Glass

Album art for The Modern Superstitions' upcoming EP. I have to do four of these! They're a lot of work, but they're fun as hell...

City of Craft Window Decals

Here is some step-by-step documentation of the hand-cut vinyl decals I made to mark each City of Craft satellite installation. I got a ton of compliments on them...thanks everyone!

Thanks also to my dad for giving me the vinyl and mask to make these...!

Original City of Craft logo drawing by Amy Borkwood.