HOLIDAY PRINT SALE!

These remaining prints from my inventory will be on sale at special prices for two weeks until December 14th, when they will ship out to arrive before the holidays (*guaranteed only in the US). Up for grabs: Mario World piece for Gallery 1988, Trash Humpers & Man With a Movie Camera prints for the Belcourt, Jeff the Brotherhood Soundland print, Sebastian Speaks gig poster and Owl Spirit art print, all 18x24".

All orders placed in these two weeks will receive one of these bonus mini-prints in their tube, pictured below. These will be randomly inserted, but if you have a special request I can try to assign first-come-first-serve. Please note these are extra mini-print proofs from my Belcourt show, some of which have slight imperfections which is why I'm giving what's left away. Mini-prints may include Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, My Neighbor Totoro, Never Let Me Go, Carlos and one of two Nashville Film Festival poster designs.



Head to my shop if you'd like to place an order. Thanks for your support in 2011 and happy holidays!

TOP 10 of 2010: #10

I used to write about movies. I even got a degree in writing about movies. As I've written less, my skills have atrophied while other hobbies, interests and things have stepped in, like making more visual art. Last year, instead of writing about my favorite movies of the year, I came up with an art project instead: the 2009 film stamp collection. This year, I wanted to come up with an even more ridiculously irrational and ambitious project: crafting a quick movie poster for ten of my favorites films from this year. I figured I'd spend just about the same amount of time on each as I would writing 250-500 words, but I would get a chance to play around visually with pens, paper and the computer in a medium I have so come to love: poster art.

This project is ridiculous, outrageous, and above all personal. My initial idea was to create off-the-cuff poster art for these films that defied any rules, boundaries or requirements one might have when making a "real" poster that would get released to the world. Inevitably, I've ended up wanting to spend more time with each one making them "better," but my goal has been to bang out ten poster ideas with no filters, no tinkering, no expectation for perfection. Each one of these, if they were being released to the world, I of course would want to perfect a little more. I like to think of them as demos; sketches, concepts, ideas for posters that could be. To make this project even more complicated and surreal, a couple of my favorite films of the year I've already made posters for, either for fun on my own (TRASH HUMPERS) or for an actual studio (CARLOS). Those movies will be absent from the project, as will the many 2010 films I haven't seen yet: WHITE MATERIAL, ANOTHER YEAR, THE KING'S SPEECH... full list to follow.

So hopefully other poster fans out there will enjoy this peek into my scattered brain, these imperfect tributes to the movies from this year that had some kind of strong effect on me. Yesterday's prelude to this project was a poster for UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES; today I give slot #10 to Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN. I thought the mirror images in the film seemed like almost a red herring whereas more often we saw Natalie actually fractured and splitting apart, which is what's happening to her character. So I avoided any mirroring and split her into glitchy pieces, still suggesting that there are "two" of her... Add a light pink backdrop (the color of her room) and a nice script, upload and post.

Stay tuned for 9 more! As always, things will pile up over at my Flickr page. Leave a comment and tell me what your favorites were this year.

TRASH HUMPERS DVD COVER

I put together this DVD cover for Harmony Korine's TRASH HUMPERS, which is being released by Drag City today. Also available are limited edition VHS tapes AND 5 actual 35mm film prints, each with custom painted cases by Harmony.

HALFTIME 2010

My five favorite movies of the year so far, in posters, in alphabetical order. What were yours?

SHOP!

Oh yeah! I have a Shop! Well, kind of. I had some extra copies of some of the prints I've made over the past year and I thought I'd set up a temporary little online store to make them available to folks wherever they are. I've got plans for new prints, new reprints, and a new, bigger and better shop in the near future-- still figuring out what my best option will be for that. For now, feel free to give my new little Shop a try by clicking the somewhat distracting red tab seen at the top of this page, or the "SHOP" link on the right-hand margin under ABOUT SAM. The shop, brought to you by Vendr, currently only accepts Paypal. The prints that I have for sale right now are:

- Kurosawa Centennial Belcourt print
- Trash Humpers Belcourt print
- Noir Fest 2 Belcourt print (available in two styles)
- Paper Hats gig poster

- Sebastian Speaks gig poster

Thanks and stay tuned for more prints!

HUMPDAY

Tonight, Nashville becomes Trashville, as Harmony Korine's TRASH HUMPERS premieres at the Belcourt, after which about 400 Nashvillians won't be able to look at a curbside recycling bin the same way ever again. I was honored to create this screenprint celebrating tonight's event with the technical assistance of Andy Vastagh at Boss Construction. It's a two-color print, black and yellow, at 18x24, limited to an edition of 100. They'll be for sale at the Belcourt starting tonight. Here's the first screen down on paper:


We then experimented with yellow ink of varying opacity to create the right effect in the 2nd screen, which has the film's characters set into the background. I wanted them to just be barely visible, or at least not noticeable at first glance, but to still have a strong yellow tone for the central tape label. You can see a nice blueish reflection when looking at the print at an angle.


We ultimately went a little darker with it but I think the basic effect was achieved.


At the end of the run I threw some blue ink on the screen to see what happened:


Off to trim, sign and edition the prints now, then to get my humpin' face on for tonight! Check out the Nashville Scene's cover story on the film, and the video below featuring one of the humpers tracking down Jim "Riddler" Ridley.

TRASH HUMPERS PRINT

I'm proud to announce this new print celebrating the new film from my old Nashville friend Harmony Korine. This print will be available for purchase at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville this Friday, May 28th at the regional premiere of TRASH HUMPERS. I'll be printing this at Boss Construction as always with the help of Andy Vastagh, tomorrow or Friday before the film. Check my Twitter for print process pics.

I was blown away by Harmony's latest work and its an honor to be involved tangentially in the local movement supporting it. It was extremely difficult designing a concept for this unique film experience. Ultimately, the only concept I felt confident about ended up being the idea of avoiding the imagery from the film almost completely and paying tribute to the aesthetic concept behind the film (saying "film" over and over about this project is beyond ironic). Thus the VHS tape pile; Harmony has described Trash Humpers as a kind of artifact, like something bizarre you would find in an old pile of discarded tapes in someone's basement. To create this collage, I went through some old boxes of VHS tapes -- taped TV programs, home movies, and school videos-- and took photos of the tapes and boxes, which was fun. Below are a couple of other abandoned concepts in rough draft form that I didn't feel were good enough to pursue to completion.