Local Poster Designers Bring Art To The Streets

n 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.

February 29, 2008