Local Artist Gig Posters Get Public Showing At Snow City

Bird frying Cyclops robots. Sun-riding cowboys. Macabre playing cards. These are just a few of the many peculiar subjects selected by print artist Craig Updegrove for the concert posters he's made over the years. A retrospective of his work, which spans five years and has been featured in a handful of international poster shows, is showing at Snow City Cafe through Feb. 4.

The show, called "For Your Viewing Pleasure," displays 22 of the artist's favorite posters.

Updegrove, a senior art major at UAA who's also provided graphic design for KRUA and The Northern Light, said he started designing and printing posters after moving to Seattle in 2005. There, he was inspired by the band posters he saw while walking along the streets of the city, and by the power their designs seemed to have for drawing in passersby.

When he first started printing posters, Updegrove worked out of his kitchen. By the time he'd finished hand-drawing the designs, making the patterns and printing the posters, his kitchen was thoroughly littered with them.

"They were drying on my cupboards," Updegrove said.

He still prefers hand-drawing the designs as opposed to constructing them on computer, he said. Apart from that, his process is usually to listen to the band's music to get a feel for it, and then designing a poster that puts off the same vibe.

Updegrove said he made the frames for the posters in "For Your Viewing Pleasure" out of scrap wood salvaged from dumpsters, warehouses and junk piles around town.

"I wanted to take an element from the street and combine them with the posters, because the posters' natural environment is on the street," he said.

January 27, 2010