Hello and welcome back! June for some reason has felt like 4 months in the span of 30 days, not sure if anyone else felt like that. Maybe it’s because we’re reaching the middle of the year and time feels like it’s moving very slowly. Anyway! I have designs to share with you.
DESIGN
One of my favorite groups making music right now, Pixel Grip, reached out to ask me to make a poster for their upcoming tour. For the sake of not having this sent directly to spam, keywords given to me were sweat, endurance, pushing through, B*D*S*M, amongst other things…. as soon as I got this prompt I knew I wanted to do some research on vintage s*x magazines on Internet Archive. I pulled a bunch of really great leather and bondage photographs from the 90s and combined them with clashing, distorted lines to give the perspective of movement and distortion. The result turned out exactly how I envisioned it— I love making work that looks like this, so fun!
Similarly I have another Sextile flyer to share! I’m so stoked I got to make this one because they’re playing in the middle of Xanadu, a new roller skating rink/music venue in Brooklyn. Thought it would be cute to have both the band’s photos framed around these repetitive circular frames, representative of the roller rink. This one was hand colored, printed, and scanned.
Okay so this next poster…. anyone who knows me knows how much I love Talking Heads and working with them in any capacity is a dream for me. An email crossed my inbox a few weeks ago to create a poster for the one and only Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew, for one of their “Remain In Light” shows where they play songs from the Talking Heads album amongst others in the discography.
I felt very overwhelmed making this, I had about ten poster variations/directions I wanted to go in before I landed on this one because I wanted it to be extremely special. I knew for sure I wanted to mimic the red/blue color palette of the original album cover, and thought bringing my love for patterns and shapes in to match the pixelation of the cover and distorted electronic sounds that can be heard on tracks like Born Under Punches made the most sense to me. Of course it’s also based around a central circle, which appears in a lot of my posters. It ended up being an accurate visual representation of what listening to the album looks like, for me personally!
To say it’s an honor doesn’t even really scratch the surface, I feel so lucky to have been trusted to make this and that I got to make work for an official member of my favorite band that has shaped so much of my work and is my main source of inspiration. 18x24 screenprinted posters available at the show (which is FREE by the way, if you live in San Francisco please go!)
One more poster that came out this month was a poster for Wilco and their Solid Sound Festival! Working with their team to make this was a great experience, I love how it turned out and the physical prints are so vibrant and really bring all the shapes to life. These posters are for sale right now during the festival June 28-30, and available on their webstore.
MOVIES
This is actually a new record for me in which I only watched five movies this month. I’ve just been too busy I haven’t made much time for it! BUT I have a lot to say about the ones I watched.
Kinds of Kindness ☆☆☆☆
I did in fact see Kinds of Kindness last night so I will talk about that first. I love Yorgos, probably my favorite director since I saw Killing of a Sacred Deer and Dogtooth many years ago, so I was no doubt stoked another film of his was being released so quickly after Poor Things. I loved that this was sort of a ‘return to form’ for him, I think Poor Things was his most ‘commercial’ film and his most successful, so to follow it with something like this that goes back to his style of disturbing filmmaking will separate a lot of his new fans from his old ones. Although I really don’t think it was THAT freaky some people will because it’s not what they were expecting as new Yorgos fans! But anyway I loved how the three separate stories vaguely connected to each other, with each new scene making references to the prior storylines. I did enjoy it and felt engaged, but felt at times it was missing that Yorgos flavor and felt a bit like an unfinished thought at times.
Liquid Sky ☆☆☆☆☆
I have seen this several times because it’s one of my favorite movies, but I had the pleasure of seeing a 4k restoration of the movie at Roxy Cinema with some friends who were first timers. My first viewing of this was in my avant garde film class in college (this sounds pretentious I know but the class genuinely introduced me to some of my favorite movies today! shoutout Jessica you rule) and was only available on Youtube in 480p. I immediately fell in love with everything about it: the funky synthesizer soundtrack, the colorful New Wave makeup and costumes, the offbeat dialogue, the psychedelic drug scenes.
I bought a bootleg DVD on eBay that wasn’t any better than watching it straight from Youtube. From then on I was always chasing a better looking version of the movie that complemented it’s visuals, but nothing really came around until this 4k restoration. It was a very special experience getting to watch this in a room full of people who have never seen it, and I’ve never seen 80s NYC look so beautiful on the big screen. It’s not a movie for everyone— the premise and ‘quirkiness’ alone is a huge turn off to people, and the subject matter is dark and not an easy watch. But with each viewing I come to appreciate Margaret’s character, and Anne Carlisle’s portrayal of both lead characters on screen just makes it so unique. A friend turned to me in the theater during the first 5 minutes and said “this is the most Julia movie I’ve ever seen”…. anyway this is streaming on Criterion Channel as part of their Synth Soundtracks collection!
Stop Making Sense ☆☆☆☆☆
Okay I won’t go on about this again but I did have an insane twice in a lifetime (haha) experience seeing Stop Making Sense in theaters again WITH the band in the audience, and watched their Q&A after. We danced in the aisles and had an amazing time, truly the greatest concert movie ever.
Manhunter ☆☆☆☆
There’s no gif that does this movie justice so here’s a cool vintage poster. This one really surprised me, it’s like a David Fincher movie before Fincher made all the movies this one reminded me of (Zodiac, Seven, Panic Room). Another movie I watched in the Criterion synth collection! Stunning set design/lighting, crazy synth score, and just a really thrilling detective movie with a super creepy killer. It’s very 80s you’ve been warned. If you enjoyed the Fincher movies I mentioned above, Silence of the Lambs (this movie also features Brian Cox as Hannibal), and Prisoners, you will love this.
MUSIC
Albums I’ve had on repeat:
BRAT — Charli xcx
Box For Buddy, Box For Star — This Is Lorelei
Unexpected — Vicious Pink
Cowboys Only — Cowboy Rhythmbox
The Gloss — Cola
I also made this very chaotic playlist for work, enjoy it while it’s still up!
No inspo this month but wanted to share I’m joining my best friend on the road this summer playing bass in their band Thank You, I’m Sorry! Here are our tour dates, feel free to come! We will have these posters for sale
That’s all for now! See you next month
