How Art Chantry inspired my ass
This past Thursday was The Art + Copy Club’s Annual Spring lecturer at UMKC. Some of you may remember my musings from last year’s evening in a post entitled How Gary Baseman Kicked My Ass. Unfortunately, a quick re-read of that post shows me that he didn’t kick it that hard, but I digress…
This year’s guest was Art Chantry, a designer who was responsible for many influential posters and album covers of Seattle’s punk and grunge music scene of the late 70′s through early 90′s. His designs had it all: monsters, tikis, dayglo inks, trashy collage techniques… all sorts of design goodies that I love.
As he went through carousel after carousel of slides (yes kids, some people still use slides over PowerPoint presentations), it became incredibly clear to me that Art Chantry heavily influenced and inspired me throughout college, and I never even knew his name until now. There were lots of albums I owned that he had designed the cover art for… Soundgarden, Southern Culture on the Skids, The Reverend Horton Heat just to name a few.
At three hours, the presentation ended up being a little long for many peoples’ tastes and in fact a few people left during the transition between slide carousel two and three. But, those of us who stuck it out learned quite a lot. Well, at least I know I did.
I learned that there’s a lot of people that designers should be studying in school that just aren’t covered. People like Von Dutch. No, not the guy who makes the trucker hats. Well, yes, that guy, but that’s just his name slapped on by his estate. He’d apparently turn over in his grave if he only knew his name was on an energy drink. I’m talking about the Von Dutch who was a pinstripe innovator, the first person to paint flames on a car, the inventor of the printed t-shirt, and the Von Dutch who would play the flute while roller skating around L.A. Apparently, the guy was totally nuts to boot.
Good stuff.