Elvis Perkins in Dearland

In our most recent experiment we like to call “collaborating with Karen,” we enlisted the help of the mighty Ms. Kurycki to jam out some serious watercoloring. And we’ve got to say, she’s a trooper. Working through a growing sickness and coming off a week of partying in Portland, she killed it on 30 or so sheets of hearty 12″x18″ watercolor paper. We then printed some thick black ink over top of the whole thing, resulting in 30 unique “prints.” See below:

Elvis and his fantastic band Dearland were pretty amazing. While You Were Sleeping was hands down the highlight of the night. Beautiful, moving, powerful.

They had quite the spread of merch. Including a poster of their own. Yikes! At least the merch guy was relatively nice.

It was warm. Sweaty beers. Yum.

We’ve got a bunch of these left, so we’ll be putting them up in the store soon…since they’re all unique, we need to photograph each one. Keep an eye out.

Beards y’all

Our homie Sean (the bearded one), who founded that club for which we did a logo, is putting on an art show! Here’s the call for entries:

BEARDS AND BRUSHES
A Facial Hair Art Show

• Art must have a facial hair theme (Beards, Mustaches, Sideburns, etc.)
• Art is due by Saturday, August 29
• Drop-off at Bogda Gallery (1253 McDuff Ave. South)
• Show opens at Bogda on Saturday, September 5
• Visit JaxBeard for more info (yeah not yet)

So that’s it! Create!

We Printed: Heather Gabel

Ooooooooookay, another little series. Every now and then we’re asked to print someone else’s work. This whole We Printed series will act as our area to show off the other person’s work and our sweet printing skillz.
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Photo credit: Chrissy Piper

Heather Gabel has been creating merchandise for one of our longtime favorite bands, Alkaline Trio, as well as tons of other bands for years now. Yes, she created that heart and skull icon that we all wanted tattood on ourselves at one point.

She’s also an awesome fine artist in her own right! Long story short, she married Tom Gabel a little while ago and they recently moved to St. Augustine. When we did that poster for Tom’s acoustic show at Café Eleven, we were lucky enough to meet Heather (as she did all of Tom’s merch and was obviously hanging out to support her dude). She approached us not too long later to produce two prints for an upcoming print show she will be a part of. We were honored to give it a shot!

It was a totally surreal experience. Working with someone else’s art (especially when already admire the work and they have a pretty established “style”) is stressful. We were constantly battling the medium and limitations of screen printing versus matching the original art as closely as possible. Everything worked out and the final prints turned out awesome! I won’t post them until the show goes up, but heres a little sneak peak.

Thanks Heather! And if you and Tom are reading this, we vote Baked Potato. Congrats!!!!

Inspiration: Jeff Canham

Jeff Canham spends his days as a sign painter based in San Francisco, CA.

He also kills it with some amazing hand-painted assemblages that show off his masterful grasp of typography, iconography and color.

He has brightened up the Bay Area and beyond with his nostalgic and massive-scale signs. He was the direct inspiration for our Declare War on Minnesota piece, but it truly pales in comparison to Canham’s brilliance.

Check out more of his work on his website.

We’re (almost) in Print!

Holy cow! Come October, we’ll be published!
Look out for 2 Dog & Pony Showprints in PRINT Magazine’s 2009 Regional Design Annual! One is our first awesome collab with Karen Kurycki (The Helio Sequence) and the other is our halftoned nightmare that is the Handsome Furs.

The issue drops in late October, and you know we’ll be all over it when it hits stands.
It’s a true honor to be included. The PRINT annuals have been a constant source of inspiration since we were but fledgling students many (not that many) moons ago.

Jazzercise!

Caitlin wrote up a nice little post that happened to have a little bit about a poster we created for our day job.

The nitty gritty about the poster (sorry, no better pics here):
• 18″ x 24″ (crazy, right!?)
• 3 colors (a combo of house paint and screen printing ink)
• Edition of 200 (our most yet)
• Sort of a nightmare
• Huge learning experience
• Big hit!
• WAAAAY cooler than the official poster for the fest (sorry dude)

That’s about it. We love it when we can bring this little side-project of ours into our daily work life, so many thanks to Dalton for having faith in us and making us get it done.

Required Listening: 60s Folksters

Yes friends, it’s been far too long. We were busy, not busy, then busy again. Things have slowed down a hair, and I wanted to make sure we got a few updates out to you before things picked up again. So this – our latest edition of “Required Listening” – will be the first in a quick round of posts. Best be gittin yerself ready.

Today we highlight two (yes, two!) of our favorite folk troubadours of the 1960s. Now I’m not typically one to favor the harmonica, as it tends to bring back painful memories of John Popper and Blues Traveler, but these two songs feature a lovely harmonica that compliments their subtle guitar lines to form perfectly simple folk tunes with huge hearts.

First up, the legendary Bob Dylan and his simply beautiful 1963 song, Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

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And wash that down with the lesser-known Scottish import and Beatle-buddy Donovan and his 1965 debut Catch the Wind

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Gosh, those are good songs, right?
-Dog & Pony Showprints

(p.s. I’ve become aware that our fancy wordpress plugin to play music doesn’t show up in some RSS readers…so if you’re reading this in an RSS feed, do yourself a favor and click through to our actual site and listen to the music. We might figure out how to fix that sooner or later, but probably not. xoxo D&P)

Kings of Leon

Here’s a poster we just did for Kings of Leon’s date at the beautiful St. Augustine Amphitheatre.

It’s an 18″ x 23″ 3-color print – and like the Tom Gabel/Dan Andriano print, this one is printed in house paint. We think we accidentally got some really high quality paint this time, so the texture on this one is off the charts (especially up there in the fire). Unfortunately, that paint caused a lot of problems when it came to printing…..but we muscled through and are pretty satisfied with the results. We’ve still got a lot to learn.

The show is tonight, and we’re psyched out of our minds.

xoxo
D&P

Comin up:
El Ten Eleven
Elvis Perkins in Dearland

Required Listening: Siamese Dream

As much as a charachiture of himself Billy Corgan has become in recent years, he managed a stroke of brilliance in 1993. Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream is an alternative pop masterpiece that doesn’t skip a beat. It’s a sweeping album with highs and lows and quite honestly, it rules pretty hard. It hit me at exactly the right moment and it’s become a timeless album that I MUST listen to all the way through. And I enjoy every second of it.

Have a listen to Hummer, a definite standout track from the album that didn’t quite get the acclaim of Disarm or Cherub Rock. It shows off both Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain’s virtuosic playing and range – with some of the album’s heaviest and softest moments all wrapped into one. Honestly, it’s just a really beautiful song. This is really the essence of everything I love about this band.

Buy Siamese Dream: iTunes | Amazon

Inspiration: Ryan McGinness

Ryan McGinness is our hero. No joke.

A former designer, he’s taken the art of screenprinting and blown everyone out of the water. What started as simple iconographic paintings have naturally progressed into mindblowing multi-layered “paintings” at a massive scale. His brilliant sense of color and composition is a force to be reckoned with.




He’s recenly moved into the realm of sculpture and is taking that to another level as well. Who knew he could translate his paintings into 3-dimensional masterpieces that don’t even make sense?

Where McGinness really lets his work shine are in his book projects. That designer side of him seems to appreciate the craft of book designing. Whether it be a catalog of his work or a custom artist’s book project, each page is meticulously designed, seeming as though he has treated each page as one of his paintings. In 2003, he released Project Rainbow, in which he created paintings specifially to be tightly photographed and cropped for the pages in the book. The curling paper, the ink texture, and all the little imperfections that exist in screenprinting are on display in all their beautiful glory.

His most recent project, No Sin/No Future acts as sort of a process book. Showing behind the scenes photos (including an assistant screen printing an image on McGinness’s freshly shaven head), bits and pieces of paintings, inspiration, sketches and text from contributing authors and Ryan himself. Again, each page is meticulously designed in a way that conveys the complete chaos that must constantly surround an incredibly successful artist that makes incredibly chaotic work. As a design/printing nerd, I can truly appreciate his masterful use of a spot metallic silver ink throughout the book. mmmmm tasty.


There’s not much more to say except research this guy a little more on your own. Visit his website, buy his books, explore his paintings, appreciate all the little details, and if you ever get the chance, see his work in person. I promise you it will blow your mind.