Iron Canvas Studio - Battlefields
Over the weekend I reached out to Michael Verhey of Iron Canvas Studios to see if he would be interested in participating in one of my Q&A sessions and sure enough he was happy to oblige. So without further ado….
Where are you from, how long have you been printing posters, and about how many prints do you put out per year?
I’m from Fargo, ND – more or less lived there all my life until our recent move to Portland, OR this summer. We’ve only been printing our own work for about 2 years and usually put out maybe 20-30 posters a year give or take a few.
What poster are most proud of and what was the inspiration behind the piece?
It’s always hard to pick a favorite, so we try to think of it in terms of always wanting our newest work to be our best so far and keep evolving and growing our skills to constantly out-do our selves on the next piece. My personal favorite might be our newest tour poster for my good friends band Battlefields.
Iron Canvas Studio - Doug Stanhope
I pick that one because conceptually I think it really fits their music and what it sounds like visually (at least we think so) First you have an aerial shot of a huge river with it’s many meandering tributaries quietly and constantly moving but yet having hidden destructive possibilities. Then you have the jellyfish on the bottom that has basically the same story: peacefully going through the water but can be deadly. Give the band a listen and you’ll see what I’m talking about!
Iron Canvas Studio - Wilmot Proviso
Did you have a mentor who helped get you involved in this work and if so tell me a little bit about that situation.
There’s a lot of people to thank for opening my eyes to the ‘art’ of poster design and printing. When I was maybe 15 or 16 my good friend had a Kozik Kyuss poster up in his room and thought it was the coolest damn looking thing ever! Then being from Fargo I grew up seeing posters around town from many of the greats : Unitus, Punchgut, Amy Jo, Tooth, Justin Seng, and even some Aesthetic Apparatus so they definitely got me into wanting to do posters.
What can we look forward to seeing from you in 2009?
Posters! We do a lot of posters for a venue here in downtown PDX – mostly digital prints for them and screen prints for the bigger shows. Lot’s of band merch and tour posters in the works as well as many – MANY more art prints which is something we’ve been wanting to find time for so look for those coming out as well.
What music do you currently have in your play list and who are your all time favorite recording artists?
I like a lot of different stuff, anything from old school
Iron Canvas Studio - High On Fire
hip-hop, old blues and jazz stuff but for the most part I’m a metal kind of guy. More specifically stonier, doomy, Black Sabbath inspired stuff is what I really like, that and old school thrash metal so there’s a lot of that too. As for all time favs that again a really tough one to answer but probably goes something like this: Black Sabbath, Kyuss, and Rage Against the Machine.
Finally, do you offer an annual subscription service and what is the easiest way to find out when you release a new print.
We don’t currently have an subscription set up but would love to get one going maybe at the beginning of next year. The easiest way to find out what we’re up to and see our newest work is either on our myspace page or gigposters.com until we get off our asses and get a website up and running.
There you go, Screenprintr’s first Artist Q&A. I have been in touch with several other designers so hopefully I will be able to get another one out later today.
