SkatRadioh @ The Tweed

SkatRadioh’s Concert Art @ The Tweed

Andrew Olson

Reader Weekly

David Moreira, artistically known as SkatRadioh, is showing his local concert posters in the Student Gallery at the Tweed Museum from April 26 through May 1st.

At the Electric Fetus there is one of SkatRadioh’s posters hung up behind the counter and at Ragstock there is another up on the wall. His art is at a level above the bands he creates advertisements for and he is reviving an art form that visually expresses more than just a show.

The Tweed (www.tweed.org) show features not only SkatRadioh’s posters, but the original artwork, tools, sleeping bag, and everything that goes into his art. The opening on Tuesday had a table of tacos and a guitar player making psychedelic ambience on an older looking Gibson and many pedals. It is a very cool show and something that you should really try to see this weekend for free.

“The SkatRadioh Poster Show at the Tweed Museum will be full of the refuse you'd see in my studio that I've salvaged over the last two years,” SkatRadioh said. “It may seemingly be a bunch of scrap junk, but it really produces some of my strongest work. Along with the work area will be plenty of poster artwork and other creative print projects I've come up with. As a bonus, there will be some pieces that'll reveal part of the process of printing and the other materials I use to make work.”

This might be one of your last chances to catch SkatRadioh because he is graduating from UMD this spring. He does plan to stick around for a little while though.

“I don't have plans to pack up and leave Duluth completely,” SkatRadioh said. “While I do have interest in projects that will bring me out and around the nation, I still belong to a community here that has mutual support for each other. The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council has grant opportunities that I will be applying for while I'm attempting to prepare myself as a self employer. I've been very fortunate to have some offers on paying projects already. It'll give me some time before I have to pay off student loans”

So what is next for SkatRadioh?

“Having been an undergrad I had the opportunity to develop as a printmaker and develop my skills both within and outside of school because of my dedication as a practicing printmaker. I hope now that I will be prepared to work as an artist and focus even more on maximizing the quantity and quality of my prints.”

SkatRadioh has also worked with Jay Whitcomb making a few posters in a collaborative effort.

“I collaborated on a Meat Puppets poster for Pizza Luce with Jay Whitcomb who had previously been a working artist for a number of years,” SkatRadioh said. “I was introduced to him and also came to admire his work from my roommate Trevor Peterson who had introduced us. Around the same time Trevor and I collaborated on a different Luce poster for a country themed event with a large horse on it. Both collaborations were out of their interest in the screen printing process, which was unfamiliar to them. We all live together now and Jay and I have turned our garage into a studio that we can both work in. Jay and Trevor play in local bands Manheat and Blood Eagle respectively.”

That wasn’t his only collaboration.

“Before that I had an unforgettable collaboration with Jeremy Baker from the St. Louisbased band High Life,” SkatRadioh said. “Not too long after the death of Michael Jackson the idea came up that we could make a poster that spoofed the cult film "Weekend at Bernie's" replacing Bernie, the dead puppet of a boss, with MJ. We used it as the midwasted tour poster for Cross Exam, Mother Speed, and High Life. The Cross Exam guys thought it was so great that they got shirts of the art printed, which was very popular with fans. I was even invited to join them on the thrashiest tour I've ever been on.”

Recently SkatRadioh did a poster for the local band Healthy Band Music Club with Nicholas Sundahl.

“It came from mutual interests in stereo optics. The particular poster is three dimensional if you cross your eyes to make the two images merge into one. This was an interesting poster because in the end the venue had been moved from what would have been the last house show for the Banana Hammock to someone's mom's house. She was out of town, but the cops showed up two sets in and in a last ditch effort I decided to invite the last three bands to finish the show at my house. The cops came by just as the last band ended their set and it turned out to be the last house show for my house called The Maxi Pad before I moved out. It was a great turnout and a lot of fun despite all the complications,” Skatradioh said.

At the Tweed show there were many people looking at the posters and talking to the artist on Tuesday at the opening. While concert posters are usually just considered disposable art, a few collectors grab the posters as mementos of the show. In SkatRadioh’s case people even pay for his posters or grab them off the wall because they see it as something more. His audience sees the ads as art to be hung on the wall that is better than a Moose painting from Menards or a mirror from Wal-Mart.

“I've got a lot of comments and positive reactions on two posters in specific,” SkatRadioh said. “One for the Chicago based Sass Dragons has an illustration of Chase No Face, an internet celebrity of sorts, curled up with a Furby. It came up as a sort of challenge while on the GigPosters.com forums, but also served as a personality comparison between the graphic and band. It's a good conversation piece when I tell people about this real life cat that survived a car crash, but unfortunately lost its face and a leg. It's still a cat with a beautiful personality and something I've seen Mike Wilson, who organizes a lot of local shows, have to go through with his own cat recently. The other poster is for the Twin Cities band Children of Euler for it's stylistic repetition of two figures making out. The colors and subject are what really make it such a strong visual. It's comprised of a complicated mix of topics on the power of perfection, beauty, and objectification. While the band is influenced by mathematics this image was my way of illustrating another part of the conversation I believe they bring up in their lyrics.”

Is there one band that SkatRadioh dreams of doing a poster for?

“It has been a dream over the past few years to do a poster for the STNNNG, but recently it's been more and more likely that I will be doing one soon. I've been in direct contact them and their label now and it's only a matter of scheduling that determines when I will do a poster for them. My dream jobs are usually in line with some kind of realistic goal and it might now be transitioning into looking for an opportunity to do something for Kylesa somehow. I'm just not sure that my work is as heavy as their sound seems to demand. Short answer, a poster for a tour stop that Kylesa, Baroness, and High on Fire make at the Triple Rock.”

What is the future in your view of concert poster art?

“There are plenty of artists and designers that are dedicated to creating something more than just an advertisement. It has already been established as an important art form for being cultural remnants. I've seen a number of collective design firms and print shops lead the contemporary discipline. I hope to join in by finding placement in a print related workshop or building one up myself after school. I don't see any end in sight for music related poster art.”

Where can you purchase these posters for your walls?

“Since my first show poster, the majority of what I print has been documented and uploaded to my Flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/skatradioh. This includes some sets of photos that give you a sense of the process I go through and the spaces I've worked in. Photos of my retrospective opening can be found there too. GigPosters.com is a massive poster archive and has a profile on me among thousands of others. Most events I've made posters for have allowed me to sell them at the show. I have a current listing of everything I have left for sale on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/SkatRadioh afterward.”