Posters I did in the early 80's

Tonight I thought I would show you a couple of posters I made in the late 1970's. Those were my starvation days and I did some posters for friends and even a little architectural rendering from blueprints. Above is a poster for a friend who did a bassoon recital. He titled the recital "A complete feast of the bassoon". I used to do whimsical pen drawings like this when I was in high school and I resurrected the style for these posters. It was held at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis where I lived at the time. I came up with this picture of a kid eating the bassoon, which drew some flack from the Children's Theater as they thought it had sexual overtones and the bassoon looked like a , well you know. I thought that was pretty weird as I had no such intention and that they had to have some proclivities of their own to imagine that. My thoughts were confirmed when their director was imprisoned for allegedly having sexual relations with the children in their program. It looked like a bassoon to me, but ........................... The lettering on this was done with the old Letraset rub on letters that were available in art supply stores in those days. I always loved that typeface (Armenian) ever since I saw it on the first Quicksilver Messenger Service album. The psychedelic poster guys used it a lot.


In the late seventies, or was it the early eighties I lived in an old residence hotel apartment building in Minneapolis called the Oak Grove. I called it the Open Grave. A national repertory company, the Tyrone Guthrie theater was a block or so up the street. They brought most of their actors in from New York, who would stay for a half a year or so at the Oak Grove. I knew many of them during that time and some of them very well. I was given comps or free tickets to most of their performances and enjoyed seeing a lot of excellent theater during that era of my life.


One of the actors I hung out with the most was the late John Spencer, who later starred in West Wing. I always boarded his Siamese cats when he went on the road. They were nice cats, but rough on the furniture. John studied my studio mannerisms to play an artist in a movie, some B picture that I never saw, I think it was a horror flick.
Some of the actors decided to do a project on their own, presenting a play written by an Irish playwright and they asked me to do a poster for it. I think I got a hundred dollars for the job. I made the poster above. When I ran into it in a portfolio in my studio the other day I noticed that Kelsey Grammer was in the play. I must have known him then, but I don't remember him. As I never watch TV ( I don't own one) I have never seen whatever show he is in, but I know he is a big star now. A number of people I knew from that theater went on to larger careers. I wonder if any of them remember me? Somehow I doubt it.