I recently did a poster for the University of Georgia that centered around a musical piece called The Here and Now by Christopher Theofanidis. The work is based on selected poems by the Persian poet Rumi and uses the powerful and mysterious qualities of band and choir. They wanted it to have a decidedly Middle Eastern/Turkish feel to it and so I thought it would be the perfect chance to try doing some hand-drawn calligraphy.

(more…)

This is a poster I did for the 2010 KU Jazz Festival, taking place on March 5-6. This year’s festival will feature Kenny Garrett (one of my favorite alto players) and his quartet. Here are a couple of older videos (like this little tune called Giant Steps) that I think explains it all. If you’re a music fan, definitely head down for both nights of the festival!

In a very loose connection to St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to point out an interesting marketing effort by General Mills in which they are bringing back the old school cereal boxes of days past. The Kix box is something else!

Happy St. Patrick’s day everyone and have a wonderful time!

Just wanted to mention another great art opening happening this week. On Friday, December 5th, 2008, Tad Carpenter and Dan Padavic are showcasing some of their new paintings, art prints, clothing, stationery, and gig posters at 1800 Baltimore (formerly Habitat Shoe Boutique) in the Kansas City Crossroads Arts District from about 6-9 p.m.

I’ve known Tad for a few years now and his stuff is amazing. I definitely recommend checking out this show and even if you can’t make it this Friday, the work will be up until December 28th, so don’t miss it!

Also, while you’re down there, you might check out the University of Kansas Art Department’s new Red Door Art Gallery, a gallery designed to showcase work created by current and former KU students and faculty.

Above image courtesy of Tad Carpenter

There was a lot of buzz yesterday online about a new photo resource, so I thought I’d mention something about it. LIFE magazine has teamed up with Google to archive thousands of photographs taken by LIFE photographers over the past several decades. This amazing collection includes photographs and etchings dating back to the 1750s and by the time everything has been put online, there will be more than 10 million photos available worldwide. The archive includes photographs taken by some of the most well respected photographers in history including Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa .

This is a continuation of a trend that gained a lot of motion in early 2008 when the Library of Congress put a section of their collection online and invited Flickr users to help them in the massive task of adding tags to the photos. Shortly thereafter, several other institutions followed suit and helped create the The Commons on Flickr.

UPDATE: Wow! Here’s another great online collection of historic photographs from Tibet from the past 30 years.

Happy browsing!