Karen's Dream

This poster was originally created as my contribution to a fund-raising auction for the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, MA. The design turned out to be one of my favorites, coming together fairly quickly, and giving me the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques I hadn’t yet tried. Regarding the content, my wife, Karen, loves the color and scale of sunflowers. Also, since the fund raiser had a Kentucky Derby theme, I decided at the last minute to include a small visual reference to Churchill Downs. The characters in the foreground suggest the play’s 1930s setting.

 

The Po Boys

My friend, Karl Westerback, is an interesting amalgam of talent and interests: born into a family of Swedish-speaking Finns; a man of refined tastes raised in a blue collar Seattle neighborhood; trained in architecture and now living and practicing in Washington’s San Juan Islands. Years ago I christened him “B. B.” in recognition of his amazing knowledge of alternative rock and The Blues. I’ve imagined Karl as a Blues star in-waiting, and it was with that narrative in mind that I photographed the Sub Shop in Nashville.

 

Titanic

When I began studying acting in Marc Clopton’s cold reading classes at the Newburyport Actors Studio, most of the scenes were entirely new to me. I eventually learned to recognize the work of Pinter or Mamet or other great playwrights, but many of the plays we read were both extremely well written and utterly anonymous; that is, until I began to inquire a bit, and learned that many such pieces were in fact from the pen of Marc Clopton himself. The idea that a chatroom could be named “Titanic” struck  me as the perfect opportunity to imagine a night of Clopton shorts. As the subtitle states, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.”

Strange Incident

I’ve loved golf - its tradition, drama, heroes, and the beauty of its settings - since I first watched The Masters as a kid. My grandfather, who lived close to the Woodland Country Club in Auburndale, MA, used to tell me stories about Francis Ouimet, the young local high school golfer, who, after playing in the U.S. Amateur Championship, won the 1913 US Open. Gramp claimed to have been given a set of Ouimet’s wooden clubs by the great golfer himself - perhaps a tall tale, but one I loved hearing anyway.

 

Cora & Tess

The idea for this play started with the vintage photo - a rare and unusual shot of two women enjoying a fishing outing circa 1930. The photograph suggested camaraderie and leisurely escape, which in turn set up a dramatic contrast with the complexities and challenges faced by some women in the Pre-WWII English countryside. “Cora” and “Tess” are based on my paternal grandmother and great aunt respectively. No doubt both would roll over in their graves if they knew where such a play’s storyline might take them, though I think both would have felt at home in their tweeds aboard a small fishing dingy. 

The Sisterhood

One ignores The Sisterhood at one’s peril, particularly if one is of the male persuasion. Women have dictated politics, religion, commerce, sexuality, finance, the arts, and everything else in civilized culture since well before written records were kept, even if history has pretended to downplay, if not ignore, such enormous contributions. In modern playwriting, consider the work of Lillian Hellman, Wendy Wasserstein, Eve Ensler, Paula Vogel, Nora Ephron, and many others. If not for the Sisterhood, the rest of us would have become extinct long ago. 

Mangajin

Living in Seattle, the closest U.S. seaport to Tokyo, exposed me to “Mangajin”- comics drawn and written in the Japanese tradition but intentionally targeted to “gaijin” or foreigners (often Americans). I’ve been a fan of comic books since childhood, and I’m intrigued by the growing popularity of modern graphic novels. They reflect a narrative style that is familiar to viewers who grew up with social media. Because of their often serious subject matter, graphic novels are becoming the “literature” of the Millennials, a topic that lends itself to a play.

 

Indian Turquoise

While living in Seattle, I experienced the work of Sherman Alexie, the gifted Native American writer who explores themes of despair, poverty, violence and alcoholism among the lives of his people, both on and off the reservation. Much of Alexie’s writing is lightened and made accessible to all audiences by his wit and humor. His screenplay for the film Smoke Signals is based on his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The image of the cigar store Indian was shot near Zion National Park with Alexie’s narratives in mind.

 

San Simeon

My first trip to California, in 1973, included a visit to Hearst Castle. I remember the tour guide telling us about the young people whose summer jobs there culminated in an employee-only party at the mansion. These kids - more or less the same age as me - had the Castle to themselves for that one day. The highlight was an evening banquet and pool party reminiscent of the elegant soirees attended by the 1930’s Hollywood elite. The bus was a reminder of the “distance” between those privileged celebrities of the past and we tourists of the present. 

 

Tooth Fairies

Tooth Fairies is an homage to artist and teacher Richard Kehl (http://www.richardkehl.com/). I don’t know how or when I first discovered Richie’s work, but I remember being fascinated by the elegance and energy of his deceptively simple compositions. His images recall the work of Dada artists Joseph Cornell (if Cornell had dealt in two dimensions instead of three) and Hanna Hoch. One of Kehl’s great conceits was the addition of butterfly wings to people in vintage photographs - a gesture that simultaneously changed perspective and scale.

 

The New Bird King

This poster was inspired by the election of Barack Obama. I saw the composition as an opportunity to experiment with with the visual vocabulary of Japanese calligraphy; with a rice paper-like background; and with some wacky little creatures I’d created using the airbrush tool in Adobe Photoshop. Friends literate in Kanji tell me that together the forms are meaningless. The paper was scanned from my grandfather’s collection of samples. The birds were an attempt to see what might emerge from the simplest possible shot of color.

 

Truck Stop

When I first moved to Seattle in 1975, Hat n’ Boots was a working gas station. Along with The Dog House and Twin Teepees restaurants, it was one of the city’s more idiosyncratic architectural icons. In an odd way, Hat n’ Boots symbolized the anything-is-possible spirit that attracted me to Seattle in the first place. In 2003 the city’s architectural preservation organization relocated the structures to a park south of downtown. I photographed Hat n’ Boots years earlier in its original location, soon after I saw the film Bagdad Cafe.

High Deaf

The great actor and clown Bill Irwin inspired this poster. A MacArthur Genius Grant winner, Irwin is perhaps best known for his vaudeville-style stage acts. In one such performance, he uses a group of video monitors to display footage of himself perfectly choreographed to create the illusion that he’d become trapped inside the televisions. His character’s disorientation and panic are made more hilarious and heart-wrenching by the fact that it's all done without dialogue. Brilliant mime with video props; like all great pros, Irwin makes it look easy.

 

The Last Cowboy in Boulder

On a trip to southern Utah, my wife and I visited the Boulder Mountain Lodge and Hells Backbone Grill “where the food is heavenly.” While exploring the Lodge grounds, we found and photographed a variety of thought-provoking vignettes. A favorite was this pair of well-used cowboy boots repurposed as flower pots. Already in love with The West, I found rich food for thought in such images. The boots are real; they have a history; somebody once wore them, and wore them out. Such a stage narrative could lead just about anywhere.

 

Last Gas

The abandoned gas station in the poster is in Boulder, Utah. The building has a ghost-town vibe to it, even though it sits at a relatively busy intersection. From a distance the structure looks like a Hollywood set - too perfectly defunct. After exploring all around the building, however, I became convinced it was real. Then came romantic notions of the station’s heyday - a last-chance fueling stop for an adventurous couple touring in a Model A or a 1950 T-bird, cruising the 60-mile long Burr Trail - the narrow road through a stunning array of rock formations that seem straight out of the movies and Old West. 

 

Kim Jung Il Surrenders to Elvis

Steve Martin wrote a play titled “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” and this poster started as a variation on that sort of naming convention. The Dragonfly Tavern is real, but it’s doubtful that either Elvis or Kim went there, let alone engaged in any sort of dialogue inside. Edinburgh is home to the world famous Fringe Festival each August,  but one could easily imagine that same sort of creative craziness happening there all year long. It is after all the place where “Harry Potter” was written. 

 

The Odds.

Steve Martin wrote a play titled “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” and this poster started as a variation on that sort of naming convention. The Dragonfly Tavern is real, but it’s doubtful that either Elvis or Kim went there, let alone engaged in any sort of dialogue inside. Edinburgh is home to the world famous Fringe Festival each August,  but one could easily imagine that same sort of creative craziness happening there all year long. It is after all the place where “Harry Potter” was written. 

PUNK

Steve Martin wrote a play titled “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” and this poster started as a variation on that sort of naming convention. The Dragonfly Tavern is real, but it’s doubtful that either Elvis or Kim went there, let alone engaged in any sort of dialogue inside. Edinburgh is home to the world famous Fringe Festival each August,  but one could easily imagine that same sort of creative craziness happening there all year long. It is after all the place where “Harry Potter” was written. 

Bugs

Some objects are so bizarre that they almost beg to be photographed and reinterpreted. Such was my impression of this creature - a large prawn headed for someone’s dinner table via an outdoor fish market in Edinburgh. “Bugs” is a term used by crabbers and lobstermen when referring to their catch. Among other references, the name recalls the disdain for this seafood prior to its “discovery” as a delicacy (some states actually had laws against feeding lobster to prison inmates more then a few times a week, on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment, as it was seen as the equivalent of eating rats). 

 

Euros

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No doubt thousands of people have shot this same photograph - an image of the newer section of Monterosso al Mare (Cinque Terre, Italy) taken from the promontory that separates it from the old, original part of town. It was my first view of an Italian beach. It conjured up memories of a Fellini movie in which tuxedo-clad lotharios play baccarat in the casino, and fabulously dressed women offer romance and danger in equal measure. Seemed like a good start for a poster.