Studio Christensen: Fairy Tale Show

This past weekend we were involved in a show called, “To Tell the Tale”, it was a fairy tale themed show. The idea was to get a few different artists portraying their own outlook on classic fairy tales. I really liked seeing how different people handled the stories within their own style, we had paintings, collages, photographs, wheatpastes, and some designed posters, overall a pretty nice mix, there was something there for everyone.

The show was at a great gallery called Studio Christensen at 20th and Panama (kinda off Pine). It was a gorgeous venue run by one of the nicest dudes ever, JT Christensen. If you ever get the opportunity to show here I would definitely go for it! Parking is a little bit of an issue but the location is really awesome, AND its right down the street from our friends at Paradigm along with some other nice galleries.

I chose to do the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. If you don’t know it here are some super spark notes: A father is poor and is forced to leave his kids in the woods to die so he doesn’t have to worry about feeding them. The kids wander around the woods and stumble upon a house made of sweet treats. They start to eat the house, then a cannibal witch traps them inside and starts to fatten them up so she can eat them. The day that she is about to eat ’em up, Gretel pushes her into the stove, she dies, Hansel and Gretel steal all of her things, take it back to their father, they are no longer poor and they live happily ever after. (just go to the wiki link)

Like most of my other posters I wanted to keep things simple, so I decided to make a house that was a cupcake, to represent the witch’s house made of treats. The tale itself describes the house a little differently but I wanted to give it my own look and feel to it. In the icing on top of the cupcake you may notice that some of the sprinkles are little NOM NOW logos and some are little skulls (to represent the impending doom for the children).

For the title of the book I chose the typeface Adobe Caslon Pro, now, you’ve seen this font show up in some of my recent work, but I CAN’T get over this typeface in Bold Italic with the alternative glyphs, just beautiful. I felt like Caslon really got the feel for the story, it’s fancy/elegant/classic yet a little playful/childish.

We all know I’m a pattern guy and it probably wouldn’t be my piece if there wasn’t a pattern in it somewhere, so the pattern in the back of this one is made up of: A few axes (the Father), a piece of candy (the witch’s house), a witch’s hat (also the witch), and a NOM NOW logo (procedure). I went through a bunch of different options for this pattern and actually struggled with it a bit, but I felt in the end that this was perfectly subtle, nothing over the top, just enough that if you look close enough you go, “Ohhhhhhhhh” and that’s what I love.

I don’t have a close up photo, but Matt and I collaborated on a piece for the fairy tale, Rapunzel. (He may post it soon but I don’t know). Like we did for the TrickGo show, I made the pattern and Matt made the graphic. The pattern I ended up making for Rapunzel is ALSO me whoring out Adobe Caslon Pro, it just consists of 4 R’s close together making a little knot surrounded with some circles, dots, and NOM NOW logos (the standard). Very simple yet elegant. This pattern was also incorporated into an 8 foot mural that was in the show. I took a photo of my favorite piece of it where the tree line is along the rip, gorgeous.

It was a great show with a bunch of AWESOME people, thanks to everyone that came out and put in! As usual we couldn’t do anything without your support and love. Just saying thanks doesn’t even cut it, y’all are the best, I swear.

I dont know how long the show will be up, but if you have some free time stop by, pop in, and check it out!

(………………………..annnnnnnndddddd this guy was there. So if you didn’t come you missed out)