U Weekly. Serving The Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio

Appreciating the finer print

By Reyan Ali

The concert posters of Clinton Reno are all about using details to complement the bigger picture. Take the story told by his poster that marks the last Columbus date in the long-running career of local indie rock generators Miranda Sound: Set against a gray sky and an overwhelming and ominous full moon, a procession of dinosaurs solemnly turn their heads back to watch a hail of asteroids approaching from the sky. Not only is this an ingeniously delicate nod toward the impending finality of both the band and the pictured prehistoric creatures, but its inspiration is rooted in a song by the afore-mentioned group, appropriately titled "Dinosaurs and Asteroids." In another example, analyze his Gnarls Barkley print designed for their recent stop at Newport: As gigantic balloon likenesses of the alternative hip-hop duo soar triumphantly into the outer limits of a light blue sky, a group of comparatively miniscule figures dangle from ropes attached to the two. Among other characters, you can spot a Darth Vader hanging from Cee-Lo (the vocalist suited up as the "Star Wars" icon for a prominent 2006 MTV Movie Awards performance of "Crazy") and The Beatles flying via Danger Mouse (the producer got his first success from infamously blending the band's "The White Album" with Jay-Z's "The Black Album" to create the bootleg "The Grey Album"). While these kinds of touches are things that only an enthusiast of Miranda Sound or Gnarls Barkley might notice, even if you're not aware of the subtleties that mark Reno's work, it's difficult to go wrong with his wonderfully informal, half-skewed, half-grounded portrayals of dapper gentlemen, untouched landscapes, or energetic caricatures when that "bigger picture" looks this good.

Heading a little over an hour northeast from his hometown of Xenia, OH, Reno first settled in Columbus to attend CCAD, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration in 1995. From there, he started doing design work at a textbook company. Later, during his time at an ad agency sometime around 1998, he did his first real music-related art by drawing caricatures from press shots of bands for a project by local writer Chip Midnight. A year after starting this enterprise, LA pop-punk group Buck liked Reno's work enough to utilize one of his caricatures for their profile picture on the upstart MP3.com, but Reno insisted that he could do much better work than what they had used. The replacement image earned an even better reception than the first, leading Reno to quickly gain experience and contacts, realizing that he could make more out of music art. Following a few unsuccessful attempts to find someone else to screen print his pieces beyond more than a single run (another house printed his first poster for Snow Patrol in 2004), a conversation with Mike Martin of the flourishing EngineHouse13 concert poster studio made him realize that he needed to do the labor so that his work could push forward and become truly his. His initial run of personally screen printed work arrived in 2005 in the form of 500 prints of a Done Waiting record sleeve and a bulletin for an Evil Queens show at the Ravari Room — the latter being his first entirely self-created concert poster.

Three years later, Reno's produces about 20 to 40 show posters a year and has worked for artists and bands as varied as Cake, Pete Yorn, Panic! At the Disco, The Thrills, Jimmy Eat World, Tegan and Sara, and High on Fire. He does the majority of his art for the three Columbus venues owned by Promowest Productions (The Basement, Lifestyles Community Pavilion, and Newport) and House of Blues in Cleveland, but has also created pieces for venues in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Austin. The selection of bands is typically dependent on who is visiting the venue, but the variety within the line-ups offers him the chance to handpick which subjects he wants to work with, as he prefers to create for names that he's at least a little bit familiar with. As far as the art direction of the content goes, he's usually allotted a lot of freedom, but tries to maintain sincerity to the aesthetic or image of the band to allow a sense of cohesion with the approach of the music. His work with groups such as Over the Rhine and The Decemberists is distinctively enough like the work of the band that it's possible to have a reasonable idea of how they sound without actually hearing a chord. Plus, he occasionally turns one poster created for a band into another gig (My Morning Jacket loved Reno's art enough to reproduce it on T-shirts created for their New Year's show) or even a memorable meeting (John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats once customized a Reno poster with a personal note).

The niche industry of show posters isn't without its difficulties, however, because of the nature of distribution. Reno notes that the success of a certain poster's sales are dependent on a variety of factors that are out of his control, such as how many people attended the show, how prominently the show was publicized, and how wide the overall fan base of the artist reaches. Word of mouth is vital to promoting his work. The ephemeral nature of rock music is such that he always has to keep creating and distributing more art to keep his name out there.

Reno's studio in the center of metropolitan Columbus is a large and dry room spotted with thick bundles of unused paper, gallons of acrylic paint, and small stacks of completed prints. It's played home to hundreds of hours of creative labor, as screen printing is a time-heavy process that requires lots of micro-management (including designing the screen, taking care of any alignment issues, and mixing the ink, among other processes). Reno usually creates one new print a week (as much as three in a rare week), and has mastered his process enough to spend only an hour and a half setting a single color for a run of 200 pieces (each piece typically requires at least three colors). Every completed print in a batch will eventually find a spot in one of the 50 shelves of his enormous drying rack that can hold a staggering 700 square feet of paper, creating quite the temporary depository of concert posters.

As an active member of the Columbus art scene, Reno recently displayed his work as part of the Cowtown Lowbrow show at Junctionview Studios. He keeps his local connections through online message boards and by meeting new artists and musicians. "It's cool to be part of a community like this, even though I'm not doing anything musical," he remarks humbly.

Some of Reno's current projects include a festival stop at Bumbershoot in Seattle, an overhaul of his current web space, and designs for upcoming shows of Death Cab for Cutie and The Swell Season (which are sure to include more minutiae for your eyes to mine). To check out his work as more becomes available, visit http://www.galaxyreno.com.

Originally Published: August 20, 2008

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