Greg Stainboy Reinel
Published 7:00 am Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Bumbershoot began in 1971 during the glory days of LPs and rock-show posters. In a sense, music was bigger back then, more of a visual medium. Now its something you view on the screen of your iPod. Its a list to be managed, not something to study and handle while you give that new vinyl a crucial first listen. Yet today theres something of a trend against nano-musicfor example, the resurgence of poster art on display at Flatstock 18. Around two dozen designers will be featuredwith some artists attendingduring the three days of Bumbershoot. In particular, we like the unabashedly retro line work of Greg Stainboy Reinel, who will be signing at the fest. His design tropes are fastback muscle cars, strong, busty women in go-go boots and short shorts, men brandishing oversize magnum pistols, and the palette-busting posters from blaxploitation and grindhouse movies of the 70s. His avatars are guys like Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen. If Quentin Tarantino could draw, hed produce images like these. A musician himself, the Florida-based Reinel has created posters for acts including Mudhoney, Buzzcocks, and Joan Jett. His work is often sexual and lurid, but, in a pre-Internet, pre-MySpace era, how else were bands going to attract your notice with a poster on a telephone pole? The colors and content have to grab your eye, and possibly dislocate it, from across the street. The whole point of making a rock poster for a rock show is to get attention, Reinel writes in a new graphic collection, Vicious Intent (Dark Horse, $19.95). Being polite has nothing to do with the job. Fisher Pavilion (Seattle Center), www.bumbershoot.org. $35$100. 11 a.m.8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Sat., Aug. 30, 11 a.m., 2008
