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HoboEye Art:
Interview with the Minneapolis poster artist and musician Dale Flattum
Dale Flattum first pursued a career in music touring the United States, Europe and Japan for over 9 years with the San Francisco based noise-rock bands; Steel Pole Bath Tub and Milk Cult. He has recorded over a dozen albums and collaborated with such musical luminaries as Jello Biafra, Mike Patton and Carla Bozulich.
In 1993, he received an artist in residence grant from the French government and flew to Marseille for four weeks as a guest of the La Friche art collective. Recording with over 20 different musicians, the resulting Milk Cult record: Project M-13 was released the following year to glowing reviews. Then, after being kicked off the major label London Records for recording an "unlistenable" record, Dale chose to devote himself to making art and relocated to Raleigh North Carolina. Working with Lump gallery as a Team Lump member, he exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Seattle, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Winston
Salem and Portland.
Most recently, Dale has combined his love of music and art and produced over 100 concert posters. And as a founding member of the American Poster Institute, has sold his work at several Flatstock poster conventions in Seattle and Austin Texas.
Dale Flattum still performs music and works as a graphic designer in Minneapolis, MN. He can be reached via his website: www.ramenroyale.com.
HoboEye: As a poster artist, you've produced some amazing work for notable bands over the years. You've also performed with groups such as Steel Pole Bath Tub and Milk Cult. Talk about the correlation between punk music and poster design. Do your musical sensibilities and attitudes spill over into your design work? Are there similarities in the way you approach both disciplines?
Flattum: Punk rock was like a thousand light bulbs going off for me. It erased so many gaps. I spent alot of time in junior high listening to my brother’s records and staring at these over-the-top 70’s album covers but I could never really connect that someone had actually made the artwork. I knew it involved airbrushes and mustaches and having your shirt half unbuttoned and the same seemed true for the music. I loved listening to it, but it never occured to me that you could do it yourself.
And then we started hearing about punk rock, and finding these records, and it became obvious that we could do this too. All you really needed was the equipment, and the art
could be made with scissors and glue, and even I had scissors and glue. It all was suddenly possible! So from the very beginning, making flyers was as important as making the music. An 8.5x11 piece of paper is still a very powerful thing.
HoboEye: Your work carries a playful sense of automatism, yet you create tension by juxtaposing erratic elements, often resulting in a sinister tone. How much of your thought process is conscious intent verses loose improvisation?
Flattum: Its always best when it happens fast. When I think too much about it I usually end up on the wrong track. You need to keep your brain loose and let the pieces connect themselves. I really don't know how it works though. That's probably why it still fascinates me.
HoboEye: Not to get into specific influences, but let's discuss the root of your design aesthetic. I see a broad range of styles in your posters—in particular, Dada and Surrealism, but also hints of the Swiss Style and Bauhaus. Do you gravitate toward a specific school of thought when it comes to design?
Flattum: Dada and surrealism were a big influence on me. Art always seemed like this "serious" business, and to discover work that was funny and angry at the same time was a huge realization. Initially it was just trippy imagery, perfect for teenage stoners. Only later did I realize how much World War I had to do with it. That they were reacting against all this atrocity and disfigurement around them. I never went to school for design so over the years I've just tried to sponge up as much of the history as I can, but for me, it all really stems back to the Xerox machine.
HoboEye: Many of your posters have the raw immediacy of hand-crafted collage work. Even your type looks hand drawn or pasted in. Talk more about your process and the mechanics behind your work. Could you briefly walk us through a typical poster design, form initial concept to finished work?
Flattum: If I'm not already familiar with a band I'll look them up on the internet and see if they have a sense of humor, or what exactly their trip is. Then I'll drag out every other book I own and start sifting through all my girlfriends encyclopedias, and then I'll cut up a bunch of pictures from the most recent junky magazines I've scrounged and waste a bunch of time watching movies that I think are relevant. And then when there's almost no time left I'll just decide to make Pat Boone have wings and a woman's mouth and call it a night.
Then what usually happens is I'll wake up and realize that a transvestite angel has nothing to do with the band so I'll start pacing and panicking until I notice the last thing left on the shelf is this 18th century aquatic wood cut book and didn't that band sing that song about whales? So I'll scan an angry surfacing whale, drop him into a saucer of milk, add some teeth and then clip out a few ladies in fur coats to have standing around the dish watching and its done!
As far as text goes, I clip out any interesting text I find and glue it all onto a blank piece of paper and when its full I'll go xerox it a bunch of times until it starts to fall apart and then when I need to spell out a bands name I just dig through the pages until I find letters that seem to fit. Its a fairly crude process that leaves you without crucial vowels at times, but it works.
HoboEye: Tell us more about your series, "Doom is the New Hope."
Flattum: DOOM started out as an excercise in pessimism. All the power point global warming and people driving around in airconditioned military vehicles began to shake my optimism. We're really a very arrogant species. We're boiling the world and we won't even use public transportation! So right around this time this bird was building its nest in my mailbox, so it was always full of twigs and bits of styrofoam and half the time I checked my mail this bird would come flying out and it made it very clear to me that animals never stop adapting and humans just get fatter and weaker. So it was easy to invision a desolate world full of squirrels and old toasters. The birds won't miss us.
Visit Dale Flattum's web site >
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