Blacksburg, Virginia
Whatever Happened to Attitudes? Woove Reporter Eva Luton Interviews Promoter Brian Zickafoose About Art, Music, and the Future of Attitudes Bar and Cafe.
At the end of the last semester, rumors began to circulate around Blacksburg that Attitudes Bar and Cafe was discontinuing their popular calendar of live music and entertainment acts. In the wake of the closure of local music club The Lantern and a significant decline in the frequency of underground concerts in Blacksburg, such as house shows in basements and living rooms, The Woove staff was eager to find out the truth about the fate of Attitudes. A small team of reporters organized an interview with local music promoter, artist, and cultural figure Brian Zickafoose, who has most recently been responsible for booking shows at the venue. Woove reporter Eva Luton asked Zickafoose about these rumors and about his own career, including his art that appeared on a recent issue of local arts and culture magazine 16 Blocks and his history in promoting music in Blacksburg, especially at the now defunct Lantern. Read more or watch the complete interview here.
This was the promotional poster I created for the MiMoSa show at Awful Arthur’s in Blacksburg, VA on May 13, 2010. I have always loved various culture’s versions of a dragon. This one is based on the Tibetan style.
I needed a quick dragon fix one night a while back and drafted up a fairly tight dragon that collected dust on the shelf for over year in my studio. When this show was confirmed, Third Eye Presents commissioned me to design the show poster and fliers so in a pinch, I resurrected the old dragon drawing and took it to my vector sanctuary in Adobe Illustrator. There it took on color. I chose red because of it being a fire dragon and drafted separate copy for the background, clouds and fire swirls and laid them out in a matter of a few hours.
This show poster harkens to the glorious, now legendary time when I was booking live shows in Blacksburg and Roanoke, VA. Ooah of the Glitch Mob was the semester wrap party and I created this poster to commemorate our final show of the semester.
The artwork itself was crafted in essentially three parts. I drafted the foreground in pen and ink and added color via premium Prisma-tone markers. These are amazing markers that allow one to blend various shades to get a smooth color transition. The mushroom huts were inspired by Roger Dean’s album cover work in the early seventies. I grew up staring long hours at his album cover work for the band Yes.
Once I completed the foreground, I found a suitable sky/cloud photo from a stock photo site and tweaked out the colors. I was looking for something dreary with thick stratocumulus cloud cover. I placed the background graphic and then pen tooled the flying, black, gargoyle-looking arial crafts coming through the clouds. The overall feel I was going for was one of impending doom, for the sole purpose that Ooah was our last show and ultimately one of the last ever events at the Lantern before it closed for good.
The show raged epic that night. DJ RahBee and Savoy crushed the opening slots. One for the books. Ooah really enjoyed the artwork and I had him sign several copies for the archive.