You know that old saying, "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like?" That's me when it comes to still, visual arts. I can dissect song lyrics and music for meaning, or debate the worth of a film if you asked me to, I'll even write you a dissertation on why (some) video games should be considered art, but when it comes to paintings, sculptures or architecture I have little or no critical insight. This would ordinarily leave me with bare walls in my apartment, but not anymore. We're actually having a hard time finding wall space for all the framed pieces we've collected, and most of it is screen printed art and movie posters.
Mondo is probably the biggest name in the screen printed movie poster market today and we happen to live in the same town as their physical store. I remember when they were just a little t-shirt shop attached to the original Alamo Drafthouse. Somewhere along the way they got into the custom screen printed movie poster game and now they're the top dogs. Their posters sell out in minutes only to show up on ebay at ten times the price and now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is collecting and archiving all of their releases.
Mondo mostly does less well known movies or films with cult classic status which I love. Buying from them lets me hang movie posters in my house like I used to do in my room when I was in high school and college, except now they're respectable pieces of art. So far we only have a few Mondo pieces including Giant from this summer's rolling road show and Tyler Stout's Kill Bill which we only got through a stroke of luck after it sold out in like three minutes online. We happened to be seeing a movie at the South Lamar location and struck up a conversation with the guy working the Mondo shop. He mentioned he had some that were returned for damage in the back. Turns out the damage was a teeny tiny tear on the edge of the poster. In the frame you can't even see it and it looks amazing on our wall. I wish I could hang most of what Mondo releases, but the one I really wish I had bought but couldn't afford at the time was this beautifully done Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poster.
Another smaller collection we've unintentionally started is by a local artist, Tim Doyle. Almost exactly a year ago a friend gave me an mc chris poster for a Secret Santa gift exchange. I loved it, but I only just finally framed and hung it a couple of weeks ago. Last week while walking around downtown we started looking around a new poster shop attached to a clothing store we love to browse called Parts and Labour. Inside the poster shop we found some really great screen print posters based several Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and Cohen Brother's films. Then we found a really amazing Breaking Bad print that we had seen hanging in a tattoo parlor almost a year ago, but never knew who did it. Last but not least we saw my mc chris poster that I had recently hung in our apartment. They were all by the same guy: Tim Doyle. You may remember me mentioning that we met and talked with him at the Austin Comic Con. He's a very cool guy and as it turns out we have very similar tastes in a lot of things. We ended up only buying his Life Aquatic print (the one that Donatello's hanging in my picture for the day), but if we get nothing else I really want to go back and get the Royal Tenenbaum's print and the Breaking Bad print.
Ironically we still haven't hung the Life Aquatic print because we've had a hard time finding 12x24 inch frames, but he gave me a suggestion for a place when I talked to him. I just need to get my car back so I can go check it out.
Among these Mondo and Tim Doyle prints we've got a scattering of other awesome pieces like the minimalist Ghostbusters poster my wife bought me last year, and the pretty stellar photos she's taken of some of our favorite musicians hanging in our music/toy/nerd room. Maybe if I get a chance I'll take some pics and post them to the blog so you can see what you're missing by not living in my apartment.
Alright. I'll stop talking about screen prints and movie posters now. They're just awesome. That's all.
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