Issue 10
Emek
By ZioArtwork By Emek
Emek had an unconventionally wholesome upbringing—think less Cleavers, and more Swiss Family Robinson. He was raised in a fixed-up horse stable, where his parents would clear the dinner table for family art time. In place of baked apples with cinnamon, there were giant sheets of paper, watercolors, crayons and an old mimeograph machine. During the day, his parents were home, or in the art studio out back, where he often watched his dad screenprint. “It was smelly and messy,” he remembers. “I didn’t think I could ever do it.”
Now 36, Emek is more than comfortable with a squeegee. And his rock posters—for the likes of Ben Harper, The Flaming Lips and Pearl Jam—have developed a cult following, selling out minutes after they’re posted online.
In stretching the medium, are you trying to escape the impermanence of a screenprint?
It’s not about impermanence for me, although that is one aspect. I get a kick out of the fact that a certain percentage of my work is stapled up somewhere. And a lot of collectors go nuts when they see a bunch of my posters stapled to a wall. Every poster that I do, my approach is that I want it to look like a piece of art. I’m very meticulous about everything I do—even though a certain number of them are put up or tossed out. It’s about trying to be true to what a rock poster is supposed to do, and yet do something that hasn’t been done before.
A rock poster has a few simple truths: name of the band, show date, place, and time. Recently, I wanted to give dimension to a medium that has been traditionally flat. So how can I make a poster different? Cut it, scratch it, sculpt, cast, burn, rip melt, cook, weave, emboss. After all is said and done, I have stretched the medium to three dimensions while keeping the poster’s simple truths.
How did you decide to burn a poster or make it out of metal?
I think it’s just a natural progression. I gear every poster toward the vibe of the band. After I had been doing posters for years, I started thinking about how far we can take the rock poster. So it’s still a rock poster, but it’s using the experiences I had growing up.
What happens when hand sculpting doesn’t fit into a band’s budget?
Sometimes, I’ll do a project and I’ll spend my own money just to make something that I think will stand the test of time. I don’t care about the budget. Not everything I do has to make money. I do it because I love making art. If I were trying to do stuff just to make a buck, then I wouldn’t be an artist. That’s the first thing I learned from growing up in my parent’s art studio. It’s not about making a dollar; it’s about expressing yourself.