Well good resolution for 2012, when I have nothing special to say, I let the artists and their works speak for themselves :) This begin .... today !!!! ;)…
Fats Waller!
Can you tell us more about yourself, who are you, where are you from, what do you do?
My name is Jessica Seamans and I am one-half of Landland, along with Dan Black. "Landland" is the name we have for the thing we do with most of our time. It includes a lot of drawing, design, illustration, screenprinting, and a little record-releasing, book-making, 3D modelcraft, and procrastination. Our main thing we our known for is our band posters.
When did you start drawing?
We've both been drawing since we were tiny babies. I focused mainly on Worlds I'd Rather Inhabit and Dan's specialty was Road Signs.
Hmm, well, I suppose we both probably took any art class that was available to us during our first 13 years of school... and drew any other chance we got.. I went to a high school that had an arts focus, and then only one year of school at an art college, and Dan attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. We're both fairly self-directed and self-motivated, though.
Today are you living from your art, or do you do something else for a living ?
We both live entirely off of the work we do through Landland. For me, that's been the case for about 10 months now and for Dan it's been a few years. Neither of us are necessarily living super well but it's fricking wonderful to get to do this as a full time job.
Not really, I would like to be doing more of that kind of work, but we haven't quite figured it out yet.
Where does your influence come from? Is there any artists/graphists you particularly like, what are your influences?
Oh geez, well, our influence comes from all over the place. Speaking just for myself, the illustration that really moves me is usually of the past. I love Tomi Ungerer (still active), George Herriman, Maurice Sendak, Winsor McCay. I spend a lot of time looking at older National Geographic magazines, or really any older book or magazine with any well-reproduced photography from the 60's and 70's. The colors are incredible, and National Geographic has really beautiful portraiture. Really amazing. I just acquired a huge collection of National Geographics so that's kind of all I'm thinking about right now...
Well, to make a band poster, which is our primary thing right now, we start with being asked by the band or the band's management, and sometimes they'll have some idea of what they want, but more often they'll tell us what they don't want. We come up with sketches, get approval, start final art. Dan has some really interesting processes lately; he's been doing a lot of really elaborate model-building to use as reference for whatever van pile-up or factory scene he might be drawing. It's really fun to watch. I usually just gather other images for reference. We both do pretty much all of our drawing by hand, so it isn't until all of our drawing is done that we scan it into the computer and do some final cleaning up in Photoshop. Then we print separations (the image from which each screen for each color of the poster will be made) and start printing.
Really, everything is by hand. When we're doing CMYK printing, which is the stuff of ours that looks more like watercolors, we make the entire drawing/painting and then separate it into the various halftones in the computer, and Dan will sometimes do some color stuff on the computer but all the drawing is done by hand.
How long does it take you to do a poster?
It takes about as much time as we have, plus a day or two.
You have a very distinctive style, are you doing only what you feel like or if tomorrow somebody asks you an oil painting with horses running out of water with a sunset backdrop, is it a problem or are you up for it ?
Hmm. Well, I would probably nail running horses, and have fun doing it, to be honest. But yes we mostly do what we want, or rather, the people that come to us never seem to ask us to do anything wildly different than the kinds of things we would be good at. There are definitely things that would be way outside of our capabilities.
We've worked for a ton of bands... Lots and lots of local Minneapolis bands. Our own bands. Friends bands. Some of the slightly bigger people we've done stuff for are, Iron and Wine, the Swell Season, Arcade Fire, Das Racist, Built to Spill, the Hold Steady, I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton.
For which band would you love to work?
R Kelly! Prince! It'll never happen.
Do you choose the artists yourself?
Not usually; typically bands will come to us, but sometimes we contact people if we see they're coming to town and we think it would make sense for us to do their Minneapolis poster.
What is the most difficult part in designing a poster ?
For me, it's either committing to a concept or not getting sick of it by the time I'm to the printing.
Clay, the person who compiled everything in the book, just asked us. We're kind of an official part of the whole gigposters community now, so I guess that helps!
Do you think you are part of a "Graphic Scene", if so who else ?
Wow, that's a tough question. I could say who we would be flattered to be considered peers of, but it's hard to say who are our actual peers... I guess, within the gigposters scene, we might be part of a group of people who make more, um, sensitive-looking band posters... And the other people that I would place in that category would be people like Nate Duval, Sonnenzimmer, maybe with Jay Ryan at the head of the pack.
Landland.net is our infrequently-updated website, and in real life, you can come visit us at our studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The best praise you received lately?
It's always really flattering when people want to buy a poster you made when they've never even heard the band it's for. That has been happening a lot lately.
In-studio masseuses.
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