ART CHANTRY

                                    
Graphic Designer

Arthur Samuel Wilbur Chantry II is a graphic designer often associated with the posters and album covers he did for bands from the Pacific Northwest, such as Nirvana, Hole and The Sonics. He is also notable for his work in logo design. Wikipedia

Born: April 9, 1954 (age 59), Seattle, Washington, United States

Education: Western Washington University

INFLUENCES: 

Among his influences are many forms of "outsider art," such as monster magazines, hot-rod art, and psychedelic culture. He found much inspiration for innovative graphic ideas in an article on Polish posters.

Chantry's sense of design relates to the punk scene in Seattle as he finds himself, with the avant-garde, creating posters for local rock concerts. Chantry has championed what he considers to be the "subculture" of design, a neglected commercial usage of the industrial trade seen in the tool catalogs of the 1940s and 50s.

http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?ID=7244

COLOUR:
Art Chantry use of colour is quite unique compared to other designers. he mainly sticks to using warm flat colours in his pieces often sticking to just one or two colours with grey/black and white. he also sometimes uses dots over his images to create the illusion of tone or texture. much like the way that Frank Miller uses cross hitching in his works. this gives his designs a comic style effect as well.

MAIN IMAGE:
Art Chantry uses alot of photos and hand drawn comic style characters. his photos are often coloursied in a colour that contrasts strongly with the background colour. this contributes alot to his punk style of design.


TEXT/TYPE: 
Art Chantry uses alot of typography in his design work. his punk style is very effective. i really like the way that his words look like each letter has been cut out of news papers. the way that he places his text isnt very clear and hard to describe since it changes in each work. however Arts text often overlaps the main image, is cut into smaller segmants and go be pointed in a varity of directions.

COMPOSITION: 
Art Chantry mainly uses hand drawn pieces of art or black and white photos. his style is much like punk flyers his designs are quite flat and 2D the colours he uses are a mixture of cool and warm often on the same page. he doesnt leave much negative space behind his main images and he always uses as much of the space as possible. I think that it is fair to say that Art Chantry creates very quite angry images. Art Chantrys work is often labled as 'Punk' this is proven by the way he creates his work and the type he creates firstly he is the artist of many many band posters and also all of his art is handmade which is a very punk thing. in this interview he talks about his 'angry images' and is asked whats pissing him off so much.

L: You've created thousands of mostly ANGRY images for us to behold and I know you're aware of that, so my question is: What is pissing you off?
A: What pisses me off? Well,you,for starters(laughing). What pisses me off (reflective), well, I had a misspent youth that left me feeling betrayed and forlorn. Forlorn is a good word. Spell that right,would you? I don't know, maybe it was because I grew up poor. I mean isn't that your excuse?
L: I guess.A: I mean, I grew up REALLY poor. We were so poor that people on welfare used to give us their extra food. We lived in a house that was once a chicken coop.
L: Are you saying you were raised in a chicken coop?
A: No, it used to be a chicken coop. I actually started off in a really wealthy family. My dad was actually a Harvard lawyer...
All of Art Chantry's is made by hand. he really does not like working on computers as he explains here in another snippet of this interview.

L: You are not into computers. Why is that?
A: Because I prefer to work with my hands. I like what I do. If I had to sit in front of a screen all day I'd go nuts. I like to move around little pieces of paper and I also don't understand technology very well. For instance, I don't understand how push-button phones work. I use a rotary-dial around the office. 

(and another snippet from an interview..)

Chantry- and because everybody has got a computer now, and everybody can buy a design disk, prices are dropping and we have to buy $20,000 worth of equipment just to maintain the lowest level of competency, and at the same time we're expected to take on all these additional skills at no extra charge. I mean, how long are we gonna put up with this shit? That's ridiculous. That's just absurd. But everybody in the design industry just embraces it as "it's progress, it's wonderful," but it's not when you think about it, we're just getting screwed.        

Art Chantrys punk style of design is very effective and eye catching. he uses alot of black and white photos as his main image ontop of a bright single coloured background surrounded by typorgaphy.