MISCmedia for 4/19/01
A Chant, Re: The Art of Art Chantry

YOU SIMPLY MUST GET Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry.

This handsome full-color volume, curated and narrated by Julie Lasky, gathers the best posters, album covers, ads, logos, magazine covers, and other assorted graphic creations produced from 1978 to 2000 by Chantry, the king of Seattle designers (until he followed a girlfriend's career move to St. Louis).

Lasky thoroughly chronicles Chantry's various "periods" or subgenres of retro design--Sub Pop, Estrus, the Rocket, theatrical work, slick posters, cheap posters, copies of sleazy-mag back-cover ads, copies of tool catalogs, copies of circus posters, copies of retro-smut, and, oh yeah, the four or five books he designed, including mine. No amount of thanks I can ever give will be enough for the work he did on Loser (which gets its due as a piece of Chantry's oevure in Lasky's book).

When Chantry held his leaving-town bash at the new Cyclops back in March 2000, he gave me the usual rant people were giving in those pre-NASDAQ-crash weeks about the dot-com invasion having finally sealed the ultimate triumph of the gentrifiers over the humble, funky li'l Seattle we'd known and loved (even though he'd complained as much as anybody about the town's supposed lack of opportunities and urban sophistication back in the old days).

But it wasn't just the destruction of artist housing and funky spaces, or the increase in arrogant cell-phone yappers, that he hated about the alleged Internet Revolution.

He was a lo-tech guy, in both his aesthetic styles and his working techniques. The text of Loser was desktop-published, but the 1,000-or-so images and the chapter headings were all pasted-up by hand, and all the photos were screened on a real stat camera. He despised the soulless perfection and numbing slickness he saw in digital graphics.

Nowadays, with KCMU in Paul Allen's clutches and The Rocket and Moe and the OK Hotel gone, but also with clubs slowly getting back to booking more live bands instead of soundalike techno nights, and with retro-industrialism so beloved in PoMo architecture (plate glass, thin wires, exposed duct work), I have one thing to say to Art:

It's OK now. Really. Things are getting better; that is to say, Seattle's feeling comfortably depressed again. The dot-comers are on the run. Everybody's sick of virtual reality. Real objects, real passions, and real life are back in vogue.

You can come back now.

NEXT: George W. Bush and Don De Lillo.

ELSEWHERE:

• "The absolute genius of the nipple in our popular culture" (found by Daze Reader)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Joey Ramone reaches the ultimate sedation.
• John Keister gets canceled again, apparently.
• Tulipomania redux.
• Parts one, two, three, four, and five of a tour through every home I've lived in.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's reminiscences of beer, basements, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.
• Mulling still more potential changes to the site.
• Memories of the radio station formerly known as KCMU.
• Thanks to the Net, some folks are writing more. That's supposed to be a bad thing?
• Remember rain?
• In defense of DIY publishing.
• A special offer on slightly-hurt Losers.
• Parts one and two of Boeing becoming just another global corporation.
• Could you be turning into a hippie without even knowing it?
• Is it time to privatize welfare customer-service?
• Tell me a story.
• A TV critic faces cancer.
• Music to accompany the mattress mambo.
• Goodbyes to film critic John Hartl, the outre-music zine The Tentacle, and some cool stores.
• A last lingering look inside the OK Hotel.
• Seattle as a city that works (and works and works).
• The terrible beauty of the freeways.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia