AMY JO’S HANDIWORK IS A MÉLANGE OF
BURLESQUE
CAMP,
cowgirl
grit, and
Victorian
flourish. She’s undeniably influenced by
’70s
pop design, but this North Dakota girl brings to those psychedelic swirls
the frontier spirit of a
nineteenth-century
Sears Roebuck catalog. For real. When I ask her about it, she cracks up,
“Those are actual images from some late 1800s Sears Roebuck catalog I picked
up.” But make no mistake. Amy Jo’s work has some bite: Hendrickson’s
all-American blonde pigtails read
Rollergirl
more than Little House on the Prairie.
 


If you go to rock shows around Minnesota, you’ve seen (and likely admired) Amy
Jo’s posters slapped up on the walls around you. She’s been at it for years.
“I grew up in Fargo, and I got into making posters kind of indirectly,”
Hendrickson recalls. “When I was about twenty, I started booking musical acts
in town, and I just made rock posters and fliers as a promotional tool. It
wasn’t until later, when I went to college, that I started thinking of graphic
design and screenprinting as something I’d try to do more seriously.”


Once she moved to Minneapolis and set up shop at
First
Amendment Gallery with some other artists, her graphic design business
really took off. Now, she’s doing individual commissions like wedding invites
and baby announcements. “A guy hired me to do a portrait of his kids, like
they were in a rock poster,” she laughs. “And I guess a lot of people just
want to do something a little different for their wedding invitations. They
want them to be a little cooler than the usual thing. It’s crazy, but sort of
fun.”


And for those in the Twin Cities music scene, Amy Jo’s sly grrl power designs
have been garnering more and more notice. She might have had to hustle
business before, but now, her work is in such demand that she finds herself
turning offers down. “I get swamped sometimes and need a little break,” she
explains. “It’s pretty time consuming to create a poster—for me it’s such a
personal process. My ideas come from how I feel when I listen to the music.
All told it takes several days, just to design and print the posters. I want
to keep my prices affordable, so I’m really pretty much just doing work for
bands I love.”


Amy Jo’s design savvy has the hook of a catchy pop song. She unabashedly draws
from
all
sorts of things to get
ideas—‘early
twentieth-century burlesque imagery, retro catalog clip art,
vintage
books and
movie
posters,
’80s
album covers. And then she tweaks those familiar styles with unexpected
juxtaposititons and cheeky flair. 


Even if she didn’t set out to do it, looking back, she says it makes sense
that she was drawn to this kind of work. “When I was a kid, I loved flipping
through the images in catalogs. I always noticed album covers and ad designs
and movie posters,” she remembers. “Now, when I’m not sure whether I’ve got
any poster ideas left, I just head out to the library and start looking
through old books. There’s all kinds of inspiration out there if you know how
to look.”


 


About the artist:
Amy Jo Hendrickson
describes herself as a North Dakota girl who grew up believing
it reasonable to become either a ballerina or a cowgirl. But, because "horses
are kind of scary and I can't balance on one foot very well" she went to
college and got a "fancy schmancy" degree in graphic design. From her home
base at Minneapolis’s First
Amendment Gallery, Amy Jo designs and screenprints rock posters and album
covers for bands all over the country. She occasionally takes on custom
screenprint and design commissions and, when she can, she turns her hand to
fine art pieces as well.


You can see a
bunch of her work on her website
or
mnartists.org.
All you social networking mavens can find
her on MySpace, too. See Amy
Jo's poster art in person this summer at
Plaster
the Town 2007, a group show devoted to gig poster design at
the Soap Factory, opening June 30
and running through August 12. If you're planning a trip to the Windy City
this July, look Amy Jo up at
Flatstock 13, another
cool rock poster show that will be part of the Pitchfork Music Festival July
14 and 15 in Chicago. You can also catch her at the
NE Minneapolis Block
Party on June 9—and while you’re at it, pick up a poster.


--Susannah Schouweiler

access+ENGAGE Issue 18.1: Paper Covers Rock
CLICK HERE to read the web (HTML) version of this issue of mnartists.org's free, biweekly arts e-mag.

Amy Jo Hendrickson on mnartists.org
Browse through more of Amy Jo's design work and fine art.

Amy Jo's website
Explore a huge selection of Amy Jo's fabulous posters, maybe buy a few, and keep track of where you can find her work.

"The Whole Point is Wanting to Go: Concert Posters" by Chris Olwell
Read Chris Olwell's thoughtful article from earlier this year on the philosophy behind good concert poster design.

Susannah Schouweiler on mnartists.org

access + ENGAGE, Music