Posters focus on city's pedal power

Fri May 07 2010
Posted May 7, 2010
4,057

Des Moines, IA By Michael Morain mmorain@dmreg.com May 8, 2010 The idea is simple: 30 Iowa artists each designed a bike-themed poster, printed 30 copies and are selling them for $30 apiece at a show that opens tonight at the Des Moines Social Club. The three-week exhibition, known as Artcrank and billed as "a poster party for bike people," taps into the city's growing pedal-powered culture. Visitors who bike to tonight's reception, for example, can valet park their Schwinns or Treks right at the front door. A bike tour is planned later this month to see the posters and the Pappajohn Sculpture Park across the street. "It's gonna be a great show. I've seen six or eight of the posters, and they're pretty incredible," said Des Moines Bicycle Collective chairman Carl Voss, who helped organize the event. ARTCRANKWHEN: Through May 29, with an opening reception from 7 p.m. to midnight today WHERE: Instinct Gallery in the Des Moines Social Club, 1408 Locust St. ADMISSION: Free. Free valet bike parking will be available as well, courtesy of the RAGBRAI Dream Team. INFO: (815) 751-0618, artcrankpostershow.com/des-moines BIKE TOUR: 2 p.m. May 22. The 3-mile bike tour starts at Mars Cafe, 2318 University Ave., and includes stops at Artcrank and the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, where a Des Moines Art Center docent will lead the group on a (walking) tour around the sculptures. Free. (515) 369-6277, bikeiowa.com.See a gallery of posters designed for Artcrank at desmoinesregister.com/photos Voss' son is a graphic designer in Minneapolis, where the first Artcrank show cranked out in 2007. He checked it out and liked what he saw. "He called up and said, 'Dad, you have to do this in Des Moines,' " Voss said. So he called Artcrank founder Charles Youel in Minneapolis and invited him to launch a show in Des Moines, as he had in Denver, St. Louis, San Francisco and Portland, Ore. Youel agreed. "The city seems like it's really focused on becoming more bike-friendly, with more biking infrastructure and a downtown layout that has a lot of potential," he said. Word about the project spread among local artists, including Sally Cooper Smith, who had heard about the show in other cities. "At first I didn't believe it. We're a cool enough city to get Artcrank?" said the founder of the marketing firm Cooper Smith, where three employees are contributing posters for the show. "I'm so excited and so nervous for Des Moines all at the same time. I sort of feel like a stage mom: I want a huge turnout. I want all the posters to be sold. I just want it to be a huge success." If the Artcrank shows in other cities are any indication, she just might get her wish. More than 2,000 visitors showed up a few weeks ago for the fourth annual event in Minneapolis - including 500 who arrived on bikes - and contributed to about $20,000 in sales, according to Youel. "Part of the appeal is that everybody has a bike experience, the memory of their first time riding and the freedom they got from that," he said. "But the thing that surprises people is that it's very different from a traditional gallery opening. It feels a lot more like a party that happens to have art in it." About half of the designs in the Des Moines show were printed with traditional screenprinting techniques at 8/7 Central, a print shop in the East Village that specializes in custom T-shirts. For the posters, the business rigged up larger screens and used special inks to produce a handmade look that is difficult to achieve digitally. "It doesn't feel like art if it's been printed by robots," said 8/7 Central's Garrett Cornelison, who designed Artcrank's promotional poster and another one for the show itself. The artwork in each show differs based on its city's particular bike culture - the two-wheeled commute is a way of life in Portland, racing is a big deal in St. Louis - but the posters that usually sell first include a local landmark or some sort of feature that connects the design to a particular place. That's good news for Brian Duffy, whose poster calls to mind his cartoons for the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, and Jill Paisley, whose design features the Des Moines skyline in the background. In the foreground, two bikes lean up against a tree under cursive letters that spell out "shift." "That's just one word," Voss said, "but it's sort of cool when you think about all the bike-related things that are happening now."