Doing this removes the ability to get back to the plate to add new elements or attempt to reprint the poster.ĪJ Masthay's poster for The Black Keys in Las Vegas on July 9, 2022. The process of relief printing involves a reduction print in which Masthay must “recarve the plate multiple times.” Masthay explained that as the edition of any given poster moves along, he is actually destroying the plate with which he is pressing the poster with. It’s very time intensive labor intensive but the results are unique and I think they speak for themselves.” “You’re talking two weeks of printing and carving, never mind the design time and the original drawings. The best way to describe it is like a giant rubber stamp on steroids,” Masthay said. “It is literally me carving sheets of linoleum and inking those up. Since then, Masthay prints thousands of posters a year out of his West Hartford studio for legendary musicians and upcoming artists alike.ĪJ Masthay can be followed on Instagram and Facebook, where updates are often shared regarding what concert posters are coming up next. Masthay said things really picked up for him after he was tapped to design posters for Fare Thee Well, the last run of shows by members of the Grateful Dead in 2015. “You had to get there and get in early, and we would literally run to the merch tables to see if there even was a print and if there was, it was like winning the lotto.”Īs the appetite for gig posters increased, bands began to take notice and would employ different artists to design tour posters and in some cases, individual posters for specific shows. This was pre-internet so there was no posting posters online or anything like that,” Masthay said. Back in those days, which were the mid-to-late 90s, you weren’t guaranteed a poster every night. I was grabbing old Dead posters and specifically Phish stuff at the time. “I was collecting concert posters before I got into them. And as Masthay was selling posters, he was collecting just as many. Masthay said he would sell prints on what's known as "Shakedown Street," a spot where vendors sell everything from grilled cheeses to necklaces outside of the concert. His love for jam bands would continue with the band Phish, who he has seen roughly 240 times. “I basically blew all of my money my first semester of freshman year going to see the Dead,” he said. Masthay had been into the jam band scene since the early 90s when he began to follow around the Grateful Dead in 1992. “It really clicked for me back in the late 90s, ‘99 or so, seeing one of Jim Pollock’s pieces at a Phish show, and saying to myself, ‘Wow, that’s an actual print. My parents have little drawings I did in kindergarten and stuff like that,” Masthay said. Having graduated from the Hartford Art School in 1997 with a degree in printmaking, it wasn’t until 2001 that Masthay established his own letterpress studio and began to test the waters of the concert poster scene There, Masthay will be selling new work, personalizing prints and giving demonstrations on how his printing press works. Additionally, a one-of-a-kind guitar designed by Masthay and played in concert by Bob Weir of Dead & Company during its last outing fetched $300,000 at a charity auction, with proceeds going to the voting registration non-profit HeadCount and environmental organization REVERB.įor Masthay, seeing Weir play the charity guitar with his design at their last show at Citi Field in New York was “surreal to say the least.”įans will get the chance to see Masthay’s artwork when be hosts an open house at his studio in West Hartford on Nov. Masthay is a life-long Connecticut resident who operates out of his workshop in West Hartford called “The Furnace.” He has worked with some of the biggest touring bands including Black Sabbath, Grateful Dead, Foo Fighters and Dead & Company, for whom he recently produced 2022 tour posters.
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