Chris Shaw teamed up with Chuck Sperry to make Pearl Jam’s Oslo, Nor­way poster. While Chuck and I have made Pearl Jam posters in the mid-1990′s, the Oslo’s Pearl Jam poster is a mix of New School and Old School Rock Poster Art.

Since the theme of the PJ tour posters is VS, we imme­di­ately thought of a Ying-Yang form as a good way to com­mu­ni­cate that idea.

Then we thought of that crazy “Nor­way Spi­ral” that filled the night sky over Nor­way a cou­ple years back (because we both love unex­plained and mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­ena like that, even if it was prob­a­bly a Russ­ian rocket spin­ning out of control).

We gave it a psy­che­delic edge by mak­ing a Ying-Yang out of the form of the Nor­way Spi­ral, and cre­at­ing two fly­ing eye­balls, rep­re­sent­ing the oppos­ing forces of Fire and Water. We wanted this poster to have a touch of skater punk, Psy­che­delia, and to just be iconic and bad-ass.

The small, sub­tle, sil­ver spi­rals in the back­ground, not only mir­rors the Ying-Yang of the cen­tral image, but is inspired by Rose­malling, which is a Nor­we­gian folk-art of dec­o­ra­tive paint­ing. This form of dec­o­ra­tion orig­i­nated in the rural val­leys of Nor­way dur­ing the Baroque and Rococo Period in the mid 18th Cen­tury. It was a folk response to the intri­cate designs the wealthy folks in Nor­way were import­ing. The forms are usu­ally sim­ple and based on “C” and “S” forms. That seemed appro­pri­ate since Chris Shaw and Chuck Sperry are both “CS” names.

Both Chuck & I are releas­ing our Artist Edi­tions on Mon­day, July 16, 2012 at a ran­dom time on ChuckSperry.net.

Pearl Jam with X poster by Chuck Sperry VS. Chris Shaw
Oslo, Nor­way
July 9, 2012
22″ x 33″
Artist Edi­tion of 200
5 Col­ors, Archival Cream Paper
Signed & Numbered