I was thrilled when Chuck Sperry asked me if I wanted to do a Public Enemy poster for his Goldenvoice series, I’m a huge Public Enemy fan from way back when. Doing a poster for a band you love isn’t always as great as it sounds, sometimes you can get hung up on trying to get a perfect image and idea and overwork the art. Trying not to over-think things, I decided to go with an old-school political poster, the kind of thing I was making in the 80’s when I listened to P.E. constantly. I’ve made a ton of art over the years listening to that band, and felt like going back to my roots.

Somehow I think I’ve wanted to make this poster for a long time. The last time I made a Public Enemy poster it was for the Fillmore, I don’t think a riot cop with a bloody baton would have passed pre-screening over there. In particular, I decided to make this poster a BART cop. BART is a Bay Area transit agency who’s police force has been involved in some very questionable shootings, have been handling themselves pretty badly, they’ve been in the news a lot. Knowing the band, the image seemed fitting, and timely.

The image is a collage of pieces from different riot cop photos, put together to make an especially sinister figure. I altered a lot of the small details along the way then separated the art into 3 colors, standard “politics” black & red, plus a bright silver… the silver gives it that rock poster feel. For the variants, we printed a pure cyan instead of the black plate, and used some different stock. A big thanks Chuck for being the master of his press, this was an especially clean run of posters.

Silkscreen poster printed by Chris Shaw & Chuck Sperry at Hangar 18, Oakland, CA.

Public Enemy poster by Chris Shaw
August 19, 2011
Regency Ball­room – San Fran­cisco, Cal­ifornia
Firehouse-Goldenvoice series #139
18′ x 28″ impression on 20″ x 30″ 100 lb. Cougar paper
Edition of 145
Signed & Numbered