Back in my college dorm in 2011 I just slapped every band poster up with masking tape. Corners curled, paper got sun bleached, and after a year they looked like garbage. But I kept doing it because frames were expensive and I thought they were for old people. Then last month I found a rare Mondo print at a thrift store in Portland for $8 and I almost ruined it the same way. Now I only buy cheap IKEA frames and honestly the posters look 10 times better on the wall. The colors pop and dust doesn't settle on the ink anymore. Does anyone else have a stack of creased posters from their old tape days that they wish they could redo, or am I the only one who treated art like a dorm room decoration? What do you guys use now, magnetic frames or actual glass?
Last Saturday I picked up an old concert poster for a 1978 Fleetwood Mac show at a garage sale in Phoenix for $5. It looked faded and washed out, but the seller said it spent 40 years in a basement. I hung it in my shop by a west-facing window, and after 3 days the ink started shifting from a dull orange to a deep red, like the sunlight was waking it up. I guess the original print had a hidden layer that only pops with UV exposure over time, but I didn't expect it to happen that fast. Has anyone else seen a poster transform after hanging it in direct light, or did I just get lucky with some fading trick?
I was digging through a box at an estate sale in Portland last weekend and found an original 1974 Grateful Dead show poster. The frame was maybe 14 by 22 inches, which blew my mind because I always picture those old rock posters as these huge billboard sized things. Turns out most of the Fillmore era stuff was printed on standard newsprint or tabloid sizes to keep costs down. I looked it up after and the typical run was only a few hundred copies, so the small size makes sense for cheap distribution. Has anyone else been surprised by the physical size of old posters versus the modern reprints we see everywhere?
Was at a small outdoor show in Portland last month and this band's poster got totally ruined when a drink spilled on the merch table. I used to think clean, bare posters were boring, but watching the artist swap in a fresh simple print with just the date and venue made everything pop. Anyone else flip their stance on busy art after seeing a mess in person?
I grabbed a screenprint of an old train depot from a vendor in Portland last month, just because the colors caught my eye. Got it home and realized the sizing threw off the entire arrangement I had above my couch, so I had to take down five other posters and start over. In the middle of that, one of my favorites slid out of its frame and tore a corner, which sucked because that one was a gift from my brother. But the new piece ended up being the anchor, and now I'm wondering if anyone else builds their whole collection around one accidental purchase. What's the one print that forced you to reshuffle everything?
Found a killer 1960s band poster in Austin for $40, raw and mint. Paid $120 to a local shop for archival framing, matting, UV glass. Six weeks later I noticed the mat was creased and the glass had a smudge that won't clean off. Shop said that's normal wear, not their problem. Anyone else get burned by framing costs that wipe out the deal value?