Carolina Alumni Review 05/07
Cover and four-page feature on my work.
Click on thumbnails for larger images
The Art of Music
From Cradle to coffee table, artist Casey Burns ’98 has made his mark making images about sound.
by Kathleen Kearns
Morehead Scholars tend to have impressive work histories, but check out these resume items: designing the cover of a Batgirl comic, touring as the bassist in a rock band, designing T-shirts for Kiss and having your rock posters collected all over the world.
Casey Burns ’98 started playing music and drawing fliers for friends’ bands when he was in high school in Hendersonville. But his love of music and his talent for illustration flowered in Chapel Hill.
While pursuing a journalism degree, Burns worked as a DJ at WXYC and took silk screening in the art department. When he turned 21, he got a job at Cat’s Cradle, where he tended bar and designed distinctive, hip-retro fliers and gig posters. Owner Frank Heath ’86 liked what he saw, and when Burns graduated, Heath created a full-time position for him.
The job was an artist’s dream, Burns says, noting that it’s rare to find someone willing to pay by the hour for the time-consuming process of creating original art. He did as many as 12 fliers a week, including some for shows at The Ritz, Local 506 and Go!, and he painted a mural of a cat that still graces the Cradle’s walls. When he silk-screened a poster, he’d often work late at night after everybody had gone home, using the club’s pool table as an art stand.
Over 10 years, Burns created posters for a number of area artists — Tift Merritt ’00, Southern Culture on the Skids, Superchunk, Don Dixon ’73, Two DollarPistols, and his own band (The Nein) — and national and international acts including Mogwai, Lucinda Williams, Yo La Tengo, Joan Baez, Sex Pistols,The Flaming Lips and Burning Spear. Often band feedback was generic — “Whoa, killer poster! Thanks, dude!” — but Sonic Youth was ecstatic that he’d captured their style. To Burns, a longtime fan, that meant a lot.
He heard from bands and band merchandise companies that wanted him to create artwork. His posters started selling online and at music festivals, and his work began appearing in coffee table books, such as The Art of Modern Rock and the forthcoming Fistful of Rock. Early last year, Burns relocated to Portland, Ore., where about 90 percent of the art he creates is music-related.
If he doesn’t know a band, he says, “I’ll go grab their new record, get an idea of where they’re coming from. I try to pick up the tone, some kind of theme. I shoot reference photos to use when I draw, so I have friends stand in wacky poses.” He likes to imply a vague narrative in his work. “You can almost fill in the gaps, but you aren’t quite sure. It makes you want to look twice.”
Burns now exhibits his art internationally, but samples of those critical early commissions remain where his career began, in Chapel Hill. Last year, Wilson Library’s Southern Folklife Collection asked him to donate more than 40 of his posters to its permanent collection, and the library plans to include part of it in an exhibit of poster art next spring.
— Kathleen Kearns