By Natalie Stevens

November 3, 2009

On October 27 the Founders Lounge was transformed from just a lounge to a lounge covered in a punk rock poster exhibition featuring Chicago graphic artist Zach Hobbs.

The posters aren’t your Picasso or Monet inspired—they’re bold, they’re bright and they don’t hold anything back.

“When I came to Elmhurst I wanted to change the way graphic design is viewed,” said Geoffery Sciacca, assistant art professor and moderator of the gallery. “[I wanted] to change how some of the public perceive graphic design.”

Zach Hobbs, a college friend of Sciacca’s, said that he grew up in Alabama and doesn’t have a “real interesting story” that would have inspired him to create the posters.

“Punk rock records were what got me,” Hobbs told the crowd of over 60 people. “I’d read every word, every lyric … study the artwork and it just stuck with me.” However, Hobbs said he didn’t grow up in the punk rock culture. “It was just the music I obsessed over,” he said with a laugh.

Hobbs’ artwork ranges from cute little cartoon characters, which he said he has a great affinity for, to characters with really round eyes, to some of the more graphic, as in explicit, images.

The first poster that Hobbs pointed out depicted a woman’s torso with a large alien-skull like head. “I puzzle piece it together,” he said, explaining all of the different images he’d used; from woman’s clothing magazines to Playboy.

The poster, created for the Dark Meat, had “stoned” eyes added to the skull head. “This band … they were stoners, on tour 280 days of the year, and lived out of a van … [the eyes] seemed appropriate,” Hobbs laughed.

One poster depicted “acid strips” on the tongue and another for the Buffalo Killers were shown smoking dope. Hobbs even joked to Sciacca that “I’m surprised you put that one up,” indicating a poster that contained what could be seen as a woman’s genitalia. 

Junior art major Amanda Conrad appreciated the openness of the artwork. “[Hobbs] felt free to experiment with his subjects,” she said. “He wasn’t afraid to do something to make people think.”

Hobbs said he learned a lot from when he first started. “I’d probably be sued for that one,” he said, pointing at a poster depicting a green “beast” of some sort. “Just took the picture from a magazine and kept photocopying it over and over. Oops,” he laughed. “But I didn’t make anything off it.”

 When it comes to generating ideas, Hobbs said that he often “only has an inch of concept… my goal is just to make it look cool.” He added that he tried to avoid the “hot rods and women with big boobs” because it was the “easy way out.”

A lot of his work often starts very small and then gets “blown up” on the copier. “I draw on a little post-it note, like one-inch big,” said Hobbs, gesturing at one of the large and disfigured faces on a poster. “I also like to write pointless narratives that make no sense,” he laughed.

Some of the artwork as well, Hobbs said, didn’t make all that much sense. One poster showed a heart, the organ, with a white splotch around it. “Who wouldn’t want a heart that bleeds milk?” Hobbs laughed. “In all my art everything bleeds milk.”

Most of his artwork though, no matter the style, includes some type of face. It’s something that Conrad liked.

 “People will automatically relate to anything that has a face,” said Conrad quoting Hobbs. “He’s right. Even the strange monsters that had faces were somewhat relatable.”

Hobbs’ work will be displayed in the Frick Center’s Founders Lounge until November 20.