Metric

Last night I had the honor of seeing Metric play at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. They put on an amazing show as expected and their new album Synthetica sounded great live. I've had an unusual amount of creative momentum lately, starting with the Zola Jesus show at the Guggenheim, and continuing this past Monday seeing 2:54 (post coming soon), so working off that I conceived and executed a Metric poster for the Williamsburg show in the span of roughly 36 hours. It was exhausting but exciting and COMPLETELY fucking worth it. I made color prints of the poster on tabloid paper a few hours before the show, and made sure I had enough for each member of the band and a copy for myself. Anyway, when the band exited it the stage I was dragged by a friend through the crowd to the front of the venue (prints in tow), and since this event was being filmed, I obnoxiously held up the poster I made to a camera that was sweeping the first few rows of the crowd - it seemed to get the camera's attention. The band then came back out for the obligatory encore and tore through "Gold Guns Girls", during which my friend gave one of my prints to the bass player, Josh. Then, for the final song of the night, lead singer Emily Haines and guitarist Jimmy Shaw went acoustic, playing a gorgeous version of "Gimme Sympathy" - but not before my friend handed Emily one of my prints, which she commented on in front of the entire audience, making eye contact with me from just a few feet away. Surreal. Nice to know I have a few eye witnesses, too. After their closing number, I howled in appreciation but didn't actually think Emily would take the print with her - sure enough, exiting the stage she picked it back up, turned back to look at me and mouthed "thank you." So... life = complete.

Since I love showing process, I posted the first thumbnails and sketches I cooked up, leading to the individually drawn portraits on separate pieces of paper. Once each portrait was scanned, they were arranged and modified in Photoshop, and all given Terminator eyes.

 

EDIT (6/22/12): Video proof of my encounter with Ms. Haines...

Also, here's a scan of the one remaining poster I gave out that night to some fellow fans (who happened to be from NJ if I remember correctly). After I left, they stayed around and got it signed by Emily! I attached a pic of all the band's signatures from a recent KROQ session they did to confirm its authenticity.

EDIT #2 (6/23/12): I stumbled upon some lovely photos from the Williamsburg show by a photographer named Ken Grand-Pierre, which included 2 pictures of Emily holding my poster! He also wrote a nice review of the gig and even mentioned my brief encounter with Ms. Haines. Thanks to Ken for taking the pics, and for letting me post his work! Check out his social media.