KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Garrett Vander Leun

For our final interview from the Kitsune Noir Poster Club we have Garrett Vander Leun, a Los Angeles based illustrator who chose The Road for his poster. Garrett has been drawing since he was a little kid, influenced by his father’s illustrations and comic books growing up. Garrett’s artwork has been featured on music packaging and t-shirts and he is currently working on several series of portraits.

Why did you choose The Road?
The book hit me very hard when I read it, unlike any book has before or since.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say I’ve had some amazing women in my life, and both my mother and grandmother have had a profound influence on me – but there’s something about the relationship between father and son that is almost indescribable, a kind of shorthand where words are often exercised in light of an unspoken understanding. That bond, and that relationship, is so strong in this book and it reminded me very much of the relationship I have with my father. Even without the father thing, the parental instinct in this novel, the need to blindly do anything for your child’s well-being, has never been captured so elegantly and pure. These two characters live in spite of their grim surroundings, live only for each other really, for as the book progresses you’re overwhelmed by hopelessness and despair. At one point, the boy talks with his father:

What would you do if I died?

If you died, I would want to die too.

So you could be with me?

Yes, so I could be with you.

Okay.

That’s it right there, the subtext of the entire book. Two people trying to survive in spite of the ever-changing times, a world where love and kindness is endangered, if not already extinct. Cormac McCarthy is a modern master, and the beauty of his words are very subtle, they’re all just-so deliberate and perfect. No quotation marks, no dialogue modifiers, no excessive flourishes of any kind. It’s like a novelized poem or something. Cormac McCarthy operates on this other level – he reminds me of Terrence Malick, the filmmaker, in a lot of ways.

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KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Cody Hoyt

Continuing our series of interviews with the artists behind the first series of the Kitsune Noir Poster Club I’d like to present a fellow named Cody Hoyt. Cody grew up in Florida, studied printmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art, and now lives in Los Angeles. I don’t remember how I came across Cody’s work but about a year and a half ago I asked him to create a desktop wallpaper and he obliged. Since then I’ve been absolutely in love with his work. It still boggles my mind that Cody isn’t a super famous artist, I tell him this all the time, and his Infinite Jest poster further proves this.

To give a little background, Infinite Jest is a book by the recently deceased David Foster Wallace that was written in 1996. If you haven’t heard of it you should have, because Time magazine put the book in it’s list of best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. Wikipedia sums up the book nicely as being about “tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism.” So you see, it’s a chaotic book about a lot of stuff, and Cody nailed it on the head.

Why did you choose Infinite Jest?
I made a short list of potential candidates. I had originally chosen A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick, which was a tragic mind-fuck of a book. Infinite Jest was my second choice, but should have been my first, because its absolutely perfect. Its also a tragic mind-fuck, but more so, and hasn’t been made into a movie starring Keanu Reeves yet. Its an epic, dark and touching jackpot of cinematic imagery.

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KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Mark Weaver

When dreaming up the Kitsune Noir Poster Club I sincerely hoped that someone would do Moby Dick. When I think of classic novels, like the really old ones that everyone borrows from, it’s at the top of my list. So when Mark Weaver chose it I was really excited. If you don’t know, Mark is an illustrator/designer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia and is one of my absolute favorites. I’ve been following Mark’s work since earlier this year and I loved what he did with collages. Anyone can cut images out of old National Geographics but not everyone can make it look like a work of art.

Why did you choose Moby Dick?
When I was a kid books like Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea captivated my imagination. Growing up in Massachusetts around small seaport towns like Gloucester, I was surrounded by all kinds of nautical imagery which brought the stories to life for me. I’ve always loved the idea of sea monsters or something fearful out in the deep depths of the ocean. When this project was assigned to me I immediately thought of the White Whale.

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KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Jez Burrows

For our second round of interviews we’re talking to British gentleman Jez Burrows about his poster for the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Jez has a very simplistic, but bold and graphic style that he employs, making the most of as little as possible. He’s worked for clients such as The New York Times, Time, Wired and Monocle to name a few.

Here’s what he had to say about his poster.

Why did you choose Walden?
I couldn’t choose one absolute favourite novel, so I narrowed it down to a shortlist. I’d initially attempted to do something on Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but quickly discovered I was losing my mind and was seeing too many cats and soldiers in my dreams.
Walden appeals to me because while it’s certainly a book about society, self-reliance, and solitude (besides a hundred other things), the setting fascinates me. I’m originally from a very rural area in the south west of England, and there’s something remarkable about taking your thoughts to the woods.

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KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Frank Chimero

As a part of the Kitsune Noir Poster Club I wanted to give you an inside look at the process behind the posters. First up is Frank Chimero, the Springfield, Missouri based illustrator who’s been really blowing up lately. Frank has worked for clients like The New York Times, Nike, Starbucks, GOOD Magazine and ton more. He’s one of my favorite artist/designers around these days and I was stoked when he agreed to take part in the club. For Frank’s poster he decided to choose Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

Why did you choose Slaughterhouse 5?
It represents something to me. So far as I can tell, it’s really the first book I found, read, and then chose to like on my own accord. It was mine. I owned it and the experience of reading it and how it made me feel. I did this when I was 12 or so, and it holds a special place with me, because it represents the process I went through of trying to understand who I was. The book is perennial for me. I’ve read it two other times since that first time, and it still has that an impact on me. It’s aged with me. Each time I read it, I connect to it in a different way. The first time, it was about aliens and pretty girls on other planets and time travel. Now, the book is more about what’s it’s like to try to capture things in a piece of art even though they fight their hardest to defy your efforts. It’s about how words fail. It’s about how people fail. It’s about how fruitless the world can seem some times. And it’s about how maybe, just maybe, Billy Pilgrim’s naivety saved him.

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