The 25th annual Portland Old Time Music Gathering is here. It has been 25 years, folks. It's amazing that what started as a small, scrappy, DIY grass-roots volunteer-run mini-festival, has grown to become a much bigger scrappy, DIY grass-roots volunteer-run-festival. I say this with all the love of course. There's a lot of heart and a lot of community around this event.
Stumptown Printers handled the graphic work during the early days of the gathering. Since this current year marks a big anniversary for POTMG, Bubbaville Board President Kate Sheie asked me to do the graphics again. It was a fun project to revisit. I thought that we should list as many musicians, bands, volunteers, sponsors, venues as possible that have helped to build this Portland Old Time Music community over the years. We managed to compile 781 names. (The small type that makes up the "flame" shapes is the list of names) 781 names! That's amazing. I know we've missed names, so big apologies if you or your band name is not on the list. We didn't establish a consistent way to archive year to year info, but after this exercise, we're a little closer to having a complete archive within the Bubbaville collection of info.
Graphic notes:
Print Method: Offset litho in 2 spot colors (Warm Red and K)
Finish Size: 14" x 20"
Paper: Royal Sundance 80# Felt Text Warm White
Source types are arranged from a combination of Repo Proofs from cast Linotype typography and decorative border (cast on Pioneer Press Model 31 Linotype Machine at the C.C. Stern Type Foundry) and Linotype digital type (6pt Excelsior and some Franklin Gothic). I made a rule for myself in creating the fiddle graphic - all the figures are proportionally true to their original form in relationship to surrounding figures - meaning I did not scale the individual figures. This includes the wave border matrix slide rule that forms the fiddle strings. I did increase the scale of the overall fiddle once it was complete and digitized. The repo proof components were all digitized and combined with the digital type faces. Film was generated from the digital file, metal litho plates were made and then printed offset on a M.A.N. Roland 200 by Richard Gwinner.
There will be a limited number of these posters for sale at the Gathering. Proceeds go to Bubbaville to be used for continued community music programming. So pick one up while you're at the Gathering!
