Crafty Bastards Vendor Q&A with El Jefe
I love El Jefe’s work. Chances are you will, too. El Jefe Design in Rockville creates limited edition, hand-crafted, silkscreened gig posters for DC clubs like 9:30 Club and Black Cat.
Here’s a message from El Jefe himself:
We will be set up right where you enter Crafty Bastards (or right where you leave depending on your view) so be on the look out for concert posters, mexican wrestlers, and clothing galore.
We will have a ton of concert posters from the last two years on sale including a bunch that are not available on our website like ones for Animal Collective, Wolfmother, Wolf Parade, Ladytron, Sparklehorse as well as some of our rarer stuff for The Decemberists, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Detroit Cobras, and others. Items will range from one buck to a hundred and everything in between so be there early to get the goods cheap. All items will be marked down from our site since no shipping charges are needed.
Hope to see you. Best, El Jefe
El Jefe will be at booth #57 this Sunday. Below he answers our vendor questions.
1. How long have you been making things?
My earliest memories are taking scrap paper my dad would bring home and creating little monsters and drawing all over them. I also would draw all over the donations forms at church which did nothing to endear myself to the minister.
2. What is your earliest/favorite crafting memory?
I worked as the Arts and Crafts Director at a Boy Scout Camp in New Hampshire. I knew how to work start branding gimp which is most likely the reason I got the job.
3. Why do you make things?
Doing concert posters is a nice break from doing “normal” design work such as book covers, brochures, logos, and annual reports. It is nice to stretch my wings, using a pencil and pen, and draw something with little to no outside influence telling me to “make it bigger and move it to the center.”
4. What sort of things do you make?
I make limited edition, silkscreen concert posters for various local and national bands like The Decemberists, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Low, Rancid, The Gossip, Wolf Parade, and Wolf Mother.
I also put out limited edition art prints, t-shirts, comics… anything that strikes my fancy with a hope that other people will like it too.
5. Any success stories you’d care to share?
It does not matter how many I sell, I always feel like Andy Warhol after my first sale of the evening! The fact that one person liked it enough to buy means I did something right.
6. Inspirations?
Music, my cats, walking around DC, Mark Ryden, lucha libre, my family, watering my tree, and good books.
7. Craft supplies you can’t live without?
My lead holder. I hate normal pencils because they do not stay sharp for long and are too small for my hands. I got a spiffy lead holder that is extra large and I can sharpen at various angles to accommodate my thickness needs.
8. Describe your work area (photos please!)
It is 8 x 10 with a computer desk, Mac G5 computer, 23 inch screen, a stack of ten poster boxes under my drafting table which is covered with rulers, matte board, a double lamp, usually a cat; two bookcases with supplies and books by Paula Scher, Steven Heller, Sagemeister, and my Canon i9900 printer which I adore. I have three lucha masks on a sill, a Shepard Fairey portrait of Huey Lewis, and various poster art on the wall. The walls are wood paneling so I can not nail anything in.
9. Family? Pets? Plants?
A lovely wife who tolerates going with me to shows to sell posters, help answer questions, sass rude people, rip on bad bands and desperate attention seekers and give a good “outside” vew of my work; a new born baby boy who is adorable and will make a great paper weight, and four cats who sit on my sketches.
10. Favorite color or pattern?
Black… when in doubt.
11. Have you been a Crafty Bastard before?
No, I look forward to it though!
12. Tell us about other crafters you love and your favorite handmade purchases.
I love Dirty Pictures (Anthony Dihle), Popidiot, and SquidFire Inc.
13. What is one thing everyone should know how to do themselves?
Figure out where North is, especially if they live in DC.
