Gig-posters: they’re no longer relegated to dorm-room décor. These days, having a limited-edition, screen-printed memento of at least one dope rock show you saw in your twenties is obligatory for the still-relevant-though-gracefully-aging adult. (Although, please: Get the thing framed before you put in on the wall.) And thanks to the demise of physical storage media for music—and the album art that goes along with it—that poster from the show is more essential than ever. It’s a visual record of a few fleeting hours of rock.
Couresty Amy Jo Hendrickson
Perhaps no one understands this better than our own local Miss Amy Joe, one of the nation’s most prolific gig-poster creators. For five years now, Amy Jo Hendrickson has been slanging posters she’s created for bands both local (Blind Shake, Chooglin’) and mad-famous international (Of Montreal, The Gossip) out of a teeny design studio/storefront on northeast Minneapolis’s 13th Avenue. She calls her place Who Made Who, after the butt-rocking AC/DC album of the same name (which also, incidentally, served as the soundtrack to the cult 1986 Stephen King film Maximum Overdrive).
The gallery, which features work by fellow poster juggernauts Dale “TOOTH” Flattum and Lonny Unitus, acts as a thrift-store repository of cultural memory. Dip into the archives, and you can buy someone else’s nostalgia. Or retroactively preserve your own in amber.
In addition to the rock posters, this weekend’s five-year-anniversary sale includes fine-art prints, as well as an array of handmade sundries, including greeting cards, calendars, t-shirts, and books. And, of course, it wouldn’t be an Amy Jo affair without cupcakes.
Who Made Who Fifth-Annual Holiday Sale and Studio Anniversary
Saturday, Dec. 15; 12–7 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 16; 12–5 p.m.
Who Made Who, 158 13th Ave. NE, Mpls.
whomadewho.etsy.com
