Collaborations

Wrensilva x John Van Hamersveld

The legendary artist, designer and photographer blends art, music and design in the Wrensilva® x John Van Hamersveld poster collaboration.

“With the arm hanging just above the record, it simulates that something is about to happen. All of a sudden you’re captured by this depth. And I think that’s what music is.”John Van Hamersveld

The Wrensilva x John Van Hamersveld poster pays homage to the influence album art has on the music experience. As JVH tells it, the untitled artwork is meant to be as multi-dimensional as music itself. We sat down with the original creative triple threat to hear about the inspiration behind his artwork, iconic moments throughout his career and what he’s listening to on his Wrensilva.

Wrensilva:Tell us about the colors in this artwork and why you selected them for this poster?JVH:I like red and blue because they are in contrast to one another. They flicker back and forth. I start the drawings in black and white, then capture and put them in the computer where I can control colors and depth. In this piece, the blue and the red are controlled in a way that gives you a background. The dark blue allows the yellow and red swoop to pop forward because of its contrast. By reducing it down and putting it into the element — the Wrensilva console — you get this depth that is like sound itself. Sound is something that goes forward and backward, and so does this.Wrensilva:How is the integration of digital and analog experience reflected in this artwork?JVH:Music is dimensional. It has a depth and a foreground to it, and I hope that this gives you a sense of something remarkable as you view it. The music isn’t actually there, but it is hanging on the wall … in the poster. You’re able to experience something that is analog but it’s been produced in a digital medium. I think what’s neat about any poster is that it’s something that you wouldn’t normally see… it’s like an underground image. This poster isn’t a photograph of a console. It’s a feeling.The digital age has brought a whole new technology in terms of working as a designer in the drawing arts. I was able to take these blank backgrounds of simplicity, make them very complex and then colorize them. And then I could take pieces and layer them as I progressed — information on top of information. You could call it psychedelic, but it’s just a pattern. When that went into silkscreen, into multiple colors, it just became an amazing visual treat.

“I hope it makes you feel something”John Van Hamersveldsays of the poster which is intended to capture the digital and analog experiences of playing your favorite vinyl on a Wrensilva record console. “With the arm hanging just above the record, it simulates that something is about to happen. All of a sudden you’re captured by this depth. And I think that’s what music is.”When Van Hamersveld created the infamous The Endless Summer movie poster more than 50 years ago, it was just the beginning of a career that has since taken him from his roots in surf culture to legendary album cover designer and entrepreneur. He’s been enlisted by some of the biggest names in music to create the visual stories that represent the albums within: Jefferson Airplane’s‘Crown of Creation’, Blondie‘Eat to the Beat’and The Beatles‘Magical Mystery Tour’to name a few.

dropping the needle on Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles

Wrensilva:What’s your favorite thing about your Wrensilva console? What albums do you listen to most on it?JVH:The Wrensilva console itself is just a great piece of design — it’s a beautiful object that sits in my home. The sound is unbelievably elegant. In terms of the albums, I listen to The Rolling Stones‘High Tide’, ‘Exile on Main St.’, Mick Jagger‘Live in New York 1993/09/02’…and [Bob] Dylan. I’ve always listened to Dylan when I’m traveling across the country, but Dylan on this piece is much more impactful.Wrensilva:Do you have a favorite record store? What do you love about it?JVH:Yes. We have one here in San Pedro, JDC Record Store, run by a friend of ours. We used to go there as often as once a week. There’s also a jazz record store called PM Sounds. Of course, I haven’t been to a record store for a year but I used to travel to them while going cross country. I did a poster for a friend of mine, Eric Clapton’s Cream‘Royal Albert Hall’. When they finally printed the poster and put it in-store, the manager called me and told me that the poster was selling out and that we had to print more. They were sold out again in a day. That poster ended up being a CD cover, and we toured to 17 record stores. The next year, we did another tour to smaller stores all over the nation. That was really the end of [record] stores, and then the medium became the computer. In the last ten years, stores have come back around and here’s the thing about record stores: analog will only continue to become much more important.

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