Poster Image

2002 Poster: Friday Night a Vein

$20

Item#: 2002SYR14

Purchase Details

11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.

You also receive…

An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.

Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.

Friday Night a Vein

poster information

Description

Friday night a vein
throbs sensuously, pulsing
with muscular jazz.

I'm not much for bars. I'm 49 years old, married, and I don't drink. So there's not much use to it. But I love music, all kinds of music. My wife and I, we've gone to the symphony. And now I'm starting to listen to rap, trying to understand it.

So I know there's good music out there. Syracuse has done a real good job with the blues and the jazz fest. And there's been a lot of times I've been downtown, and you hear the bars playing good music. I don't go in them. But I walk by them, and you can hear it—it's good music. I say to myself, “Jeese, this place sounds great.”

I love jazz. I've played the trumpet. I was in jazz band. So working with this poem was easy. As soon as I read it, I envisioned a trio of musicians—a singer, a trumpet player and a drummer.

I always work in black line and watercolor, so that part is typical. For the drawing, I looked at some photos of jazz bars and instruments, and then did a lot of it in my imagination. It's usually pretty spontaneous like that.

I like the way the image turned out. It makes you feel jazzy. And I think it's sensual without being sexual or offensive.