Ron Jasin moved to Louisville from Detroit in the late '90s and became webmaster for his friend's independent record label, Initial. When Initial shuttered in 2004, Jasin returned to an older, less-sophisticated industry still related to music — an art form he learned as a kid in his parent's screenprinting shop.

Now 35, Jasin designs and prints concert posters for the biggest indie rock shows hitting Louisville: The Hold Steady, Lucero and My Morning Jacket, which gave him the honors of making the poster for its 2008 concert at Waterfront Park.

 “Gig posters always seem to get a really good response from people,” Jasin said. “But I think a lot of people don't understand the work that goes into it. They view it more as just a flier. People are familiar with gig posters, they just don't understand it.”

The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft's latest exhibition will improve that understanding of the underground art. “Gig Posters: The Art of Contemporary Music Promotion” will feature about 200 posters from some 70 artists from around the world, including names familiar to Louisville's art scene like Justin Kamerer and Bill Green.

It opens Friday at the West Main Street museum and runs through May 16. Jasin will show the screen-printing process during the opening, creating prints of poster he designed to promote the show.

Some posters are designed using computers, but most are screenprints featuring bold colors — vibrant pinks and yellows, with baroque lines — and even bolder designs. Made famous in the 1960s psychedelic music scene in San Francisco — when concert promoter Bill Graham commissioned posters for Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead shows — gig posters are endeavors both commercially and artistically creative.

“I think it's more fine art,” said Brion Clinkingbeard, the museum's deputy curator. “The artists are doing limited-edition prints. When the print runs out, the prices go up. They're small-business people, but it's part of a lifestyle. The surprising thing is there's this incredible subculture for this artistic expression.”

Clinkingbeard began organizing “Gig Posters” about a year ago, after stumbling on the work of Louisville poster artists at last year's “New Blue” exhibition of emerging artists. Clinkingbeard said the exhibition is not intended to be a comprehensive historical view of the art form, but, rather, a snippet of works currently populating concert halls and walls wherever popular music is consumed. Most will be unframed, displayed without adornment on walls of the exhibition hall.

“We want to present them as posters,” he said.

 

“Gig Posters” features contemporary poster art, most all from this decade, for bands ranging from rock stalwarts Iggy Pop and the Stooges to indie-pop favorite Feist to the emerging band Fleet Foxes. Most are posters created for a specific concert or tour, but some were created out of the artists' fanboy love of musicians.

 

One of the posters in the show is a riff on a playing card — a king on a bicycle surrounded by images of guitars — that Arizona-based artist Jake Early designed for an MMJ show in Las Vegas. The concert was canceled after lead singer Jim James suffered an on-stage injury last fall, but the poster endures through the “Gig Posters” exhibition.

“It's an art form that's overlooked,” said Early, 39. “Anyone with a Mac and a Kinko's nearby thinks they're a graphic artist, so it's a dying art form.”

 

 

Jasin's MMJ poster for the Waterfront Park concert features delicately drawn female figures with their hands held above their heads, their bodies covered by roses and a crown, against a yellow and blue background. Copies were sold at the concert, which drew 10,000, and via Jasin's website, Madpixel.net. The entire lot of 200 sold out in three days, Jasin said.

“Honestly, I don't make a lot of money doing gig posters,” said Jasin, who designs and prints posters in his basement studio and also does graphic design work.

“It's just a labor of love. You get more creative control with gig posters. Usually, the only input you get from the band is ‘yes' or ‘no.' And 90 percent of the time, it's yes. They just want to make sure they're not being misrepresented.”