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Greg “Stainboy” Reinel has been practicing silkscreen print traditions for more than two decades, one of those resilient rock poster artists who've transformed the typical gig advertisement into limited-edition runs of signed and numbered posters sought after by collectors. He’s kept up with the graphic design programs that are used by every savvy promoter these days, though he views them as just another tool to help him make his art.
“Drawing is everything,” says Reinel. “The best digital artists are great artists without a computer. I have nothing against digital art — I use a lot of digital stuff. But to me, it’s just another pencil. My computer breaks down, I can still make art.”
I chatted with Reinel over coffee at Kahwa last week. The 49-year-old artist, who settled in St. Petersburg last year (he was born in Bradenton but his family moved around a lot), looks like a well-aged British punk rocker with his spiky dark-rooted, fading-bleached hair and sharp leather outerwear. His good-natured, refreshingly brash attitude matches his audacious poster style.
He didn’t set out to be a graphic artist, nor did he view his untrained skills as anything special. “I’ve always drawn, for as long as I could remember,” he says. “It was just something I did, like breathing.” Sometimes his sketches got him into trouble, especially with teachers he didn’t like. “I’d draw pictures of them in really compromising situations, and then post them up around school.”
He became entrenched in the Orlando music scene sometime after high school. Back then, most of his creative outpourings were gig-related, black-and-white Xeroxes of his own hand-drawn flyers that evolved to offset copies printed at a shop that gave him a deep discount because his work amused the staff. He went through a phase of making a new poster for every one of his shows, and creating gig posters for bands he liked, for free (and not necessarily with their permission). “Within a year, I noticed people were collecting the things. I walked into a record store one day and the guy had some up for sale.”
Bands started seeking him out and commissioning work. Over the years, he’d amped up his game to large, lurid, full-color silkscreens influenced by the vibrant vintage-era rock posters of graphic artists like San Francisco’s legendary Frank Kozik and late Detroit/Frisco icon Gary Grimshaw, and informed as much by his experiences as a musician as by his interests and passions: ’70s-era spaghetti Westerns and blaxploitation films, muscle cars, ’40s film noir, beautiful women and pin-up art. Sometimes coming up with a concept is easy; other times, not so much.
“To me, it’s an energy, that’s what I like about it,” he says. “There’s days when I’m like, I don’t fucking want to do this anymore, I don’t want to do this again for months, and then I’ll lie down to sleep and I’ll have an idea and I’m up and drawing.”
By the mid-’00s, he was making money on his poster art, but his primary pursuit was making music with his best friend/drummer Jeff Wood in power-rock duo Nutrajet. “We were at that point where every band wants to be; we’d started touring in Europe, we had a label there, we had good management interests, we were actually making a living playing music. We weren’t rich, but it was like a mole’s-eye view of rock stardom. And then he got a brain tumor.” After Wood’s passing in 2007, Reinel was set adrift. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Whenever you play with somebody like that, nothing you do afterwards really feels the same.”
That’s when his career as a poster artist started in earnest, out of necessity. He put his music on hold indefinitely and treated his art like a band for a few years, taking it on the road to Flatstock and festivals like Bumbershoot in Seattle. He caught the attention of Dark Horse Comics during a show in Portland and a handshake deal turned into a book of his works, 2008’s Vicious Intent: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Art and Exploitation of Stainboy Reinel. His idol Frank Kozik wrote the foreword.
He doesn’t feel like he’s succeeded with a piece unless he’s tweaked a nerve, and he’s never had a moment that he felt he was crossing a line; he doesn’t believe it exists, except in terms of his clients being unhappy. Only one such occasion stands out, a 2010 poster commissioned by Faith No More for their reunion tour. The stop was Christchurch, New Zealand. His poster featured a nude angel with Faith No More/Star of David-style pasties. The bass player was not a fan. “But instead of calling me, because there was still time to do a different design, he goes on Twitter and starts ranting about how he fucking hates this poster.” Reinel reached out, apologized and offered to change it, but says he got no response and the ranting continued. “I come to the gig later and the poster’s sold out!” He laughs, continuing “So he gets on Twitter and begrudgingly has to admit, ‘Well the poster sold out, but I still hate it.’”
His favorite piece of all time is his first poster for Nashville Pussy, now a regular client. He was given free rein to do what he wanted and he churned out a buck-naked, pistol-wielding Pam Grier, her legs spread wide front and center, the ‘V’ in Nashville falling right in the middle, the raised fist of a black-power afro pick sticking up from her exposed thatch. “When I was drawing it, the ’fro pick was a last-minute decision, and it says everything — freedom, black power, rock power.” A few of the 22'x32'-size posters were displayed in The Social’s windows that day, much to the venue’s unease. “I remember the band getting out of their van, and just freaking. Blaine [Cartwright], the singer, he was like, ‘Best fucking Nashville Pussy poster, ever.’” (See said poster in this slideshow.)
Elvis Costello, Queens of the Stone Age, Flogging Molly, Mastodon, New York Dolls and Pennywise are among the many who’ve commissioned Stainboy creations, though his skills extend to album covers and film posters, and the past 18 months have seen his focus shift to private commissions of hyper-realistic pin-ups and erotic art. He’s still doing plenty of rock posters, however, which he foresees as being around long after he’s gone. “Everything rock ‘n’ roll has gotten so small and compressed and digital. A real piece of art, that stuff is timeless. No one’s going to be collecting digital files 20 years from now.”
Click here to see a slideshow of Reinel's work (with a few NSFW entries), and stay tuned for a selection of his NSFW posters and sketches on CL's BedPost blog. Also, check out stainboyreinel.com and stainboyreinel.deviantart.com to find out how to pick up your own Stainboy art...
Clik here to view.
Greg “Stainboy” Reinel has been practicing silkscreen print traditions for more than two decades, one of those resilient rock poster artists who've transformed the typical gig advertisement into limited-edition runs of signed and numbered posters sought after by collectors. He’s kept up with the graphic design programs that are used by every savvy promoter these days, though he views them as just another tool to help him make his art.“Drawing is everything,” says Reinel. “The best digital artists are great artists without a computer. I have nothing against digital art — I use a lot of digital stuff. But to me, it’s just another pencil. My computer breaks down, I can still make art.”
I chatted with Reinel over coffee at Kahwa last week. The 49-year-old artist, who settled in St. Petersburg last year (he was born in Bradenton but his family moved around a lot), looks like a well-aged British punk rocker with his spiky dark-rooted, fading-bleached hair and sharp leather outerwear. His good-natured, refreshingly brash attitude matches his audacious poster style.
He didn’t set out to be a graphic artist, nor did he view his untrained skills as anything special. “I’ve always drawn, for as long as I could remember,” he says. “It was just something I did, like breathing.” Sometimes his sketches got him into trouble, especially with teachers he didn’t like. “I’d draw pictures of them in really compromising situations, and then post them up around school.”
He became entrenched in the Orlando music scene sometime after high school. Back then, most of his creative outpourings were gig-related, black-and-white Xeroxes of his own hand-drawn flyers that evolved to offset copies printed at a shop that gave him a deep discount because his work amused the staff. He went through a phase of making a new poster for every one of his shows, and creating gig posters for bands he liked, for free (and not necessarily with their permission). “Within a year, I noticed people were collecting the things. I walked into a record store one day and the guy had some up for sale.”
Bands started seeking him out and commissioning work. Over the years, he’d amped up his game to large, lurid, full-color silkscreens influenced by the vibrant vintage-era rock posters of graphic artists like San Francisco’s legendary Frank Kozik and late Detroit/Frisco icon Gary Grimshaw, and informed as much by his experiences as a musician as by his interests and passions: ’70s-era spaghetti Westerns and blaxploitation films, muscle cars, ’40s film noir, beautiful women and pin-up art. Sometimes coming up with a concept is easy; other times, not so much.
“To me, it’s an energy, that’s what I like about it,” he says. “There’s days when I’m like, I don’t fucking want to do this anymore, I don’t want to do this again for months, and then I’ll lie down to sleep and I’ll have an idea and I’m up and drawing.”
By the mid-’00s, he was making money on his poster art, but his primary pursuit was making music with his best friend/drummer Jeff Wood in power-rock duo Nutrajet. “We were at that point where every band wants to be; we’d started touring in Europe, we had a label there, we had good management interests, we were actually making a living playing music. We weren’t rich, but it was like a mole’s-eye view of rock stardom. And then he got a brain tumor.” After Wood’s passing in 2007, Reinel was set adrift. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Whenever you play with somebody like that, nothing you do afterwards really feels the same.”
That’s when his career as a poster artist started in earnest, out of necessity. He put his music on hold indefinitely and treated his art like a band for a few years, taking it on the road to Flatstock and festivals like Bumbershoot in Seattle. He caught the attention of Dark Horse Comics during a show in Portland and a handshake deal turned into a book of his works, 2008’s Vicious Intent: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Art and Exploitation of Stainboy Reinel. His idol Frank Kozik wrote the foreword.
He doesn’t feel like he’s succeeded with a piece unless he’s tweaked a nerve, and he’s never had a moment that he felt he was crossing a line; he doesn’t believe it exists, except in terms of his clients being unhappy. Only one such occasion stands out, a 2010 poster commissioned by Faith No More for their reunion tour. The stop was Christchurch, New Zealand. His poster featured a nude angel with Faith No More/Star of David-style pasties. The bass player was not a fan. “But instead of calling me, because there was still time to do a different design, he goes on Twitter and starts ranting about how he fucking hates this poster.” Reinel reached out, apologized and offered to change it, but says he got no response and the ranting continued. “I come to the gig later and the poster’s sold out!” He laughs, continuing “So he gets on Twitter and begrudgingly has to admit, ‘Well the poster sold out, but I still hate it.’”
His favorite piece of all time is his first poster for Nashville Pussy, now a regular client. He was given free rein to do what he wanted and he churned out a buck-naked, pistol-wielding Pam Grier, her legs spread wide front and center, the ‘V’ in Nashville falling right in the middle, the raised fist of a black-power afro pick sticking up from her exposed thatch. “When I was drawing it, the ’fro pick was a last-minute decision, and it says everything — freedom, black power, rock power.” A few of the 22'x32'-size posters were displayed in The Social’s windows that day, much to the venue’s unease. “I remember the band getting out of their van, and just freaking. Blaine [Cartwright], the singer, he was like, ‘Best fucking Nashville Pussy poster, ever.’” (See said poster in this slideshow.)
Elvis Costello, Queens of the Stone Age, Flogging Molly, Mastodon, New York Dolls and Pennywise are among the many who’ve commissioned Stainboy creations, though his skills extend to album covers and film posters, and the past 18 months have seen his focus shift to private commissions of hyper-realistic pin-ups and erotic art. He’s still doing plenty of rock posters, however, which he foresees as being around long after he’s gone. “Everything rock ‘n’ roll has gotten so small and compressed and digital. A real piece of art, that stuff is timeless. No one’s going to be collecting digital files 20 years from now.”
Click here to see a slideshow of Reinel's work (with a few NSFW entries), and stay tuned for a selection of his NSFW posters and sketches on CL's BedPost blog. Also, check out stainboyreinel.com and stainboyreinel.deviantart.com to find out how to pick up your own Stainboy art...