Pauline Walsh Jacobson Fine Art
 

The Creative Process - 70's Austin Music Concert Posters

Home    Music Posters     About the Artist     Contact the Artist     Exhibit Schedule
 

These music posters represent some of my earliest work. During the seventies while working as a draftsman/cartographer, I spent evenings and weekends doing freelance graphic design for local businesses, including the fledgling Austin, Texas music industry, where I had the opportunity to create and publish music concert posters for local venues, including Willie Nelson�s Austin Opry House.

The originals were done in pen-and-ink on poster board and mylar, and I was fortunate enough to have had the hindsight to preserve them through the years. The posters are an important part of my past work and I am very proud to have had the opportunity to do them and to have been a part of making Austin the "Live Music Capital of the World".

 

The Austin Music Scene had a number of very talented poster artists including Jim Franklin, Danny Garrett, Michael Priest, Guy Juke, Kerry Awn and others who have gained local and national recognition for the work they did mostly for the Armadillo World Headquarters during the 1970's. Though not one of the major artists, to my knowledge I am the only woman to have created a significant number of Austin music posters during that time. The original printings of these posters are sold locally at art festivals and book fairs. I have yet to see any of my posters turn up at these events, which makes me believe that copies from the original printings are extremely rare. I don't even have a complete set myself, and I donated most of my originals to the Barker Texas History Center in the early 1980's when they put out a call for artists for a retrospective they were putting together. The posters that were in that show and many more ended up at the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

The Texas Opry House closed in December of 1974 just before the Ray Charles concert due to Willie's problems with the IRS, and reopened in late 1975 as the Austin Opry House. The Ray Charles concert was moved to the Armadillo, and as a result, my favorite poster was never printed.  The Austin Opry House closed in early 1978, thus ending my time as a music poster artist.

 

All works on this web site � Pauline Walsh Jacobson. All rights reserved worldwide, unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.