Zeb Love’s piece for the 72 Seasons project looks as much like a painting as a poster. Here, Zeb offers insight into his process, why he likes to print his own work, and how happy his personal 72 seasons were.
 

INSPIRATION BEHIND THE ART 

…it’s got a lot of meaning to it. I think, especially nowadays, with people being glued to their phones, social media, and the news, everybody is just sleepwalking their life away, oblivious to what’s going on around them; that’s the first thing that clicked in my brain. And then also my own struggles with drinking too much, drinking my life away, feeling like I’m numbing myself out? I don’t know; I’m maybe realizing that more and more as I get older. So, the song resonated with me on several levels. Which all means it’s a cross between what’s going on with the social climate of everybody being glued to some sort of addiction – screen, social media numbers, whatever – and then also with my own addiction. I want to change that, but it’s a slow process.

When creating this idea, I read through the lyrics and wrote down the phrases that stuck with me. I repeated that day after day: underline repeated, which sparked a figure moving and overlapping. And the next line was “stagger on through the fog” –  I stagger on –  that’s why the guy is staggering, and it’s generally unclear what’s happening because it’s misty and foggy. The next line is about a hazy, cloudy yet sun-bright fog, so going back to the social media thing – the addiction – it’s that nameless entity that just lives in the fog and shadows. The figure is stumbling out of warm light, turning into a skeleton as if shedding its life. At the same time, I didn’t want it to be too dark, so there are some bright colors for such a dark image, and I like that contrast. If it was too dark, I think it would really turn off a lot more people, but the bright colors catch your eye, so you want to see what’s going on. Then you see the darker shit and what the scene actually is.



PRINTING HIS OWN POSTERS

I’ve been printing my own stuff for around the last ten years, and last year, I bought a brand-new printing press, an M&R Saturn, which is my dream machine. I started this piece back in October, and I just finished printing it back in February. Even though it’s a long process, the printing part is so much fun. I love mixing the colors and being so hands-on in creating each print. I’ve been exploring painting more and more, the overlapping of colors, how they work together, how you can get an extra green out of overlapping this and this, and it’s really fun to watch it come to life, especially when you’re on the press. There’s lots of small things which can go wrong, but that adds to the charm.

Printing takes about a week of planning. There are seven colors, and I was doing one color a day. So I printed all the yellow first... let all 600 of those dry. The next day, it was the orange… let those dry. The next red, and so on. It’s a meditative process, but I really enjoy the connection. We have a TV mounted in front of the press, so I watched Fargo seasons one, two, and three while printing this one. Last summer, I had a couple of big, big runs for Phish and Dave Matthews, and because I was on the press so much, I watched all seven seasons of The Sopranos.



ZEB’S 72 SEASONS & BEYOND

My childhood? It was fantastic. I grew up on a farm with animals – horses and stuff – in the country and spent a lot of time outside. In the last interview, I talked about my love for Walden and Henry David Thoreau, and I really fell in love with the simplicity of being outdoors. Plus, nature and the cycles of nature always win. With regards to what 2024 is bringing my way, I have a lot of projects going. There’s a poster convention at the South by Southwest [SXSW] convention called Flatstock where I’ll go and meet up with all my poster friends [this happened in March – ED], we’ll talk shop and all that nerdy stuff. In July, we’ll get to do that again in Chicago, and there’s also a steady amount of my own work to do, so it’s all about staying on top of that.