O U TSK IR TS
Hand Prints
STO R Y BY
Shannon Sharpe
Below left to right:
Cricket Press gig post-
ers for Frightened
Rabbit, The Rosebuds
and four concerts
at Humboldt State
University.
Brian and Sara Turner, the husband and
wife who operate the Cricket Press in
Lexington,
k y ,
have always been artists.
Yet neither one of them was ever formally
trained in screen printing, the medium that
would eventually become their lifework—
the hand-printing of music gig posters,
art prints, invitations and practically any
type of communication or promotional
item a client might desire.
The couple met in a photography class
they were taking at the University of Ken-
tucky. (“It was actually during the very last
week of the semester,” says Brian. “The
entire class would get together to organize
the photo lab’s darkroom facilities and
that’s when we first spoke to each other-
after spending an entire semester in that
same class!”) Both studied studio art with
a focus on photography, but neither settled
down to a specific career immediately.
“After college we spent several years
floundering around in the local art scene,
experimenting with different mediums and
trying to find the ones that we wanted to
focus on,” says Brian. “We would individu-
ally exhibit our work in small, local galleries,
but it would be everything from painting
to photography to mixed-media pieces.”
The two eventually realized that while
they wanted to continue to experiment
with art, they also needed a regular pay-
check. So each began to take on various
graphic design projects. As they pursued
their careers, they began to take notice
of the handmade music-gig posters for some
of their favorite bands, especially those
made by Jay Ryan, a Chicago-based poster
artist working under the studio name The
Bird Machine. “For our one-year wedding
anniversary—which is traditionally paper—
Brian bought me our first gig poster,” says
028 american craft aug/sepio
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