One recent rainy afternoon, I found myself knocking at the door of Methane Studios in Avondale Estates. Located in the Globe Arts Center in the heart of the Avondale Estates Rail Arts District, Methane Studios is a design company known for screen-printed gig posters and fine art prints.
Stepping inside the funky pseudo-industrial space is a bit of a mind trip. The front room is set up as part-retail, part-lounge. Wooden crates are filled to the brim with art prints, stickers and t-shirts line a nearby shelf, a Simpson’s themed pinball machine is next to a relaxed and casual sitting area, and above it all looms a giant – and I do mean giant – gorilla head watching over the shop.
Methane Studios is co-owned by artists Robert Lee and Mark McDevitt, who originally met in the Illustration program at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio in the ‘80s. After they graduated Lee, McDevitt, and a group of friends decided to head south to Atlanta where Lee’s brother Tim was already living in the city and working as an illustrator for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While at first the young artists held odd jobs to support themselves, Lee and McDevitt continued pursuing their passions for illustration and eventually found work in t-shirt print and design studios.
“Mark printed my band posters,” explained Lee, who was in a band called King Lear Jet at the time. Over about six months McDevitt had been hand-printing all of Lee’s band posters at home in his garage. When Lee’s first boss, Tim Caerbert, offered to let the two young men use the facilities after hours to print posters, he could not have predicted just what a spark that would light in their hearts. “Mark was kind of the catalyst for screen printing on paper. He learned it in college and this was a chance for him to get back into it and do something fun.” Now, some 25 years later, Lee and McDevitt own and operate their own highly respected and celebrated print and design studio.
Methane Studios was founded in 1998 and got its first big break when Janet Ridgeway moved to Atlanta and opened Echo Lounge in East Atlanta Village. Ridgeway was originally from Seattle where there was a thriving gig poster scene, and when she met Lee and McDevitt and saw their gig posters she knew she wanted to incorporate their work in her new music venue.
“She said she wanted posters for all the bands that play in her club,” continued Lee. “It was perfect timing – right place, right time. She had a desire and we had the means to do it. When the Echo Lounge opened, every band that we could we would design and print their posters.” Through this arrangement, Lee and McDevitt had the opportunity to make posters for well-known bands and musicians such as the White Stripes, Patti Smith, and Pavement.
In those early days, Methane Studios worked directly with promoters and club owners who would order a short run of hand-designed and printed posters for their events. They would then keep 10 or so to sell online and keep in their archives. ”It was a good setup; we had no art direction and nobody would tell you what to do or give you revisions. It was just the Wild West. We did posters and when the bands showed up they had posters waiting in their dressing rooms,” recalled Lee. After five or six years the industry began to change and bands wanted to own their shirt designs so that they could print them on shirts and other merchandise. As a further progression of the art form, these days gig posters generally are less focused on show promotion and instead serve as memorabilia and keepsakes.
The exclusive nature of gig posters has also led them to become a sought-after collector’s item. The Methane team recently returned from Flat Stock, a poster trade show that takes place in conjunction with SXSW in Austin every year. “It’s a bunch of gig poster nerds, like we are,” Lee laughed. At one such Flat Stock event Lee and McDevitt met author Paul Grushkin who was looking to create an updated edition of his series Art of Rock poster art compilation books. Grushkin published five or six of Methane’s posters in the 2004 edition The Art of Modern Rock and soon their work was more in demand than ever before. “That was the springboard for us to get Dave Matthews, Black Keys, Wilco, all of those big bands,” said Lee. Bands would flip through the book and see Methane’s work and then hire them directly to make their posters.
“Our largest year was 2009,” Lee recalled. “We did over 70 different posters for Dave Matthews Band. It was actually just spring through late fall, they toured the US and then went over and toured Europe. That was the most they have ever done.”
In time, the shifting landscape had changed the artists’ relationships with their art, going from the completely unstructured do-as-you-please early days to a much more directed and controlled art form. Today, though they do still create gig posters for certain bands including Dave Matthews Band, Methane has focused more on wholesale art prints that are then sold at boutique shops in the city and across the Southeast, including Decatur’s HomeGrown gift shop.
“When you put a band’s name on a poster or a piece of art it shrinks the market down,” explained Lee. “By doing just images, your market is a lot broader. In some ways we have entered the dreaded home decor area, but it’s fun because we can do what we want. That’s the thing about gig posters; they have to be limited edition. It’s for that band, for that show, and you can’t print more afterwards.”
For many years Methane Studios was headquartered out of a space in East Point, but when their building began to show signs of aging they decided to find a new home for their shop. In 2021, during the height of COVID, Lee and McDevitt found their current space in the Globe Arts Center. Conveniently, one of Methane’s local printers, Brandon McDonald, owns and operates Backside Press out of the studio next door, and it was a perfect fit from the start.
“We found this place and thought it was great. We saw this as a retail space, I call it our ‘honeycomb hideout.’ It’s retail, slash lounge, slash hideout.” They met their new landlord, Taylor Means, and it was quickly apparent that Methane’s ideas aligned with Means’ visions for Globe Arts Center. “He is very supportive of the arts and wants this building to be full of makers and creatives and artists. He doesn’t want corporate offices, he wants to keep it like Little Tree – full of artist workspaces.”
Methane Studios is located on Washington Street just behind the Little Tree Art Studios, which is owned by Taylor Means’ parents, Bob and Marghe Means. The Globe Arts Center offers great potential for events and activations supporting the arts and in 2022 when Methane Studios proposed an art and music festival the WigWag Fest was officially born. Now in its second year, the 2023 festival is sponsored by Methane Studios, Little Tree Art Studios, Globe Arts Center, DosDiablosDesign, Backside Press, Banjo Coffee, Odditees Screen Printing, and Constellation Brands.
The 2023 WigWag Fest will take place on Saturday, May 13 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The grassy lot next to Methane will hold a stage where seven bands – including Lee’s surf rock instrumental band Chrome Castles – will perform throughout the day while 30+ artists sell their goods in tents along the street. Visitors can expect food trucks, beer on tap, premixed cocktails, live screen printing, a kids area, and a VIP experience featuring rare posters and complimentary beverages.
For more information on Methane Studios visit their website and don’t miss the WigWag facebook page for more event details. Hope to see you there!
