September 04, 2009 , 06:00 PM - November 05, 2009, 10:00 PM

Rock Poster Art of Drowning Creek Studio’s Jeff Wood
(Commerce, Georgia)
DrowningCreek.com

As seen in "Art Of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion"

Drowning Creek Studio, LLC™ is a small art studio owned & operated by Jeff Wood and Judy Gex. DCS creates collectible limited edition art prints and concert & event posters for select clients. The shop, located in an old slaughter house, is equipped with state-of-the-art computers, screen print, and digital imaging devices. Printing primarily with resin-based, eco-friendly UV inks and waterbased acrylics, DCS has also become a leader in eco-friendly printing for the music industry. No petro-chemical solvents are used in DCS’ printing process. The degradable celluloid film positives are generated digitally using no developing chemicals. Biodegradable, soy-based Franmar chemicals are used for clean-up and reclaiming needs. Packing materials and boxes are recycled, and waste water is triple-filtered.

The name Drowning Creek Studio was rekindled by Jeff Wood in the fall of 1999 after the members of Low Brow Ink moved to different states. Johnny Thief DiDonna (Screamin’ Ink), Mike & Cari Martin (Enginehouse13), Jeff Wood & Judy Gex had all lived in Surfside Beach, SC for a short magical time where Mike and Johnny worked in the art department for Jeff at Island Screenworks……

Low Brow Ink had been formed to create and print gig posters for local events at the beach. Shortly after, Mike & Cari moved to Ohio, Johnny to New York, & Jeff & Judy to Georgia.

The name Drowning Creek was re-adopted because it was doubtful another design studio would think to use it as their own. The name Drowning Creek was originally used by Jeff in 1989 when he was dancing, airbrushing, and doing beadwork on the Powwow circuit. The actual Drowning Creek is located in the Lumber River area of North Carolina. Robeson County is home to the Lumbee Indians, a mixture of tribes that escaped to the swamps of NC to escape white settlers. Jeff lived there when he was finding his Native roots. The Natives called the river Drowning Creek because of its nasty habit of taking lives. It’s basically a swamp river and very treacherous for swimming.

Starting with little more than a vision, and a soon-to-be-maxed-out credit card, Jeff & Judy started putting the pieces together to build their own art studio and print shop. After working together in their small living quarters/temporary studio, Judy got a job in 1998 outside the abode to keep the peace. During the next 2 years, Jeff continued to design and establish a small, but growing poster business on a then fledgling auction site called Ebay. Meanwhile Judy became an avid horticulturist and tropical house manager at the greenhouse where she worked. In October 2000, Judy quit her job to return back to the blossoming poster business.

In the early stages of the poster business, many of the posters were done as collaborations with other illustrators. Besides doing our own posters, we liked the idea of collaborating and publishing other artists. Most of these posters were created using line art supplied by another illustrator with Jeff completing, colorizing, and separating the design, and then printing the posters. Eventually, the shipping back and forth, costs, and the time element made that somewhat impractical.

During that time, some folks got the impression that Drowning Creek Studio was just a print shop, or publishing house. The realization that Jeff’s part in designing the posters was not understood and seldom truly appreciated, we decided some operating decisions had to be made. We started pulling back on the collaborations, and focused on doing the art in-house. Jeff still continued to collaborate with Johnny, since the style they had started to develop had become a signature look for the studio. During the summer of 2002, the new printing equipment was ordered to replace the mostly inoperable equipment purchased from SFAL. The old press was in not precise enough to handle the fine detail that we wanted. With the new equipment and the switch from solvent based inks to the newer and cleaner technology of UV printing came a learning curve. The UV inks did not print the same, and DCS embarked on an 8 month experiment to find an ink formula that worked. Nazdar Ink finally came through with an ink that mimicked the solvent ink look. This new ink was developed for specially for Drowning Creek and another company looking for the same finished texture. Jeff still uses waterbase inks and acylic paint to screen print some his fine art pieces, especially the work on canvas.The process is very labor intensive.

Since 2003, almost all of the design work coming out of the studio has been done in-house by Jeff, Johnny & past apprentice AJ Mapes. The Studio is finally being recognized for Jeff’s and Johnny’s work, and has been turning out some of the best work to come from Drowning Creek to date. The studio has one several Independent Music Awards for thie work, as well as, an Expresso Beans “Poster of the Year” award where the Jam in the Dam 2007 placed third. Drowning Creek’s work has also been heavily featured in publications pertaining to rock poster art such as “The Art of Modern Rock” by Grushkin and King and “Swag” by Spencer Drate.

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