{"id":1147,"date":"2010-08-05T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2010-08-05T09:00:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T15:00:42","slug":"william-schaff-lift-yr-skinny-fists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/08\/05\/william-schaff-lift-yr-skinny-fists\/","title":{"rendered":"William Schaff – Lift Yr Skinny Fists"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As <\/em>Stylus found out in this interview, William Schaff is a musician too, but he\u2019s most well-known for his album art. He has done the entire discography for Okkervil River, but most of us <\/em>Brave New Waves-listening –and <\/em>The Wedge-watching– punks were first thrown into his world after cracking open Godspeed You! Black Emperor\u2019s <\/em>Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! and witnessing the disturbing drawing of skull-masked presidents wagging their fingers and chopping off hands. Freud\u2019s Bathhouse and Diner is getting more than 100 original zines of Schaff\u2019s as the key attraction of their zine art exhibit and expo, <\/em>I Know What My Weaknesses Are, Probably Better than You Do. Schaff took enough time to talk to <\/em>Stylus over the phone from his Rhode Island studio where he works and sleeps.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: I read all about how you met up with Okkervil River, how you and William Sheff met because you almost have the same name, but how did you meet up with other bands, like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or the What Cheer? Brigade?<\/strong>
\nWS:<\/strong> Meeting with Godspeed was coincidental. I was in a band ages ago and we toured through Montreal, and we played at Hotel2Tango. We slept there, and in the morning this guy [Godspeed\u2019s Efrim Menuck] popped out, we started talking. And I gave him one of those little books [that\u2019ll be in the exhibition] because back then I always carried them around with me. Time passed on, and he asked me in an email if it was alright that used images from that book for his band\u2019s album cover. I said yeah, go ahead, that means I don\u2019t have to draw anything new for it, you\u2019ve already got the images. Then I was sitting in New York, reading my Rolling Stone<\/em> and I realized, \u201cWow these guys are huge.\u201d I just finished another job for them this week. They\u2019re curating a show for All Tomorrow\u2019s Parties. I did the poster for them. It\u2019s nice that they\u2019re keeping in contact about stuff like that.
\nAs for the What Cheer? Brigade: I\u2019m a member of that band. There are so many people in that band and there\u2019s no band leader, so everyone brings something different to the table. I hate booking shows, but I am able to create images for the band.
\nStylus: What do you play?
\nWS:<\/strong> I\u2019m one of the six drummers, I play the quad drums. It\u2019s a standard marching band instrument.
\nStylus: On your Flickr page, you post playlists that you had listened to when you were making a piece. Do you feel it\u2019s necessary to do that?
\nWS:<\/strong> I have to listen to music when I\u2019m working, it\u2019s seldom there isn\u2019t some sort of sound going on in the background. Like right now\u2014well, I paused the DVD when you called\u2014but I\u2019m watching this documentary that I can\u2019t figure out whether it is fake or not. It\u2019s called Brothers of the Head; have you heard of this?
\nStylus: No, not at all.
\nWS:<\/strong> It\u2019s about two conjoined twins, about their life, and they start a rock band together. It\u2019s really something. Anyways, getting back to the question, I\u2019m always listening to music when I\u2019m working because it has the biggest influence on me. And as for posting my playlists, I do that because someone who likes a piece of mine might be interested in the music that I\u2019m listening to and then maybe they could see how that music goes with the piece.
\nStylus: What\u2019s your opinion on street art?
\nWS:<\/strong> I love good street art. I have absolutely no problem with graffiti, but I just hate bombing crews who are just putting their name everywhere. When I was in Berlin not too long ago, there was beautiful street art everywhere\u2014but here in the U.S., it\u2019s illegal, so nicer street art is harder to find. I do make some stencils once in a while, but by no means do I consider myself a street artist.
\nStylus: I also noticed that you do a lot of mail art. Why did that interest you?
\nWS:<\/strong> I originally started doing that because I got the internet way back when the internet wasn\u2019t like it is now. I started drawing on envelopes because it took a good chunk of time while a page was loading up. Over time, I\u2019ve gotten a lot of beautiful mail. I get a lot of bills, most of which I never open. But to see a wonderful package, amidst all those things that bring you down, it really brightens your day.
\nStylus: Is there anything else you\u2019d like to talk about?<\/strong>
\n[After a bit of small talk]
\nWS:<\/strong> Yeah, actually I\u2019d like to talk about the gallery [Freud\u2019s Bathhouse and Diner]. They\u2019re reaching out to artists, and they\u2019re taking all the steps to make it happen. They\u2019re saying, \u201cYes we\u2019ll ship it here, yes we\u2019ll ship it back, yes we\u2019ll insure it.\u201d It\u2019s really admirable because not many people would do that, and it\u2019s amazing that they have the wherewithal to carry through with it all. So if I had something to add, it\u2019s how thankful I am for people like Kristel and Mark, because I couldn\u2019t do it without them.<\/p>\n

You can see <\/em>I Know What My Weaknesses Are, Probably Better than You Do opening tonight and showing until August 29 at Freud\u2019s Bathhouse and Diner at 42 Albert Street.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess As Stylus found out in this interview, William Schaff is a musician too, but he\u2019s most well-known for his album art. He has done the entire discography for Okkervil River, but most of us Brave New Waves-listening –and The Wedge-watching– punks were first thrown into his world after cracking open Godspeed You! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}