Art for Radio

It's true, WFMU is one of my favorite things EVER. If you haven't tried it yet, you need to start now. It's overwhelming at first, no doubt, but give it some time, and you will soon love it too. WFMU is freeform radio and they just completed their marathon to raise operational costs without any corporate or institutional funding. This kind of radio is extremely rare nowadays.

I totally grew up with radio in suburban Detroit. At first with commercial radio (what else was there?!) as a kid in the 80's, and then I was lucky enough to pick up some low-watt signals and late-night radio that blew open my music consciousness that turned me forever away from commercial radio. There was a radio station, WORB, operating from Oakland Community College in Farmington, Michigan, that broadcast with 10 watts and was responsible for getting me into the punk and post-punk music that has influenced my art today. As a teenager, I would draw things like skeletons and punks and mail them to the radio station. For one particular drawing, which I wish I still had because you would get a good laugh out of it, the DJs at WORB asked if they could print their playlist on the back of one of my drawings, and send it out to their mailing list. Hell, yeah! Picture a frustrated teenager in suburbia getting a playlist in the mail one day from her favorite radio station, printed on the back of one of her own drawings. I just about died. WORB has long been shut down, they violated FCC regulations more than a few times (they never censored the music they broadcast) but their impact on me in music and art was huge.


Fast forward twenty years later. Since the new year, I have been volunteering logo illustrations to WFMU after their recent call for volunteers. I don't know if they will actually use these or not, but I had fun doing them, and I could always use the practice.