Rod Hunting, Davey Sommers, Chad Kouri, Scott Thomas, Alex Fuller, Sam Rosen, and David Sieren are all brothers — yet their family is not unified by blood, but instead by kindred creative thread.
The seven initially met through school, work, and mutual friends, and it was their combined interest in design and their need to find a space to create that solidified their bond. This led them to start The Post Family collaborative, which set up shop at 1821 W. Hubbard St. in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood in 2007.
“I was looking for space because I was printing in my apartment at the time; Chad was looking for a space because he was doing the same thing,” Hunting says. “We all wanted it but didn’t know that each other wanted it.”
The group’s moniker came courtesy of an outdated Christmas card. While Kouri was in Grand Rapids for an art battle a few summers ago, he stopped in a restaurant for breakfast. He noticed a random postcard out on the counter and decided to pick it up.
“It was the middle of July, and there was a Christmas card in the middle of the counter of the diner that we went to, and it said, ‘Merry Christmas and praise Jesus — love, the Post Family,’” Kouri says. “It was the corniest photo. It’s just little ephemeral stuff like that — my work is geared off of that, so that’s the stuff that I usually bring home with me.”
As the guys were forming a collaborative and deliberating on a name, the conversation kept coming back to The Post Family idea namely because many of them are influenced by post-modernism and the group essentially functions as a family unit.
“I think that there were just tons of layers to that statement,” Thomas says. “It could live a long life, and we knew that we could all feel comfortable with it.”
Although The Post Family mainly produces screen-print and letterpress designs in its studio, the group comes from a variety of disciplines, ranging from photography to architecture to graphic design, and each of these elements have informed its individual aesthetics.
“Our backgrounds differ a bit, but when it comes down to it, we’re a group of creatively minded people, and we don’t look at it as ‘We all come from different backgrounds,'” Kouri says. “It’s more [that] we all had this idea and excitement about creation.”
In 2008, the collaborative opened its venture to the rest of Chicago’s creative community by developing an exhibition space and a design blog – both of which revolve around the group’s current inspirations. The gallery allowed it to engage other local artists and give them the opportunity to create work solely for art’s sake.
“At work, all the time, it’s the money that drives the creative, so it’s great to reach out to people that we admire and say, ‘Hey, go crazy, make stuff, and put it here,’” Hunting says. “It’s amazing to see what people come up with.”
Initially, The Post Family’s blog started out as a means for the seven members to stay in contact throughout the day and swap ideas. Soon enough, the blog began garnering attention from fellow design aficionados and local media – even earning the distinction of being nominated as Chicago’s best art blog by Chicago Magazine.
“After two years of doing that, we kind of look up and we had a lot of recognition for the blog alone,” Kouri says.
The collective’s exhibition space is currently showing There, Now It Will Last Forever, which focuses on environmentally driven work by Chicago-based talent. On July 15, The Post Family will host Cantankerous Hellfighter, featuring Aesthetic Apparatus and Delicious Design League in honor of their inclusion at Flatstock, which is taking place during the Pitchfork Music Festival. There’s just one catch: no gig posters allowed.
“It’s all going to be fine-art stuff,” Thomas says. “I know that they each are doing stuff individually, swapping it, [and] then adding to it, so it’s going to be a very collaborative show. They’re both amazing artists and great printers.”
Cantankerous Hellfighter is especially significant for the guys at The Post Family because they consider Minneapolis-based Aesthetic Apparatus to be a major influence on their work.
“I know that everyone here has probably looked up to Aesthetic Apparatus,” Thomas says. “I remember just instantly being drawn to them, I think because they were just so hands on with their design and they were doing a lot of great gig posters.”
Since forming The Post Family, the guys also have found the talent in Chicago’s screen-printing community to be incredibly supportive of its endeavors. “That’s the first thing that I really experienced [in] reaching out to people,” Hunting says. “I just thought that the people from Delicious, or Sonnenzimmer, or Jay Ryan or whoever, they were doing the same things that we were doing in printing, that they would be closed mouthed. But everyone has been so nice and overwhelmingly nice.”
Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi from Sonnenzimmer (who were profiled in ALARM 35) are Chicago-based screen printers that The Post Family has looked up to for years because of their ability to take their poster work into the realm of fine art. “Their stuff is world class,” Thomas says. “You take the type off of the gig poster and it’s just a beautiful piece of art.”
Since meeting The Post Family in late 2007, Butcher and Nakanishi have become not only mentors but great friends with the group. “When I first got to know them, it took me a while to figure out exactly what they were!” Butcher says. “An anarchist art collective? Well…sort of…but no. A design gang? No, not quite either. [It] turns out they are just friends who wanted space to make things with their hands. The potential that I saw in the beginning has already come into fruition.”
Nakanishi also feels that The Post Family has the makings to become a major influence on the next generation of Chicago’s designers. “I feel like they will have a huge impact if they challenge the status quo within what they do,” she says. “It will make younger folks understand how to envision, how to position their social network within an framework for creative endeavors. That’s beautiful.”
In only two years, The Post Family’s shows have received significant accolades and support from the rest of Chicago’s art community. Yet even though it has come so far in such a short amount of time, it’s ready to return its focus to the original intent of creating work on its own terms.
“We’re probably only going to do four shows next year,” Kouri says. “We started this place because we wanted to make stuff, and we’re really not doing that anymore, so we’re going to slow down on the shows a little bit.”
Yet no matter what direction The Post Family chooses to take in the future, there’s no doubt that its creators will all take that path together. “To a certain degree, we fight like brothers, we act like brothers, and that mantra really lives on in everything we do,” Thomas says. “We’re all going to walk into the studio again and keep creating.”