Indie poster festival’s headliners are the artists behind countless legendary prints
Concert posters have remained a staple for music and art collectors since they started gaining value on the secondary market in the 1970s and ’80s. Some might even say the extremes of the subculture are out of hand; in 2022, a poster for the legendary last Beatles concert in the US, in 1966 at Shea Stadium in Queens, sold via Heritage Auctions for a staggering $220,000. At the same auction, a near-perfectly graded (9.6/10) “Skeleton and Rose” poster from the Grateful Dead’s September 1966 run, changed hands for $137,500.
While nostalgia and the featured musicians in such posters—top-touring iconic outfits like the Beatles, the Dead, Phish, Jack White, Pearl Jam, and Wilco—play a central part in the phenomenon for many hardcore collectors, the artists who create them have also stepped into the limelight over the past 50 years. To the point that now, modern creatives like Ames Bros, Rob Jones, Daniel Danger, EMEK, Kushagra Gupta, and Dan Mumford have carried on traditions started by poster legends like the psychedelically-inspired Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin of Zap Comix, Stanley Mouse, Wes Wilson, and Jim Phillips.
The inspiration for Mass Mini Con
As a fan and fellow creative, Jeff Haidaczuk said he and Mass Mini Con co-founder Jessica Lin established the festival in 2023 to celebrate artists they loved after the COVID pandemic devastated the industry. Initially, he explained, the pair was spurred to start the event after Mondo, the Austin-based original print shop beloved by collectors worldwide, was largely gutted by its parent company Funko in 2022. Scores of independent artists were vocally angry, as the company’s creative directors and several other employees were laid off.
“That left a pretty big hole in the pop culture art community,” Haidaczuk, who operates the printing business Rucking Fotten, said. “In early 2023 Jessica reached out to me to see if I had any interest in starting our own little convention, since I had personal relationships with a lot of the artists in the scene. So I started asking around and literally everyone we asked said, Yes.”
His Mini Con co-founder and fellow creative organizer Lin said: “I was thinking how it seemed like a lot of my favorite artists seem to live in New England, and I reached out to Jeff, who I knew worked at Mondo and was a local, about a small event.”
Lin added that the duo pushed hard this year to deliver everything they’ve personally missed in the collecting community: “If my idea was the seed, it has really blossomed under Jeff’s vision. His boundless energy and ideas have turned Mass Mini Con into something way beyond my imagination and it’s great to see our growth year after year.”
Expanding Mass Mini Con in year three
This year’s spectacle is in Allston on Sept. 13 and 14, and in addition to just posters is billed as a “multi-day show for likeminded collectors of art, pop culture, and physical media.” Haidaczuk, who previously worked at Mondo, said he is extremely excited about the lineup. That’s in part because it includes his former co-worker, Rob Jones, who co-founded Mondo and served as one of the company’s creative directors for years.
While it may not be so “mini” this year, Haidaczuk said the upcoming 2025 convention feels more mature than in years past. Although the first show in 2023 wasn’t “exactly a massive success,” the co-founder said it did well enough for the team to try it again. Last summer, the second Mass Mini Con was held at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, where it morphed into a full-day event.
This year’s attendees include Jones, as well as a long and diverse roster of contemporary artists with some scattered stars among the group. There will be work and appearances from: Alex Pardee, Oliver Barrett, Rory Kurtz, Daniel Danger, Jason Edmiston, Veronica Fish, C.A. Martin, Landland, Dan McCarthy, Anne Benjamin, Calvin Laituri, Chase Andersen, CODA, David Seidman, Gary Pullin, J.C. Richard, Ghost x Ghost, Johnny Dombrowski, Katherine Lam, Matt Ryan Tobin, Mutant, Stephen Andrade, Scott Buoncristiano, Sara Deck, and Witch Cat Creative, among others.
“So now, we’re heading into our third show, we’ve expanded to two days: we’ve partnered with a few galleries to help bring in more artists, we have both days fully booked out with panels and screenings,” Haidaczuk said.
More to expect at Mas Mini Con 2025
Other highlights for this year include a screening of John Carpenter’s classic “The Thing” in 35mm at the Brattle in Cambridge on Friday, in conjunction with a poster release by Ken Taylor and several panels Haidaczuk said will allow attendees to “really nerd out.”
“We have DL Screenprinting coming out from Seattle for a talk called ‘Where Do Posters Come From?’ where they’ll sit down with a few artists and talk about how they work in collaboration to take a jpeg and turn it into a silk-screened poster with different papers, inks, embellishments, etc.,” he said. “And Sunday’s conversation with Rob Jones and Jason Edmiston will be an absolute riot.”
As so-called AI has threatened to undermine the design industry with everyone from stale vanilla businesses to bands using burgeoning tech for graphics, Haidaczuk said that in-person events like Mass Mini Con are that much more vital. (As to what that looks like, earlier this year, AL Murphy, who goes by the_aicop on Instagram, started highlighting many of these infractions from bands like Smash Mouth, the String Cheese Incident, and Height Street Daydream.)
“I think Boston does a great job celebrating the arts and artists, but of course we could always do more,” the co-founder added. “We have such an incredible history here for art, music, and movies, so I think the best thing to do is to keep supporting where we can.
“That doesn’t mean just financially—it’s however we can. … Liking, commenting, and sharing on social media really does go a long way.”
More info and tickets here.
