My Story

I am Lucky and Grateful for the Experiences in My Life

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Art has always been a pas­sion of mine, dat­ing back to my child­hood when I first used my father’s Win­dor & New­ton Oil col­ors as fin­ger­paints on the walls of our house. Tur­pen­tine baths were the only option for the aftermath.

The sum­mer before enter­ing 2nd grade, I vis­it­ed my father in Paris, France where he was tak­ing some art class­es. The expe­ri­ence of meet­ing his class­mates from acrooss all parts of the world had a pro­found effect on the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of human­i­ty. Draw­ing pic­tures removed the bar­ri­er of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with­out know a for­e­ing lan­guage. I knew art would always be a part of my life, somehow.

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Grow­ing up, I saw how hard my father had to work as an entre­pre­neur. He ran his own busi­ness, Cer­nak Design Stu­dios, with an office locat­ed nextdoor to the Oliv­er Man­sion in South Bend, Indi­ana. Even­tu­al­ly, he would pur­sue a Mas­ters Degree at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. This made hav­ing an Apple Mac­in­tosh in the house essen­tial, and his long com­mutes to class week­nights gave me enough time to exper­i­ment with Pho­to­shop and Quark­Ex­press before he returned home.

My love and appre­ci­a­tion for art con­tin­ued, and by the time I reached High School, the wis­dom of Andy Warhol had the strongest impres­sion on me.

Being good in busi­ness is the most fas­ci­nat­ing kind of art. Mak­ing mon­ey is art and work­ing is art and good busi­ness is the best art.

- Andy Warhol

Unlike my father, and lat­er my broth­er, I decid­ed to pur­sue a Busi­ness instead of a degree at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. This path even­tu­al­ly lead me to Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty and the J. Mack Robin­son Col­lege of Busi­ness where I focused on Mar­ket­ing and Advertising.

After liv­ing in the Mid­west all my life, the warmer cli­mate of Atlanta, GA was cer­tain­ly appre­ci­at­ed at my new home.

2005

Liv­ing in Inman Park, near the Vari­ety Play­house, and work­ing for The Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny afford­ed me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to focus on my oth­er pas­sion — Music! I attend as many Con­certs and Music Fes­ti­vals pos­si­ble. From New Orleans Jaz­zfest to Boston for New Years Eve, dri­ving any­where for a show was now an option. 

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2006

On May 21, 2006, I attend­ed the Soco Music Expe­ri­ence fea­tur­ing many bands includ­ing The Flam­ing Lips, Cow­boy Mouth, Big Star, De La Soul, & Ozomatli. The con­cert poster for the event was designed by Lind­sey Kuhn, as was being screen­print­ed live. I did­n’t real­ized at the time, but I had also just met Ron Dono­van who was help­ing Lind­sey with the print demonstration. 

ExpressoBeans.com mem­bers might remem­ber this date as the EMEK Tool ‘Cyber­man’ poster release. Need­less to say I missed out, but the events that tran­spired would more than make up for that missed opportunity.

As I was hang­ing out near the back­stage with oth­er fans, up rolls Wayne Coyne of The Flam­ing Lips to say Hel­lo. I was well aware Wayne was also an artist. I owned the Art of Mod­ern Rock: The Poster Explo­sion Hard­cov­er by Paul Grushkin and Den­nis King, a book he wrote the Fore­word too.

As Wayne was sign­ing auto­graphs, I men­tioned that I had my Sketch Book with col­or­ful Sharpies on me and would be more than hap­py to bust them out if he felt inspired. 

I was com­plete­ly sur­prised when he said “Yes.”

As if things could­n’t get any bet­ter, I was then asked to be a part of the show that night dressed up like San­ta Claus, aka St. Nicholas, my Patron Saint, on stage. I called my girl­friend, who was liv­ing in South Bend, Indi­ana to make sure this was­n’t a dream. Con­ver­sa­tion con­firmed my new real­i­ty. Time to Be Here Now.

That Day Changed My Life Forever

Soon, I decid­ed it was time for me to fol­low my pas­sion. I left Atlanta the Sum­mer of 2006 and moved in with my girl­friend who was liv­ing in my home­town so I could focus more on art while tak­ing cours­es online via Lynda.com that includ­ed Word­Press, an open-source blog­ging soft­ware pro­gram built using HTML, CSS, PHP, and MYSQL.

On July 29, 2006, I attend Flat­stock 9 at Union Park, Chica­go. This was the first time I met Mer­le Beck­er, a groovy film­mak­er work­ing on what I thought was a lit­tle some­thing about Con­cert Posters. 

That lit­tle some­thing lat­er turned out to be the fea­ture film Amer­i­can Arti­fact: The Rise of the Amer­i­can Rock Poster Artist.

I con­tin­ued mak­ing art on a seem­ing­ly dai­ly basis while dream­ing of con­certs I wish I’d rather be at. At one point I con­vinced my girl­friend that we should dri­ve down to St Louis, Mis­souri to see a con­cert. The Flam­ing Lips were going to play at The Pageant. 

“How would we pay for it?” she asked.

I’ll design a rock poster and sell it in the park­ing before the show to help pay for some of our expens­es, some­thing I learned about from attend­ing a Grate­ful Dead con­cert after I grad­u­at­ed High School. I lat­er attempt­ed mak­ing my own posters for Phish con­certs in the 90’s, so I felt ready to give it a try one more time.

The Flam­ing Lips show was EPIC. After­wards, I got to talk to Wayne — again! I gave him a poster, and he signed a copy for me. If that was­n’t enough, the band then pro­ceeds to hand me the drum head con­tain­ing the setlist from that night. Wow. Love and Kind­ness does exist.

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When bands vis­it­ed South Bend, Indi­ana — I would make a con­cert poster.

I exper­i­ment­ed with var­i­ous medi­ums includ­ing: graphite, ink, mark­er, and water­col­or, on var­i­ous sub­trates like Vel­lum for my Roger Waters piece.

Date Night in Chica­go also became oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a con­cert poster. 

The low cost of liv­ing in Indi­ana made it pos­si­ble to invest more time into mak­ing art.

If I did­n’t make a con­cert poster for a show I was attend­ing, I had an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to run into the artist who did. 

Dur­ing the hol­i­day break, I met up with a dear friend dat­ing back to my child­hood. He had made the jour­ney to Cal­i­for­nia after High School and men­tioned he might have an oppor­tu­ni­ty for me design­ing eLearn­ing SCORM com­pli­ant cours­es for soft­ware pro­grams. I swear Esti­mat­ed Prophet start­ed play­ing in my head. I knew where to go.

2007

I moved to Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia on March 14, 2007.

A fel­low co-work­er was in an avant-garde band called Eddie the Rat which was coool to me. I approached him one day on our lunch break about mak­ing posters for his shows. There would be no risk for him as I would pay for every­thing. All I want­ed was the rights to my art, and be allowed to sell some copies online in hopes of mak­ing some rent mon­ey. The Bay Area was not cheap after all.

2008

I had every inten­tion of design­ing more con­cert posters, and was open to any opportunities.

On August 8, I mar­ried that girl­friend you’ve been read­ing about. Soon there after a finan­cial cri­sis hit and the tech com­pa­ny I was work­ing for was aquired. This meant my ser­vices were no longer needed. 

The chang­ing econ­o­my effect­ed every­one to some degree, includ­ing The Fire­house Kus­tom Rockart Kom­pa­ny, who moved the print­ing stu­dio from San Fran­cis­co to Oak­land. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, this was only a few miles away from my apart­ment, basi­cal­ly a short bike ride.

One evening at ArtRock Gallery, I met artists Chuck Sper­ry and Ron Dono­van. I was aware of this place since High School, and recent­ly designed a ban­ner ad for the web­site GigPosters.com. I expressed my love for con­cert posters and men­tioned I owned their Eric Clap­ton posters from a run of shows Madi­son Square Gar­den. They were impressed enough to invite me into their studio.

I soon real­ized that the art being pro­duced at the Stu­dio (dubbed Hangar 18) need­ed to be shared with the world. 

“What could I do to help the Artists so they could have more time to produce their art?”

My mis­sion was clear. In the age before Social Media, a web­site was cru­cial. I start­ed a blog on my domain nickcernak.com to doc­u­ment thi­er art. Lat­er, as the con­tent scope evolved, the artist whose poster I was fea­tur­ing would send me a Pay­Pal but­ton linked to their account to get thi­er art direct­ly into col­lec­tors hands.

This expe­ri­ence soon opened up the door for a paid gig design­ing the web­site for The Rock Poster Soci­ety.

Before I knew it, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to design a web­site for artist Chuck Sper­ry pre­sent­ed itself. I jumped at the offer. Word was final­ly get­ting to rock posters with sim­i­lar interests.

I con­sid­er myself very lucky. I’ve been giv­en the chance to work with peo­ple who inspire me and bring joy to the world including:

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Rock Poster Artists

Alexan­dra Fis­ch­er, Chris Shaw, Chuck Sper­ry, Dave Hunter, Den­nis Larkins, John Seabury, Jon-Paul Bail, Lau­ren Yurkovich, Marq Spus­ta, Ron Dono­van, Win­ston Smith, Zoltron

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Actors

Arj Bark­er, Tom Chantler,

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Business

ArtRock, Charmed Paint­ing, Cut Merch, Fac­tion Brew­ing, Fan Asy­lum, Lucky Mule, Sta­tion 4, Stick­er Robot, Tech Lim­i­nal, Tour­Swag

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Musicians

Doo­bie Deci­bel Sys­tem, Eddie The Rat, Eric Clap­ton, Flip­per, Dr. John, Moon­al­ice, Pete Sears, Roger McNamee

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Organizations

Expres­so Beans, Haight Street Art Cen­ter, Moon­al­ice Posters, Doo­bie Deci­bel Sys­tem Posters, St. Isabel­la School, The Rock Poster Soci­ety (TRPS), Vir­tu­al Pump­kin, Youth Poster Contest

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