Iron Maiden Poster

Under the covers: Stefan Marx

You may not have heard of Stefan Marx before, but if you've been paying attention to the finer side of house for a while, then you'll definitely recognise his work. Creating covers for Playhouse, Mule Musiq, Endless Flight and as resident designer at Smallville, his artwork has graced the covers of some of the most elegant releases of the past half decade. Head of Lousy Livin' and with a passion for skateboarding, his work extends beyond the bounds of record covers; with t-shirts, decks, books, prints and sculptures all adorned in his signature style. We tapped him to design the limited-edition poster for our RA X party in Moscow , so RA's Ross Jackson recently caught up with Marx via Skype to see what makes him tick.






My pen is always in my pocket, it's always lying around. I draw simple things with it and write down notes. My drawings are spontaneous; I do them while travelling around, like my pictures of planes and my portraits. I work in an artist's book with my favourite pen; the Pentel Stylo MLJ20. I really like the heavy contrast of black and white; I don't use pencil. I like to have mistakes in my drawings. I don't do pencil work first then ink over later, I just go straight in. I don't really see them as mistakes, they're just part of the work.

My written pieces are mostly made from quotes, from lyrics of my favourite bands. I'm not a poet, I'm not making them up in my head, I just connect them to my life situations and pick sentences out of the lyrics that are special to me. I decided how the lyric is portrayed; I mix my own phrases with the lyrics. It's nice for me to have these around as it's like having a record but without the music. The bands I use are mostly from my teenage years; Pavement, Ariel Pink, etc. If you don't know the bands and the lyrics, you connect the quotes to something in your own life, it's interesting. I also use quotes from my friends, I've used some from Lawrence.

A Rick Perry Supporter Plays With Madness | Decibel Magazine

Throw up a red flag or two for heavy metal fans:

Though only the babysitter had appeared as a witness for the defense during the main trial, several family members, including Stacy, testified during the penalty phase, asking the jury to spare Willingham’s life. When Stacy was on the stand, Jackson grilled her about the “significance” of Willingham’s “very large tattoo of a skull, encircled by some kind of a serpent.”

“It’s just a tattoo,” Stacy responded.

“He just likes skulls and snakes. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. He just had—he got a tattoo on him.”

The prosecution cited such evidence in asserting that Willingham fit the profile of a sociopath, and brought forth two medical experts to confirm the theory. Neither had met Willingham. One of them was Tim Gregory, a psychologist with a master’s degree in marriage and family issues, who had previously gone goose hunting with Jackson, and had not published any research in the field of sociopathic behavior. His practice was devoted to family counselling.

At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60 — a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house — and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting — it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture — a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel…I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.