From Street Art to Community Love: The Beautiful Angle Project’s Impact on Tacoma”

Meet Beautiful Angle

Lance Kagey and Tom Llewellyn invite us into their 20+ year collaboration. Beautiful Angle has brought striking art to various Tacoma neighborhoods including Hilltop, North End, Lincoln District, Stadium, 6th Ave, downtown, and South Tacoma Way.

In 2002, Tom Llewellyn and Lance Kagey embarked on a mission to infuse Tacoma with artistic flair. Their collaborative project, Beautiful Angle, focuses on creating visually captivating posters that showcase the diverse culture and vibrancy of Tacoma’s neighborhoods. What started as a passion project has now bloomed into a celebrated artistic endeavor, resonating with the city’s community.

From the challenges of creating handcrafted posters to the community’s overwhelming support, Tom and Lance share their immersive experiences, creative processes, and heartwarming stories.

Tune in and learn more about Beautiful Angle, Tom Llewellyn, Lance Kagey, and Tacoma!

Connect With Beautiful Angle

Visit the Beautiful Angle Website

Checkout the Beautiful Angle Facebook Group

Beautiful Angle Episode Transcript

Hello friends, and welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. My name is Scott Cowan, and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington Scott. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re gonna like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. Alright. So I am sitting here, well, by myself, but I’m in the virtual room with Tom and Lance of Beautiful Angle, and they have promised to tell me everything I wanna know about Beautiful Angle today. But, guys, my biggest question is, how’d you 2 meet, and whose idea who pitched this idea to you know, Tom, did you pitch it to Lance? Lance, did you pitch it to Tom? How’d you guys meet, and how did Beautiful Angle get started? Let’s just jump right into that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:00:56]:

We met at a, the debut showing of Rattle and Humm, the u two concert movie. We were introduced, by a mutual friend of ours who, his name is Ed Dobias. He actually lives in Spain now, but he knew us both and said, hey. I I know, you know, I know these other people. There was actually he introduced our our us and our wives to each other and said, we we know these people that you guys should meet. And and so he introduced us, the 5 of us, Lance and I and our and our spouses, and Ed saw this movie together. And, so we can track it to the day Okay. Of when we met without you know, I always have to look it up, and I don’t have the date in front of me.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:01:42]:

When whenever that was 37 years ago and change or something like that. Wow. So that’s how we met, and then we’ve done a number of we were both just sort of creatives, you know, in our souls. And, and, so we did a number of other creative projects over the years. We did a actually a comic strip for a while in a weird little Seattle newspaper, and then we were in a band together for years. And, went through all the, you know, trials and tribulations of being in a band and going through through numerous lineups. And then we had a really good line up for quite a while. And then when that crashed and burned, we threw in the towel on that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:02:29]:

And then we were sort of, you know, taking a break. And then and then, you know, Lance, maybe you should talk about how you got into letterpress and how this came.

Lance Kagey [00:02:40]:

Yeah. First of all, I’d say though, we didn’t really crash and burn. Our our, drummer moved to Brazil and it’s like, what do you do when your drummer moves to Brazil? So

Scott Cowan [00:02:53]:

Yeah. Okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:02:54]:

Oh, well, before We had fun doing it. Look.

Scott Cowan [00:02:57]:

I have to interrupt because in total, so hijacking the thread. Tom, I saw on Facebook you went and saw you 2 at the Sphere.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:03:05]:

Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:03:06]:

Totally not related to anything we’re talking about today, but how was it?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:03:10]:

It was amazing. Honestly, it was it was really good. It was worth the the price of the trip and the ticket. And, I mean, you know, I’ve been a fan of you 2 since I was in high school, you know, 500 years ago. And, my wife is more fanatical YouTube fan than I am, so this was our Christmas present to each other. And the sphere is this crazy overwhelming thing, but, the best part about the show for me was just how good Bono’s voice sounded. He sounded better in this show than the last time when they came through Seattle. His voice was just kind of miraculously good for how old he is.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:03:51]:

So it was a it was a great show. Loved everything about it.

Scott Cowan [00:03:55]:

The reason I’m asking is because Dead and Company just announced they’re gonna do a, like, 15, 16 show thing there.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:04:02]:

And I heard that porn And Fish is coming next after YouTube.

Scott Cowan [00:04:07]:

Oh. Yeah. Okay. For, like, 4, 4 sessions. My question is, band sound good, but was it overwhelming visually?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:04:15]:

Yes. It was. Wenatchee, before we went because I had a coworker said she felt motion sick the entire time she was there. So we took and I have no idea if the Dramamine was necessary, but we felt good. And, yeah, there were a couple times where I had to, like, close my eyes and not look because it was so much visual kind of input and it it’s it’s everything within your field of vision is moving. And you’re you’re also, you know, 300 feet above the stage or whatever. So, yeah,

 Tom Llewellyn [00:04:54]:

it was a little

 Tom Llewellyn [00:04:55]:

it was a little, you know, whatever the whatever the word is there, the disconcerting or whatever, but it was really cool.

Scott Cowan [00:05:04]:

Okay. Alright. Well, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Lance, how did you get involved in letterpress?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:05:13]:

I’ve been interested I’ve been interested in printmaking for a long time, and, I met a guy up in Vancouver, Canada. His name is Jim Rimmer, and he was actually considered a national treasure of Canada, back in the day. He’s he’s gone now. He, was just a fascinating guy and he would do, design type, hand carve, hand cast type, carve linoleum cuts, produce books, print the books, and they’d sell us like $300 to $600 a book. They were just beautiful works of art and he was just the most gracious guy and he kind of infected me with the idea of doing letterpress and, so shortly after that, I got connected to some different letterpress people, some of them were at a school in Seattle called Scott of Visual Concepts and, found a press online after looking for months months that I could buy and happened to see it on Ebay. It was $50. We put in a bid for it, and we won it. The only thing was it was in Ohio.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:06:36]:

So we had to ship it, you know, 10 times that to get it to Tacoma. But that kind of, gave me the impetus to start now. Beautiful Angle was natural, you know, birth out of that from conversations I have with Tom as a writer and me as designer. So

Scott Cowan [00:06:59]:

Okay. So so, Lance, did you kind of bring this idea to Tom? Is that kinda I mean, can we say you’re the one that started that dialogue?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:07:09]:

Tom Tom is the brilliant one. No. It was out of conversation, though, for sure. But Alright. What did that conversation entail? Tom? What do you recall?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:07:18]:

Well, we we were both big fans of street artists. Right? Like, you know, Space Invader and Shepard Fairey and Banksy and these kind of folks, back in the day before that seemed as overly commercialized as it does now, but and just graffiti art and stencil artists and all that stuff. Mhmm. Even taggers, I think are fascinating. But, anyway, we so we’ve been talking about that, and it just yeah. It was just a natural thing of, like, Lance had this gorgeous press in his basement, and, you know, we were just like, oh, we should make posters. You know? I mean, it wasn’t it wasn’t like some great intellectual, you know, epiphany. Maybe it was actually because when we Wenatchee we were in a band together, we, you know, we we had a great time as Lance mentioned, but it was really hard to get past the sort of friends and family circuit.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:08:11]:

You know, you would you would do a show and you’d look out at wherever you were playing and you’d say, oh, hey, look at there’s 6 people there that I don’t know personally. How exciting is that? And and it was just a lot of promotional work and everything. And then and then we did this poster thing in about 3 or 4 posters in. It just just it just got a buzz. It was just kind of it was took

 Tom Llewellyn [00:08:33]:

Cowan a life of its own. Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:08:35]:

It was almost instantly popular. And you’re like, okay. We touched something here. We don’t really, you know, I mean, we have ideas on why, but it just it kind of became popular. Yeah. Maybe 5 or 6 posters in, but it it did not take long.

Scott Cowan [00:08:52]:

So I I think if memory serves me right, you guys started this in about what, 2002, or 3?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:09:00]:

2002.

Scott Cowan [00:09:01]:

Yeah. Yep. So I had just moved back to Tacoma, and I was living in the North End. And, both you guys probably remember, there was a website exit 133.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:09:12]:

Oh, sure. Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:09:13]:

Yeah. So I was reading that a lot.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:09:15]:

And Derek Young’s website.

Scott Cowan [00:09:17]:

Derek. Derek. Oh, yeah. Derek. And I remember hearing something about this. Like like, these posters, they were just appearing around town, you know, magically in the middle of the night by, you know, Keebler Elves or something like that. Yeah. Right.

Scott Cowan [00:09:31]:

Turns out it’s you guys. And all these years later, you’re still doing it, and I think that’s a credit to both the 2 of you, but also credit to Tacoma.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:09:45]:

That’s right. I think that’s right. And then one of the things that’s interesting about that is that when we did this, we actually had that conversation of let’s not make this so ambitious or labor intensive that it becomes unsustainable. Like, it, you know, you don’t wanna do it at this level of, you know, grandiosity that you burn out from it quickly. Because literally our goal on the, before we hung our 1st poster was, let’s do this in a way that we could imagine doing this 20 years from Cowan now we’re past that date. But you’re right, Tacoma Wenatchee we started doing this, we’re both marketing guys in some form right? And I remember, you know, trying to find you’re doing like, I was working for a Cowan, we were trying to find like Tacoma gifts for clients and you’d go, you tried to find something that had the name Tacoma on it and there was just nothing. You’d go into the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Tacoma and all the gifts there would say Seattle. And it was, you know, there was just nobody in Tacoma was loving on Tacoma.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:10:58]:

So that was definitely part of this goal too was to, you know, other people other than us have described it as a kinda ongoing love letter to Tacoma, and I don’t think that’s too far off.

Scott Cowan [00:11:10]:

Where did you hang the 1st poster? Where was the 1st did you

 Tom Llewellyn [00:11:15]:

Yeah. We know the answer to that too.

Scott Cowan [00:11:17]:

Okay. So where was it?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:11:20]:

So we did this we we did this thing on the on the date. I can’t was it, like, 501st 501 years or something, Lance?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:11:30]:

Probably something like that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:11:31]:

On the anniversary of on the anniversary of this sounds so so overly intellectual, but, but, we did it on the anniversary of Martin Luther hanging his treaties on the door in Wittenberg, Germany on the church door. So that’s what actually what we did on our very first posters. We we hung them, we stapled them and things onto doors of churches. The first one was on First Presbyterian Church, if I remember correctly. Is that right?

Scott Cowan [00:12:01]:

Okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:12:01]:

Yeah. So, yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:12:05]:

Now, no judgment here, but, you know, some people would say that this is graffiti, and you shouldn’t be posting things, etcetera, etcetera. I’ve read some comments.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:12:17]:

Some people have definitely said that.

Scott Cowan [00:12:19]:

But I also think I’ve read some things. I’m paraphrasing here, and I’m not gonna get it completely accurate. But, you know, the city of Tacoma says, you know, post no bills, yet you guys are doing that, and yet you’re acknowledged by the city for being good heart. You know? I think it’s I think it’s a testament to you’re doing. So I think that’s fascinating. But you the 1st time out, were you nervous that you’d get in trouble? Yeah. We thought,

 Tom Llewellyn [00:12:46]:

you know go ahead, Tom.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:12:49]:

No. Yeah. A little bit. I I remember we were we were doing a lot of what’s called wheat pasting which is the traditional way of putting up posters, you know, where you’re basically using sort of a wallpaper paste and posting them on this, you know, sides of buildings or on telephone poles or street poles. And, wheat paste is is it’s not damaging to anything because it’s literally just flour and water, but it is it will stay up there for months months months, even years, even in the rain, if you get it up and it can dry.

Scott Cowan [00:13:19]:

Okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:13:20]:

I just remember the 1st night that we were on the corner of, Sixth Avenue and Sprague, you know, which is a rough, a roughish intersection, and we’re pasting up a poster, on this light pole and this police officer pulls up right next to us. He looks out the window and then he looks ahead and drives away. And you’re like, okay. I I think we’re okay.

Scott Cowan [00:13:45]:

You’re okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:13:46]:

We are we are low priority.

Scott Cowan [00:13:48]:

So did anybody at first, did anybody complain when you got before you guys before like you said, like, 3 posters, then you knew you kinda were on to something. But, like, in those first 2 or 3 poster runs, did did anybody was there an article in the tribune or something like that? No.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:14:04]:

But Lance is gonna tell you a famous Chamber of Commerce story.

Scott Cowan [00:14:07]:

Yeah. Awesome.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:14:09]:

So yeah. So one of our early posters, we, I think it was, we pasted downtown somewhere, but we got an email from this guy in the Chamber of Commerce that, said, what are you guys doing? You’re ruining our you know, you’re you’re uglifying our city, and stop doing it and da da da. And and, we’re like, whatever. And but then a year later or within a year, we got an award, and he had to present us with the award.

Scott Cowan [00:14:45]:

And did he have a change of heart at that point?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:14:48]:

I don’t know he did. I bet he didn’t, but I don’t think he had a choice in in, you know, he he probably we probably weren’t his choice,

 Tom Llewellyn [00:14:57]:

but but

 Tom Llewellyn [00:14:58]:

it was funny. And we knew who he was, and he knew, you know, we all knew who each other were while we’re shaking his hand, and he has this sort of pain, you know, smile tasted on his face. Love it.

Scott Cowan [00:15:09]:

Yeah. So for 22 years Cowan basically 1 a month, is that have you kept that pace up 10 to 12 a year?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:15:20]:

Yeah. 10 I would say about probably 10 a year.

Scott Cowan [00:15:22]:

So you’ve done over 200 of these posters?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:15:26]:

Easily. And easily more than that because sometimes we do other projects that, you know, expand that number.

Scott Cowan [00:15:33]:

But you’ve hung 200 sets of, I’ll call it, gorilla art around Tacoma, And it’s still it’s still popular, which is just That

 Tom Llewellyn [00:15:45]:

is that’s the perplexing thing, I think, is that we’re, like, every time we do something, it’s like, well, have we reached our point of irrelevance? But still people show up, so we like that. It’s nice.

Scott Cowan [00:15:58]:

And I think I saw somewhere that people kinda know the route that you take now, and there are people out there waiting for you to post.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:16:11]:

There are definitely people out there waiting for us to post and we, you know, we kind of mix it up. We go back and forth between because we love seeing the people. Right? And we’ve got to know Yeah. Quite a few of them. So, you know, like this last month, we had a a guest artist with us, a really talented guy named Stein Hanson. And, he’d never worked with us before, so we wanted to kinda show him a good time, so we kinda let people know we were coming out. And when we went out, there were some mobs of people. Right? And, waiting and, you know, taking they all want their picture taken, you know, with with us or with Stein.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:16:49]:

Stein was autograph and a whole bunch of posters. We don’t autograph things. We’ve made that as a policy, but, and he was just like, he had the time of his life, you know, it was great. You know, he had a he had a good time, I should say, I don’t want to overstate it, but you know what I mean? And then other nights, we know everywhere everybody’s waiting, and we intentionally go to a different part of town and and they all are screaming and frustrated and but then somebody will find 1 or they’ll find because we like to hang big blocks of posters. They just look great if you could hang 20 in a big grid or something. And somebody will find 1, and they’ll post it online. And then everybody will rush over there to, you know, to grab 1 or something. So it’s still really it’s really fun either way you do it.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:17:31]:

But we intentionally like to, you know sometimes we like to make it easy on folks, and sometimes we do it as more of a Scott of a, you know, wild and wooly treasure hunt.

Scott Cowan [00:17:42]:

Alright. So how And one

 Tom Llewellyn [00:17:43]:

of the things one of the things we learned early on that I appreciate was that more than just self expression or or community conversation, having, some predictable spots where people show up was a great community connector. It’s like people met their neighbor, and they said, oh, I have this poster. I have that poster. And and that’s a great benefit that we’ve learned from doing this project.

Scott Cowan [00:18:13]:

How many posters do you print in a run typically?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:18:17]:

We usually print about a 120, and we hang up 80. So we get we give away whatever that is, 8 12ths, what is that, 4, 6, 2 thirds, we give away 2 thirds of the posters for free to, you know, we put them out on the street and then we save the other 3rd to sell to support the project.

Scott Cowan [00:18:36]:

Okay. And when I’m on the website, there’s different prices for for the posters. How do you determine I I think I know the answer, but how do you determine what we’re what Scott where I’m Cowan vault, but how do you guys price your posters?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:18:51]:

Yeah. We have this sort of, like, street streetwear pricing thing of trying to create this sort of intentional scarcity. So if you get one early, you know, if if if there we we basically take, the number of posters and divide it into 1500. So if we have thirty or more, they’ll be $50 a piece, that’s as cheap as they get. And if we have 1 left, it’d be $1500, if we have 3 left, it’d be $500. So Okay. That’s how it works.

Scott Cowan [00:19:20]:

And the ones I well, not the ones I like because I like a lot of them, but the the Sonic Sky one’s just not available. So that’s Yep. That’s I I missed out. I don’t know I don’t know. 1500. I’m not a big that bit, bit I’m not a Sonix fan anymore, so I don’t know if I drop $1500 on it. I might I might, guys. I you know?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:19:38]:

It’s I’m sorry. We we do occasionally. We like, we do an event every spring that’s coming up in, what is it, April, it’s called Way’s Goose. And it’s a it’s a print arts kind of gathering

Scott Cowan [00:19:50]:

and

 Tom Llewellyn [00:19:50]:

show and we sell posters there. And you’ll have people who will walk up to our little table and they’ll say, $50 for a poster, are you kidding me? It’s just a piece of paper. And then somebody else will walk up right after them and say, how much is this one? And we’ll say, oh, that one’s $7.50. And they’re like, okay, Do you take a check? So it’s just, you know, the value is whatever it is to the person, I guess.

Scott Cowan [00:20:12]:

Absolutely. Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:20:13]:

Right?

Scott Cowan [00:20:13]:

Absolutely. No. How do you so now I’m gonna ask creative questions. You know, you guys are being artists here, but what’s the what’s the workflow flow like? How do you guys decide, like, are you working on a design now? What’s your I don’t wanna call it your next design, but are you guys brainstorming a design?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:20:35]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:20:37]:

Well, how do we do that? How do you guys do that? What what’s the what’s the what’s your creative process?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:20:44]:

Well, this current poster we’re doing we’re doing with a guest artist again, Stan Shaw. And Tom came up with the idea of doing a boxing poster, and we reached out to Stan and he’s like, yeah, I’d love to do that with you. So that’s that’s as much as, you know, we can say about that one. But, yeah, But there’s it’s interesting. There are limitations with letterpress that kind of corral us into, certain choices. For example, 1 holiday season we were going to do a holiday themed poster and Tom wrote these great words but I just did not have the tenacity to handset each letter for this long paragraph or whatever it was. And, so we scrapped it and decided, okay, let’s just do something on the fly. And we designed something on the fly, and I liked what how it turned out.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:21:43]:

I thought it was great. So we get the full range of of having having a fully developed concept ahead of time or working on the fly and and so on. One of our great posters that’s sold out, we did with Art Chantry. And, can I swear on this show? I’m I’m unable to swear on this show.

Scott Cowan [00:22:06]:

You can. It’s Art Chantry. Go ahead.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:22:09]:

We were doing with this thing with Art Chantry, and it was great. And he’s he was we had the words and everything ahead of time, but we’re designing again on the fly. And he’s like, oh, let’s see what we got here to work with. Why don’t we take all this round shit here and gather up all the round shit and we’ll cram it in here, and that’ll be 1 layer of the poster. And and so it can be very organic like that, and we like that. We like that, the process.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:22:40]:

We we really have a long term agenda of, like, you know you know, people ask us what what we make posters about. And I always think of them as ads kind of because we are, you know, like Lance is a graphic designer. We think of it as that sort of being true to the poster art form, but and posters usually advertise something, but, so we just sort of advertise whatever we feel like talking about, you know. But it’s really generally Lance says, hey, I wanna do a poster about this or I’ll say, I wanna do a poster about that and the other person almost always says, okay. And that’s, you know, that’s that’s the that’s about as as brutal as our creative, arguments become. Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:23:25]:

In fact, one time, we had, we had gotten, our grant from the city, and we had proposed doing kind of like a a story arc through our posters for 18 months. And just that little change in our approach made it so laborsome to do and keep up with.

Scott Cowan [00:23:47]:

Mhmm.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:23:47]:

But,

 Tom Llewellyn [00:23:47]:

we’re like, oh, let’s not do that again.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:23:49]:

It was exhausting.

Scott Cowan [00:23:50]:

It turned

 Tom Llewellyn [00:23:51]:

out great, but it was just a different different approach.

Scott Cowan [00:23:54]:

So one of the things I’ve seen is you guys do this because you’re the client, you’re not working for a client, you you get to have complete total artistic control. It seems like if you had agreed to a story arc that you’re you’re giving away some of that artistic control by being you know, you’ve laid out 18 months of of content. And I think being that you can do whatever you want without the client having a voice. But how does that work when you when you work with a a third party, an artist? I mean, you you have to help them with their vision. Right? I mean, now it’s 3 3 people’s vision, not just 2 of you.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:24:38]:

We’re careful on who we work with. We are both sort of art snobs, I would say. I mean, it’s true that, like, we look around at a lot of a lot of folks’ stuff and go, oh, no. And and, you know, we wanna be I wanna be careful how we say that because there’s there’s so many people doing amazing work that wanna work with us. In fact, there’s there’s a number of people who we’ve asked to collaborate with us, who’ve said no to us. So, you know, so that’s cool too. But when you bring in another artist you have to, you bring them in understanding that it’s gonna be a collaborative process. So it’s riskier.

Scott Cowan [00:25:17]:

Mhmm.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:25:18]:

And yeah. So this this this boxing poster we’re doing with Stan. Cowan Stan is a guy that we worked with more than anyone else, and he’s just a ridiculously talented illustrator. And, he is an old art chantry buddy who worked on and did a lot of illustrations for the rocket and things back in the glory days of Seattle Grunge. But, so we have, you know, we sent him, like, here’s a here’s a very rough concept of this, you know, boxing poster. It was very standard boxer in the gym, you know, sort of a thing. And it’s, it’s a poster about Sugar Ray Seals, to come legendary Tacoma gold medal winner. Yep.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:26:02]:

And, and then Stan came up with a completely different idea on it and they were like, I I you know, if I’m being honest it made me a little uncomfortable when I first saw it and but it’s so beautiful, the the artwork is so good that you just like, okay this is you can’t really argue just with the quality of it, and then we we’ve actually printed half of it and it’s just it’s so gorgeous. And that I mean, credit to Stan on that. It’s just his work on it is beautiful.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:26:31]:

And we do really when we’re working with guest artists, we really do try and free them up to express their vision as opposed to, like, us getting them to work for us. They’re not working for us.

Scott Cowan [00:26:45]:

Right. One of the posters, I’ve got lots of questions now about the posters themselves, but you have 1 poster that’s kind of a a timeline of Tacoma music. Now that how how on earth did you accomplish that with letterpress? Because I have a friend that has a a letterpress down in California, and, you know, he’s he’s talented. I I see a lot of stuff that he does, and then I looked at that poster and I went, how’d you guys accomplish that from a technical standpoint?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:27:13]:

From a technical standpoint, the actual image, which is kind of like tree rings, where it’s actually just a vinyl record, inked up and printed to create a kind of stump of a tree, you know, and you see the rings. And then we pointed to, various points along that, continuum to describe different interesting facts about the music history in Tacoma. And it got to be so complex that I could not handset type to do that. Okay. So we we actually went had a a plate made, a magnesium plate. So I basically created a digital file for the content portion, had a plate made, and used that for the fine line work in the small type.

Scott Cowan [00:28:05]:

Okay. And fun fact, I was at 2 of those events in my life. There’s

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:10]:

Oh, really? Which 2?

Scott Cowan [00:28:11]:

I was at the David Bowie concert, and I was at the string cheese incident concert. So Wow. I was I was a little surprised you put string cheese

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:19]:

in the second one? String cheese.

Scott Cowan [00:28:21]:

They played it, they recorded their live on the road in

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:24]:

Tacoma. Nice.

Scott Cowan [00:28:25]:

At u they were at the UPS Field House.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:27]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:28:28]:

Yeah. Yeah. I was to that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:30]:

Our champion is getting a lot of press here, but he was a good source for a lot of, that content information that we were trying to dig Scott. Tom was great at helping find that too.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:28:41]:

So Yeah. It was fun. That’s one of my favorite ones we’ve done.

Scott Cowan [00:28:45]:

Yeah. Give give give the attention to Art for a second. I sat down with him at his studio, and I think I have 4 hours of recordings with him. I still haven’t figured out what to do with him. It was I’d never met him before. I was it was a really fun time. Yeah. What a character.

Scott Cowan [00:29:04]:

Let’s just go with what a character. And so yeah. Yeah. So I

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:09]:

love him.

Scott Cowan [00:29:12]:

So the route. I I do wanna talk about the route. You guys kinda mix it up, but if I had a what neighborhoods do you typically post in? Yeah. I’ve heard Hilltop, North End, but where else do you guys go?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:28]:

Yeah. We kinda mix it up as much as we Cowan, but, yeah, Lincoln District is another one. Go ahead, Lance. Stadium. Yes.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:35]:

We do stadium, we do 6th Ave. We do downtown, of course. Lincoln, we like to get over there. South Tacoma Way, down that way. So we do the bridge around.

Scott Cowan [00:29:47]:

Do you go up to McKinley Hill?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:49]:

We have we have done some that way, but not often.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:53]:

Oh, okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:29:53]:

But we if if, if the topic of the poster relates to something, that’s also another draw to a certain area or otherwise. In fact, one of our early posters was about the Murray Morgan Bridge, and we posted one on the bridge. And that one actually was one of the impetus for kind of propelling our project forward because it made the front of the Tribune paper.

Scott Cowan [00:30:23]:

The longevity, you guys, I mean, that’s the thing here that it just keeps coming back in my mind is the the longevity of this collaboration, this project that you guys do. It’s it’s just kudos to both of you. I mean, 20 plus years. And and and and at the same time, it’s kudos to Tacoma for being a good participant in it too.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:30:45]:

For sure.

Scott Cowan [00:30:46]:

I do.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:30:46]:

It’s easy to work with it’s easy to work with, such great words that Tom usually is the one crafting. He makes it easy to do.

Scott Cowan [00:30:56]:

You say that

 Tom Llewellyn [00:30:57]:

Compliments all around.

Scott Cowan [00:30:59]:

Yeah. You say that, but both of you guys I mean, seriously, twenty years of of doing this is

 Tom Llewellyn [00:31:06]:

it it’s There’s a thing. I mean, we think about, like, one of the things I always say about Tacoma that’s, there’s a person that I know who’s moving down here and is a musician, and I said, you know, one of the great gifts that you’ll find that Tacoma has is that Tacoma needs you.

Scott Cowan [00:31:25]:

Right.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:31:26]:

And there’s this, if if you just, if people are really dig deep on what they want in life, if most people want to have some sort of purpose in, you know, kind of connections to other folks and to come and has both those things. It gives you a purpose and like this this, you know, if you if you post this stuff around Seattle, Seattle’s like, that’s nice, but they don’t need it, you know. And Tacoma Tacoma really needs it. You know, they they they need a little love. They need a little, you know, a little, you know, soft caresses. And so and we’re not always we are critical sometimes too, but I think that’s, you know, we

 Tom Llewellyn [00:32:04]:

we try to

 Tom Llewellyn [00:32:04]:

think of ourselves as being in relationship with the city. But and like you’re right, we post these things on telephone poles and right above our posters a little sign that reminds us of the, you know, of the legal statute that says it’s illegal to post these and how much we could be fined for each one. But we remind ourselves that, like, our city mayor and a lot of our city council people have these posters hanging in their offices, and we’ve gotten awards from the city. So hopefully, if it ever comes to that, we’ll have some people in our court,

Scott Cowan [00:32:36]:

literal court. Yeah. I you guys, after after the length of time, I’d really unless there was a a radical change in how the city of Tacoma conducts itself, I don’t think you’re at a lot of risk here. What what do you guys get out of it? And and I mean that in the sense of from a fulfillment standpoint. For this many years to be doing this, why? What what why every month do you keep doing this?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:33:11]:

I wanna hear Lance’s answer to this.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:33:17]:

I think, there’s a couple real deep reasons like the friendship that Tom and I have or, connection to people like working with Stan Shaw on a poster together. Doing this type of work, the actual physical part of doing it, is really a great thing to do with other people and gives you a chance to, be together in a way that’s, different than than just sitting over a beer. And so those are the things I I really appreciate. I do also like the opportunity to try and try again at creating something beautiful. So sometimes our posters are like, yeah. It’s not my favorite, but I guess try next month. Let’s try again, you know. And I learn and grow as an artist because of that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:34:11]:

Okay. Tom. I

 Tom Llewellyn [00:34:12]:

mostly like the shameless ego strokes. It doesn’t hurt. I’m telling you. You go out on a on a Tuesday night, and you have all these people saying, oh, we love you guys. Thank you so much, and you can’t help but feel better about yourself if by the time you go to bed.

Scott Cowan [00:34:34]:

I love that.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:34:35]:

Okay. So

Scott Cowan [00:34:37]:

One thing I saw doing my my research is that you’ve got a Facebook group with, like, over 4,000 people following you Yeah. Which is pretty cool. You’ve done, you know, you’ve done interviews before. You guys have you guys are not you don’t shy away from the from publicity, which I think is great. But you also don’t seem like you come across as being, needy for either. Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:35:05]:

We’re not big self promoters.

Scott Cowan [00:35:06]:

Right. But you but you don’t shy away from it. Somebody if somebody reaches out to you so, Lance, I don’t know if you know this. So I’ll just Tom, his latest book, I saw a picture of the book cover on Facebook. I said, oh, that looks cool. The art caught my eye. I reach out to him thinking he’s an author, and he is an author. I don’t mean to, like Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:35:29]:

But I didn’t know that he was the the 2 of you. I didn’t know there was this connection. And then and then I I’m I all of a sudden, I realized, I was like, oh my gosh. And then I asked him if if he would be, you know, willing to do this conversation, and he said, you know, he was, yeah. I think so, Lance. I think we’d be like to do this. And I was, like, very you guys were very approachable about it. It.

Scott Cowan [00:35:50]:

And I just once again, I I don’t wanna say this publicly. I’m going to Tom, I I told you and and, Lance, I grew up in Tacoma in the sixties seventies. I I graduated high school in 1980. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I I did not like Tacoma. Please don’t send me hate mail, people. I moved back to Tacoma in, like, 1001, 2002 when my son came to live with me full time. I lived up on the North End.

Scott Cowan [00:36:19]:

I enjoyed it a great deal. Lived out until about 7 years ago, lived out in the Parkland area. Nobody likes Parkland. I I have this love hate relationship with Tacoma. But after talking to Tom about his book and the other things that we talked about, I I actually told my wife ago, god, I could see moving back there. And that’s like, people that know me, I’m not a real I’m not a big fan of Western Washington, and yet you guys the 2 of you have, you know, paint you’re not painted, but I I have this kind of soft spot, this fondness for Tacoma. And Tom had said, Tacoma needs you, And and that’s struck a chord. I mean, I’ll be honest with you.

Scott Cowan [00:37:03]:

That’s that’s struck a chord. There’s something about Tacoma, and it’s I don’t know how to articulate it. But I think it has something to do with, like, what you guys are doing, what the what the community there is doing in general. It’s the red headed stepchild of Seattle. I don’t know. That’s not what I have to say.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:37:24]:

Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:37:24]:

And and and there’s I mean, and all those things, and just we should pause and just say we are just one little teeny part of the arts community and the kind of community community down here. There’s so many people doing things for their fellow citizens and every, there’s just a lot of people who work hard at trying to make this place better and more connected. And there’s a great art scene. Yeah. And there is a difference to it because if you say, hey, I’d like to be involved. The general answer is like, yeah. That’s great. Come and be involved.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:37:58]:

Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. And that’s one thing that really stands out to me as an urban center is that there’s kinda this come on along attitude. A new artist moves into Cowan, and it’s not like, well, you need to be vetted by the, you know, artist elite. No. It’s like, oh, come on. We’re doing this other thing.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:38:16]:

Come do it with us or do your thing with let’s dive in together. And that’s, I think, really unique for an urban culture center.

Scott Cowan [00:38:25]:

Yeah. No. And that’s and that’s

 Tom Llewellyn [00:38:27]:

just I mean, there’s issues. The city has issues. You know?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:38:30]:

Oh, yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:38:31]:

Oh, yeah. Of course. But I’m and I’m not saying that you 2 are the reason I would be willing to move back to the coma. I’m not I’m not saying that. I am saying that you’ve you’ve been able to, like, remind me though of, like, exit 133. I hadn’t thought about that site in a long, long time, you know. And that was a a great community platform for a number of years that Derek did.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:38:54]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:38:55]:

And there was a lot of really interesting things going on in Tacoma that you don’t find, in my experience, as relevant or prevalent in other communities. So whatever it is, it’s Yeah. Keeping the the community going, you guys. You’re you’re a part of it, and it’s great that the community’s still doing it. Lance, when did you are you, are you a native Tacoma guy, or when did you when did you move to Tacoma?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:39:28]:

I’ve lived in Tacoma for 27 years. Okay. And, my wife, born and raised in Federal Way, so she’s lived within, like, 10, 15 miles of her whole life. And

Scott Cowan [00:39:42]:

Mhmm.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:39:43]:

I

 Tom Llewellyn [00:39:43]:

moved back up from California when I was, in my twenties to find my roots. My family was originally from this area. Actually, they homesteaded up in Birch Bay in the 1800. So I got deep roots and, came back up to kinda discover my roots. And, Tom and Deb had moved to Tacoma and were like, hey. We wanna hang out closer to them. So we ended up moving, to Tacoma or Mhmm. From the Union Ply area.

Scott Cowan [00:40:13]:

And yeah. Oh, from Union Ply. Okay. Alright. Yeah. No. It’s just Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:40:18]:

It it it’s interesting people’s journeys to communities. I you know, I when I talk to people across the state, how they end up and whatever wherever home is at that moment that we’re talking, everybody’s story is is kind of interesting. So, Lance, I always ask guests some questions. I’m gonna put you on the spot. I’m gonna do it differently this time. Tom has answered these questions before, but I want you to answer them for Tom. K? So what do you think Tom said when I asked him where’s a great place to get a where’s a Tom’s opinion, where’s a great place to get a cup of coffee in Tacoma?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:40:52]:

I hope he got it right because the answer is The Method downtown. It’s a coffee and skate shop. So

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:00]:

I feel like I’m on a the newlywed game, and

Scott Cowan [00:41:03]:

I want to take a look at the version of the newlywed game. Yeah. Okay. So so we he did not mention method.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:11]:

Okay. What did you mention, Tom?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:15]:

I mentioned Bluebeard, but, apparently, that’s because I’m wrong. So

Scott Cowan [00:41:19]:

Blue Well, there’s no problem.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:21]:

Method uses the the method uses Bluebeard’s coffee, so Bluebeard is the roaster for the method. There you go.

Scott Cowan [00:41:28]:

So another question I always ask my guests, and so Tom answered this one before. What did Tom answer to my question? Where’s a great place for me to grab lunch when I’m in Tacoma?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:43]:

I don’t know the answer.

Scott Cowan [00:41:46]:

Well, take a stab at it. He’s he’s he’s giving you a clue.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:53]:

Yeah. I I don’t read lips very well. So

Scott Cowan [00:41:56]:

Okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:41:56]:

Think think of a place on maybe on Sixth Avenue with a great tap list.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:42:01]:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I should have said red hot right away. Okay. The red hot.

Scott Cowan [00:42:06]:

How about you? If if I were showing up in Tacoma, where would where would you, Lance, where would you tell me to go to lunch in Tacoma?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:42:13]:

Well, I work right above Thaipepper, and so it, isn’t a common place. I just head downstairs to get good food. That’d be one place. But, to take to take my wife out, our or friends, we go to Nrama. It’s a great, mixologist coffee or cocktail place with incredible food in the, courthouse square, the old post office building.

Scott Cowan [00:42:41]:

Really? I have never heard of that. Not that I know everything in Tacoma. I don’t, but I’ve never heard of that place. Interesting. Yeah. Okay.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:42:47]:

Owner the owner is Chris Kiel, and he’s a well known restaurant guy around town.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:42:54]:

It’s only open for dinner, so it might not work for lunch, but it is an amazing place.

Scott Cowan [00:42:59]:

For the for the right food, I can stick around for dinner. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So I normally ask those questions a little later, but, you know, we’ll come back. So what do you guys where do you see Beautiful Angle in 5 years? What’s what do you think?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:43:20]:

Doing the same thing we’re doing right now.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:43:23]:

Just grinding it out, baby.

Scott Cowan [00:43:26]:

No. That doesn’t sound like fun the way you just said that. So I don’t think it’s grinding, you know. I think, you know, I I gotta I think

 Tom Llewellyn [00:43:32]:

it is honestly, I would disagree with you. I think it is.

Scott Cowan [00:43:37]:

Really?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:43:38]:

Why? Why? I don’t mean it in a bad way. I just think Lance and I both are grinders. We are guys that if you say, see this cart full of gravel, it weighs 3 pounds and our truck broke down and we have to move it 5 miles down the road. We’re the guys that you want on the back of the cart. We we we don’t mind grunting out words. And I think that’s one of the reasons we get along. As you’re like, all right, we got to do this thing. All right, let’s go do it.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:44:08]:

And and I think that’s that part of our personalities is one of the reasons this thing is still rolling. It’s it’s we’re not we’re not trying to be the star that explodes in the sky, you know, we are trying to be the guys who just Cowan keep doing good work and keep doing good work, you know. Yeah. Less David Bowie, more Tom Petty. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:44:30]:

So going back to the work ethic and the grind, can you guys walk me through the printing? So you got the design all laid out. You’ve done letterpress or you’ve done a magnesium plate or all that, but so now it’s time to print. How long does it take you guys to do a 100 and 20 posters?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:44:54]:

To actually run a 120 pieces of paper through our press, which is, what’s called a proof press. It was actually in in the old days. It was actually used for proofing before it wouldn’t be moved to a bigger press for production runs. Okay. Our proof our press is a challenge proof press. The what was the question again?

Scott Cowan [00:45:26]:

How long the the printing process, how how long does it does it take you guys Oh, yeah. More than a day? Is it is it So Do we get together and have beers and print?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:45:36]:

So yeah. That’s right. So, to run a 120 sheets of paper through the press takes a couple hours. Couple hours. Do that. But some of our posters may be up to 6 colors, so you are, you know, that’s 6 runs of paper through the press And so each Wenatchee color gets a run. So

 Tom Llewellyn [00:46:03]:

So And before you’re doing that, you have to And before you’re doing that, you have to concept the image, and you have to write the words. And then if you’re doing it on a linoleum cut, which is what we do more often than anything else, you have to transfer the image to the linoleum, and then you have to carve the linoleum. And then if you have a 3 color thing, that means you’re carving 3 different plates and then you have to mount that to wood. And that all that stuff put together is still the least labor intensive part of the whole thing because the real labor is that you have to buy a press, you have to find we have how many how many typefaces do you have in your studio, Lance?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:46:44]:

More than I can count actually.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:46:45]:

Yeah. And a lot And so you have

 Tom Llewellyn [00:46:47]:

so you have to all those

 Tom Llewellyn [00:46:50]:

Yeah. So you have to find you have to go find all this stuff. You have to reach out and build networks and communities and you have to Lance dedicates an entire floor of his house to this. People come over, we invite people over to print with us on a regular basis, and they’ll come over and they’ll turn the crank on the press, and that and that poster magically comes out the other end and they’re like, oh, this is so fun. But you don’t realize and then and then when you’re done, you have you have 500 letters of of 4 different typefaces, and they’re they’re they’re tiny. Right? They’re they’re quarter of an inch high. You have to figure out where to put them all Cowan. And then you have to put in all of these spacers around everything to lock it in.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:47:31]:

I mean, it is it is really labor intensive.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:47:35]:

Yeah. It’s like doing, a puzzle every week, you know. It takes you hours to do and

 Tom Llewellyn [00:47:42]:

But you don’t just get dump the pieces back in the box. You have to dump the pieces back in 75 different little boxes.

Scott Cowan [00:47:49]:

Right. So but the the actual act of printing though is a couple of hours per color.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:47:56]:

Oh.

Scott Cowan [00:47:57]:

Alright. Now they’ve Scott do the how long does it take to dry the ink? I mean, can you do 3 colors in a night? Can you guys put 6 hours of work? I’m oversimplifying, but could you put 6 hours of work in and do 3 colors, or is this a couple 3 night project now?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:48:13]:

Yeah. We can do basically 1 1 color a night. And they are relatively dry in the morning usually.

Scott Cowan [00:48:21]:

Okay. So if you’re doing 3 colors, you gotta plan 3 evenings, probably evenings worth of work around everything else, your your personal lives and all that stuff. And then you’ve Scott, like, you, Tom, the the design, the layout, the the carving, all of that is, let’s

 Tom Llewellyn [00:48:41]:

use the paper. I mean, it’s just so much it’s so much stuff.

Scott Cowan [00:48:45]:

Well, let’s I’m gonna ask Scott what let’s go back to that Tacoma music poster. From, hours of layout standpoint, how long did that poster take to once you’ve hammered out the idea, then that could have taken you instrumental amount of time. But how long did it take you to do the physical layout for that poster?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:49:09]:

Because I created it digitally to create the plate, I would say it probably took a good portion of a day to do the layout and get it right and then, figuring out how it goes in connection with the analog plate made and so forth. But,

 Tom Llewellyn [00:49:39]:

Right. There is another poster we did probably 2 years in or something like that called Blender, which has in it the entire page and it’s a big poster, it’s our largest size that we print. And, it has a hand carved image, but then it has the entire page is filled with type. And, and so much there’s so many words on it that we had to keep switching typefaces because you’re like, well, we are now out of ease and, so we need to switch over to a different typeface. So it’s this it it looks like a type sampler Scott of. It has all these different typefaces just sort of mashed together in a in a really beautiful way, but but that was that was backbreakingly labor intensive. And there’s probably still lines from that poster that haven’t gotten back into the type cases because

 Tom Llewellyn [00:50:34]:

That’s possible.

Scott Cowan [00:50:39]:

The there was 1 poster I saw that was like a Lucky Charms box that was flattened out.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:50:46]:

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:50:48]:

How how did you how’d you do that one? Was that that you took, like, a digital, plate and then letter pressed over it, or what did what did we how’d you do that one?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:51:04]:

I’ve been collecting cereal boxes for a long time, and, I’m not joking. And we cut them open to make a place to put a poster. And so they’re actually on cereal boxes. So everyone’s different. And that was a 2 color job. It was, so, you know, it was for a year of the tiger and so the headline was, like, it’s great or whatever. And, we had an image of a vintage engraving of a tiger head, kind of from a circus poster crashing through the paper. And that was our, image that we overprinted on actual cereal boxes.

Scott Cowan [00:51:45]:

So you overprinted on actual cereal boxes. Oh my god. Okay. Tom, this is directed to you because earlier when we talked, you mentioned you’re a a baseball fan. Have you guys ever done any posters that are related to Bay Tacoma baseball?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:52:02]:

I don’t think we have, but I like that idea. We there’s another if I can give a shout out to another great art project in Tacoma, there’s a there’s this project that we love called Grit City Magazine. In fact, Lance’s design studio, Rotator Creative, does a lot of the design on that magazine. But I do have an article in the next issue about legendary Tacoma Giants pitcher Gaylord Perry. So I I do love I do love that stuff.

Scott Cowan [00:52:38]:

I have a I think it’s a 1960 Washington National.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:52:42]:

I Cowan I

Scott Cowan [00:52:44]:

Go ahead? Sorry. I cut you off. I think you should do a Tacoma. I think there should be a and a beautiful ankle there should be a beautiful ankle to Scott in baseball inspired poster in the future. I think that would be really cool. I was saying I was cutting you off. I have a 1960 or 61 Washington National Bank Gaylord Perry Tacoma Giants baseball card somewhere in my collection. And I just found out last week.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:53:11]:

Cool. Yeah. It’s very cool.

Scott Cowan [00:53:13]:

And I found out last last week that my junior high history teacher, who pitched for the Tacoma Giants, John Prigenzer, just passed away, that he he pitched for the he pitched for the Tacoma Giants, and then he pitched in San Francisco for a couple seasons, and he was kind of a cult favorite. And, anyway, my love for Tacoma baseball runs really deep, and I I think it’d be a really cool, there’s my there’s my pitch. Do that, please.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:53:44]:

I’ll buy it.

Scott Cowan [00:53:45]:

I’ll buy posters.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:53:46]:

I like it.

Scott Cowan [00:53:48]:

So I think, you know, I think this is just a really cool thing. I like the fact that one thing I heard was you you guys have a poster sale, but you give the proceeds to charity. Right?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:54:02]:

We do. We give a Scott. Actually, a lot of our posters are given away to a number of nonprofits and so forth for them for their auctions or whatnot. But then every holiday season, we have a big party where we sell all of our, kind of back Scott. They’re really Cowan, and, people come and get the poster they missed long ago. And all that money goes to a charity that we’ve picked for that year. And then, usually, we can get some corporate matching dollars as well, so that’s a a great benefit.

Scott Cowan [00:54:38]:

That’s that’s wonderful you guys do that. So what as we wrap this up, what didn’t I ask you about Beautiful Angle that you think we should get out there? Is there something we overlooked?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:54:53]:

One thing I can think of that I think is part of the story is, we have an incredible collection of vintage engravings that have come from print shops that have closed down over the years. And one in particular called us up and said, yeah. We’re we’re we we’ve been in in Tacoma for 3 generations, and we’re closing up shop. And we have all these to come a engraving and to come a centric engravings, and we were just gonna throw them away. I’ve been wondering if you guys might want them. You know? And so that’s, like, incredible opportunity to, like, just delve into the history. You know? I’ve heard through these artifacts, and, we try to repurpose into posters and find ways to use them that are unique and interesting and kind of weave the history into the future.

Scott Cowan [00:55:49]:

So of this these old engravings, what caught your eye? What like, share with share with us a couple that you think are really quite interesting and intriguing.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:56:01]:

They they go back all the way to things like old sailing ships and, old Coca Cola ads and and lots and lots of of faces of like you just have remember this wasn’t art. It was it was advertising. Right?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:56:18]:

Newsletters or ad

 Tom Llewellyn [00:56:19]:

Yeah. Newsletters. Lots and lots of, like, faces of realtors and insurance agents and things like that. And but and then they go all the way up into probably the eighties, like one of our one of my favorites. In fact, one of my favorite posters we did, we used this old, and their color separations too so there there’s like multiple things of like a 1972 Camaro. And it’s just this kind of beautiful kitschy car thing and you’re like, well, well, we gotta make a Camaro poster because that’s too cool. And, so, like, on that one, we worked with an artist named Chris Sharp, who does sign painting. He also does, like, you know, stenciling of cars.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:57:00]:

We got this cool sort of vintage stenciling style on, like, over the top of this Camaro. It’s really it’s, you know, there’s some just really cool stuff in there.

Scott Cowan [00:57:09]:

K.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:57:09]:

Mhmm. Yeah. There’s just some amazing imagery. You should probably mention the wrestlers, Tom.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:57:18]:

Yeah. I’m I’m I’m gonna say this in a way that I’m sure is gonna offend somebody because I’m not sure how to say it but it’s we have this huge collection of midget wrestlers. So I apologize before and after that if I use the wrong terminology there. But, I don’t know if if we could use them or not. We did we did reach out to a local celebrity bookstore owner that you should talk to named Scott p Flaherty who runs King’s Books and is sort of the central figure of the country’s literary scene. And he picked up these wrestling images and could name some of their names. It was like he’s like, oh, that’s Werner Krunker or something like that. And you’re like, what? And we turn it over and sure enough written on there on a piece of tape is the is the name of this female, wrestler of, you know, unique size.

Scott Cowan [00:58:16]:

Yeah.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:58:17]:

Yeah. So but, you know, this was some this for some event that was probably held at, you know, at the Tacoma armory or the UPS field house or something back in the day, you know.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:58:30]:

We’ve got some great ones of, like, a vintage, national park brochure, you know, rack brochure or something, and these great images are from the forties or fifties probably. So it’s a wide ranging collection that we love to kinda dive into.

 Tom Llewellyn [00:58:47]:

We had one that we did on this poster and it was it was an image of, somebody, you know, doing something with trees like they were marking trees to cut them Cowan. And we took a picture of it, my wife took a picture of it and used Google image search where you can use to, like, search images online and sure enough found this thing and it’s this from this old Weyerhaeuser calendar of like the glory of stumps and, you know, why clear cutting is so great for nature and all this sort of weird stuff because the favorite image of the calendar is this family having this beautiful picnic around a stump. Yep.

Scott Cowan [00:59:32]:

So type in engravings take up a lot of space. How Tom mentioned you you’ve donated I’ll say donated a floor of your home to this. I mean, how much space is this all this take up?

 Tom Llewellyn [00:59:53]:

I would I would think, probably 800 square feet is, where we have our stuff, and, there there is a real niche culture in the letterpress and book arts community. So when when a print shop goes out of business and word gets around, there’s kind of this rescue rescue effort because we don’t want this glorious wood type to go to an antique dealer where you can buy your initials and put it on your cubicle in a corporate office. You know? Right. Because then it becomes less useful. Right? And so we’ve had the opportunity to collect, quite a collection of type and, various types of everything down from 4 point lead type all the way up to, you know, foot, 1 foot size lettering that you can put on the breast and the everything in between.

Scott Cowan [01:00:52]:

Wow. So my last question about the press, I do wanna how what size posters do you guys typically run? How big can this proof press go?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:01:03]:

Challenge proof press. This particular one, has a print impressioning area of 15 by 20 four. K. So that’s the largest poster size we can really do. We have, we vary our poster sizes from anywhere from, like, 13 by 19 on up to a 14 by 24 size ish.

Scott Cowan [01:01:28]:

Okay. I lied. I just have a question.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:01:30]:

Realize is that if you if if you make something 11, 11 by 17, it does not look interesting. And it you have to get away from that size because it looks like it came off a printer even if it didn’t. So you have to change the dimensions from that to get bigger or longer and narrower or something.

Scott Cowan [01:01:51]:

K.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:01:52]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:01:53]:

I lied. There was another post or poster that I saw. I wanna say it was a monkey that was kinda die cut that you guys did.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:02:02]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [01:02:03]:

How did you do walk me through that one.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:02:05]:

Yep.

Scott Cowan [01:02:06]:

Because that’s that’s certainly an interesting shape and size, I mean, caught my eye.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:02:12]:

Mhmm. We do a poster every year for this other in in conjunction with another project, if you haven’t talked to the Monkey Shines people, we can connect you to that, this this Tacoma citywide glass, art glass art treasure hunt that happens every year around Chinese New Year. And, so we’ve done so that was for the, of course, Year of the Monkey, which we’ve done two of those now because we’ve been around long enough where we’re cycling through the years the 2nd time. We just did our finished our 2nd Year of the Dragon last month or at the beginning of February. And, yeah, so that one we so that’s on kind of a paper called chipboard. Lance, tell me if I’m saying anything wrong here.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:03:01]:

Yep. That’s right.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:03:02]:

Which is sort of brown craft, you know, it’s it’s basically the stuff that cereal boxes are made out of. Okay. Hard wood. And so we laid out a bunch of type that, if you could see the entire poster, it’s just all the sort of nonsense monkey related type like, you know, lines from King of the Swingers, from Jungle Book, and things like that.

Scott Cowan [01:03:24]:

K.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:03:25]:

And then Lance is gonna throw you the best.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:03:29]:

And then we just printed sheets of that. So it’s just this random type across the sheet that related to monkeys’ reference references. And then, our friend Dustin Harland at C4 Labs took that stack of posters and laser cut them into the shapes of a barrel of monkeys monkeys. And so they interlock Cowan they can hang from trees and whatnot, and we gave away both the positive, shape and the negative shape into the community. That was one of the frustrating, hanging moments in our hanging history because people would come up like they were rabid about it, and they’re like, no. No. No. I want the positive one.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:04:17]:

I don’t want the negative one. You gotta trade me, you know. And you’re just like, come on. You’re getting a free poster, dude.

Scott Cowan [01:04:22]:

Oh my gosh.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:04:23]:

But, it was very popular and, fun fun to do. So those were laser cut into those shapes.

Scott Cowan [01:04:30]:

Okay. That’s I haven’t looked at all your posters, but have you done other laser cut posters?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:04:40]:

We’ve done laser cut type. Lance’s brother was kind enough to to do some laser cutting, of some some letters we were missing for typefaces and things like that. And even, Lance designed an entire large letter typeface that, and then that his brother then Scott out for us. So we are not purists in the sense of like, we’re only gonna use, 1950 and prior era technology, we’re happy to mix it up.

Scott Cowan [01:05:13]:

No. And that’s Actually, that’s

 Tom Llewellyn [01:05:14]:

a really good point, Tom, because I think what yeah. One of the things that drives me as an artist is I don’t wanna regurgitate the past. I’m not doing letterpress because it’s nostalgic. I’m doing it because it’s a cool, artist tool, and what can we do with it that’d be unique and fun and interesting? And what could we how can we make plates or images with in one of our famous posters, It actually has some line work that’s just solder that’s glued down to a board to make a line, you know, an interesting line or something like that. And we so we’re very experimental on how we approach letterpress and want to use the craft to do new things.

Scott Cowan [01:05:57]:

Okay. Last question. Promise. Is there a day or a week of the month that you typically post these or is it random?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:06:09]:

Yeah. We we’ve sort of set aside Tuesday nights for both printing and generally distributing posters too.

Scott Cowan [01:06:18]:

K. So Tuesday nights is the night to be out looking. Now you did say to follow on that, though, you did say every now and then you kind of you kind of announce it out to the to your fans that you’re doing it, or or is it secret?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:06:34]:

Yeah. We’re not afraid to do that. I mean, we like the that’s it’s actually a challenge because, Scott, we use Facebook and Instagram, but both of those social channels are starting to skew older. And Facebook, particularly, where we have our by far biggest following, but it, you know, it’s skewing till middle age and later, which limits your ability to to reach out to younger people. And I would love to figure out how to crack that nut. I don’t know how to do it. TikTok or something. I don’t know.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:05]:

TikTok dance, Tom.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:06]:

I don’t know if I could stand it.

Scott Cowan [01:07:08]:

I can barely see how

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:09]:

to do it. They’re going to have

Scott Cowan [01:07:10]:

to do the dance. I think TikTok Oh. Oh. Now this is an audio format, so nobody can see the 3 the 3 of us. We are not TikTok demographic, but I think that your I so I I think TikTok’s where you probably would go and get get those eyeballs, you know, those younger Tacoma residents that

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:43]:

you have It sounds horrible, Scott. It sounds horrible.

Scott Cowan [01:07:45]:

I know it does, but, Tom, you have kids. Can you enlist your children?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:52]:

Not hearing me. I mean,

 Tom Llewellyn [01:07:55]:

there you go. Media.

Scott Cowan [01:07:56]:

Yeah. I don’t know. Just it yeah. I’ve been on TikTok, like, twice, and I didn’t get it. I’m I’m not I’m I’m firmly entrenched in Facebook. Oh god. Oh my gosh. Alright.

Scott Cowan [01:08:13]:

Guys, Lance, I have 1 last question for you, and then we’ll let you guys go. This is a very important question. I ask it of every guest. Tom’s already answered it. I’m not gonna ask you to guess Tom’s answer. This has to be your answer. Cake or pie, and why? Why, though, is the important part.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:08:37]:

Mhmm. It’s time for pie. Mhmm. K. I would say, pie is simple, you can make it from berries you find on the side of the road, it’s tasty, it’s satisfying and very comforting. And My mom would actually make me boysenberry pie every now and then for my birthday. So

Scott Cowan [01:09:02]:

So are you a, like, a fruit pie? Is that is, like, berry pie, is that your thing? I mean

 Tom Llewellyn [01:09:11]:

pretty much all pie.

Scott Cowan [01:09:12]:

Okay. Alright. Guys, where can people find more about Beautiful Angle? Where would you like people to go look? And we’ll make sure it’s in the show notes, but why don’t you tell them where to go?

 Tom Llewellyn [01:09:25]:

Yeah. Beautiful angle.com is our website. You can see all our entire collection of posters there and whatever still for sale is on there. And you can link to our socials from there as well. But join our Facebook group, too. We love new members on our Facebook group.

Scott Cowan [01:09:41]:

Mhmm.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:09:42]:

Yeah. Or follow us on Instagram at Beautiful Angle Tacoma.

Scott Cowan [01:09:46]:

Beautiful Angle Tacoma. Okay. Excellent. Lance, Tom, thank you both so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Really appreciate it and keep maybe we’ll have this conversation another 20 years again. I mean, that would be pretty well, at my age, it’d be pretty amazing, but it would be very cool. And you guys doing this, that’s I really, really kudos to both of you. I think it’s awesome.

Scott Cowan [01:10:11]:

So thank you.

 Tom Llewellyn [01:10:13]:

Thanks, Scott. Thanks so much.