Exhibit features historic fliers

Students see fliers on kiosks around campus or in store windows, and may never think anything of them. But to many people, promotional fliers for local rock bands are a fine art.\nEric Weddle, a local aficionado of Bloomington's musical history, has collected some of those fliers for a gallery exhibit at the John Waldron Arts Center. He's calling it "Post No Bills," and through it he said he hopes to share his enthusiasm for the music of Bloomington's past and present.\n"There's so much history here," said Weddle of the fliers he's collected for the show.\nThe idea for "Post No Bills" came to Weddle last year, but he said he felt the time wasn't right. When the city began cracking down on event fliering this summer, the idea came up again. \nWhen the opportunity to hold the exhibition in tandem with local rock festival BloomingtonFest, occurring this weekend, presented itself, Weddle decided to go ahead with the show.\n"When the fliering ban happened, it seemed like the best time," Weddle said.\nWeddle has been collecting fliers for about five years, and portions of his collection will be included in the show. \nBut, he said, what made the show possible were the contributions from other Bloomington residents who had also been saving fliers over the years -- in some cases, for decades.\nHe found that interest in the project ran high among like-minded Bloomington music enthusiasts.\n"The response has been huge," he said. "Lots of people have had huge collections. They spent hours with me (going through fliers)."\nOne flier fan who contributed to the project is Lee Williams. \nWilliams began booking acts at Second Story Nightclub, 201 S. College Ave., in 1982. Williams spent 18 years at Second Story, a Bloomington club that showcases alternative rock, booking bands for the club and designing many of the fliers promoting the shows.\nWilliams has been a part of Bloomington's musical history during the last 20 years. For him, the fliers aren't just a document of performances of forgotten bands, they're the story of his life. \n"Everything about a flier will trigger a memory," Williams said. "Every one of these is a memory for me."\nFor Williams, fliers are integral to the survival of any local music scene.\n"They're cheap -- all you had to do was put a flier in the right place in downtown Bloomington -- it immediately creates this word-of-mouth thing that travels very quickly," he said.\nWilliams designed fliers before computer graphics and design programs made flier design quick and easy. Fliers were harder to make, but were ultimately more distinctively personal creations.\n"Those were time consuming," he said, remembering the painstaking process of designing and creating fliers by hand.\nHe said he is glad the exhibit will give people who may have never given fliers a second look a chance to see them in a more standard artistic setting.\n"People will be able to objectively get a sense of the quality of work over the last 30 years," he said. "The artistic quality in Bloomington is so high -- we're known as an arts town."\nWeddle said he hopes the show will raise appreciation of both fliers as an art form and show them a side of Bloomington they might have never otherwise known existed.\n"A lot of work goes into these fliers," he said. "Hopefully, (the show) will make people more aware of Bloomington's musical history."\n"Post No Bills" will appear in the Rosemary P. Miller Gallery of the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St., from Aug. 29 - Sept. 2. The hours are 1-6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 1-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. An opening reception tonight will be held tonight from 5:30-7 p.m.