You might not know his face or his name, but if you’ve spent any time in Fishtown over the past year or so, odds are good you’ve come in contact with at least one of Jim Anderson’s gnarly collage monsters and Sharpied, corpse-painted visages both indoors and out.
Working the sickness of his monstrosities under the name GRIMGRIMGRIM, Jim is the guy to call to create flyers and posters for, among others, Flash Mob Productions, who have been throwing an overwhelming majority of the worthwhile, touring-level rap, metal, punk and hardcore shows in the area (the majority of which are at Kung Fu Necktie).
Jim Anderson/Matthew Albasi
Having moved to town from Boston a decade ago, Jim’s first foray into the role of artist-who-musicians-call goes back to, as he tells it, “this weird connection I had with a friend who was friends with Lush Life who raps down in South Philly. He messaged me and said, ‘Hey, you should do this video; it’s with Killer Mike’. So I did that video [for the song ‘This Ecstatic Cult’] for them, and it worked out good because Dave got in touch with me about doing show posters for them.”
The Dave in question is Dave Kiss, who we have to thank both for these unforgettable shows and for Jim Anderson’s nasty colors covering the town. However, Jim’s logo — a melting black metal face — had already been working on it, and was going to complete that work, flyers or no flyers.
In spite of what he’s known for, Jim is not originally from a digital-image background. Though it’s his digital skills that call these creatures into being through mixed-media collages which include his own drawings, he started all this as a man of letters. “When I went to college I did typography and then all the image stuff just kind of comes together after that. I do draw, but it’s just easier to do it digital.”
A few of Jim Anderson’s posters./Matthew Albasi
That ease matters here particularly. In contrast to the self-imposed or nonexistent deadlines other artists enjoy, these shows happen on a specific date and only have so much time before that for promotion. “It’s still work. Sometimes I’m really bad at it and I’m late with stuff.” Jim’s self-directed work, equally soaked in that macabre coolness, has haunted the walls of the Rocket Cat and the El Bar, among other venues.
What shines through all the skulls, though, is the sheer joy put into each piece. “I just like making them because I think they’re kinda funny. There’s really no big, dark thing behind it; it’s just, ‘Oh, look at this Lana Del Ray Baphomet.’ If you describe to somebody what you’re doing it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, I can’t come over right now. I’m doing this poster for Bongzilla and it’s a weed-demon with an Illuminati head,’ and you say that out loud and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, this is cool.’”
More of Jim’s work can be found at grimgrimgrim.net and @fishtownisthebastard on Instagram. He is currently working on a poster for D.R.I. at the Voltage Lounge and could not be more stoked about it. •
