If you’re in the Twin Cities, do yourself a favor and don’t miss this week’s City Pages (December 19, 2007). Kevin Cannon has done an absolutely stunning spread on pages 50 and 55 titled The Twin Cities Rock Atlas that has to be seen to be believed. It highlights numerous music oriented locations around the Twin Cities. It isn’t currently online, which is good, because only print could do this justice. The text for the piece is written by City Pages’ Peter S. Scholtes (and written well, although it unavoidably and painfully covers the art!)

One of the most outstanding things about Kevin’s work is his vast skill at distilling things down to the bare minimum of what they need to be effective. This has never been more evident than in this piece. If you think of icons of Minneapolis, you probably think of the big Grain Belt Bottle cap, the cherry in the spoon, and maybe First Ave. (pictured in the tiny excerpt above from the spread). This spread makes it seem like icons are everywhere, as Kevin beautifully distills the architectural souls of probably a minimum of 50 Twin Cities structures. Not many cartoonists could pull this off, and Kevin makes it look easy.

Happily, City Pages is apparently going to make it into a poster… I don’t yet know how they will be making them available, but I sure want one.

I just got an update from Kevin on the posters:

I think CP is going to give away the posters for free.
Word is that they’ll be available at the venues that
are on the poster. I’m working on a (Big Time Attic) blog post that
shows the process of making the poster, and there
you’ll be able to see all the easter eggs hiding
behind the text (actually there aren’t many easter
eggs, but I do have a little Conspiracy guy standing
next to diamond’s)…