Thesis 2025 / Nelson Liu

As a foreigner, one observation I’ve made since coming to the Twin Cities is that many people I’ve met have gone through a lot of trauma—whether it's substance abuse, religious pressure, or just growing up in a tough environment, it’s a common theme I see in the Midwest. This encourages me to use what I’m good at—hand-drawn illustration—as a medium to elevate personal history and tell the tales of the local folks.

Naturally, I want this supportive practice to be part of a community, so I decided to go back to my early love of album covers and music-related visuals, making that the focus of my work. Combining my passion for metal music with supporting local communities, my thesis is about creating music flyers and posters for local metal bands' live shows.

There are eight different flyers and posters displayed on the main wall. Each design is based on the band’s soundscape, ambience, and some research into their aesthetic preferences. For instance, Decapitation for Eudaemon was made for Eudaemon, an atmospheric black metal band—a genre often tied to forest and nature imagery. Through their social media, I noticed they also frequently share feminist and witch-like illustrations, so the final piece blends those two themes. Another example is Ravens for Oriska—the flowing, liquid-like texture reflects the band’s slower tempo, while the bustling ravens and the sad human head is drawn from lyrical themes of their demo tracks, Sulfur and Helium, which describe “the kind of anxiety where the mind feels detached from the body, bordering on a longing for death.”

The variation in the wall display emphasizes each band’s individuality. I used different techniques—ink pointillism, experimental screen printing, risograph—to reflect this. I also created custom fonts, like the band title in Hands for The Rope, and experimented with different text layouts so that each poster feels like its own little world.

To tie everything together, the installation builds an overall atmosphere meant to replicate an imagined record store—one that embraces different kinds of bands and fosters a stronger sense of community. I’ve included a vitrine box showcasing original
hand-drawn sketches for the posters and flyers, as well as milk crates filled with records to further enhance the record store setting. It’s a space meant to invite people to pay closer attention to the applied art that surrounds everyday life. This setup also reflects my approach: using these posters as proof of concept to reach out to bands, explore possible commissions, form connections, and take part in the community by documenting more local music.

Lastly, from a creator’s standpoint, even though each piece varies in medium and display, I want my own gothic and dark sensibility to be present throughout. In this context, it makes sense. To be gothic is not just to be strange or horrifying—it's about finding the beauty in the grotesque. It's to find the gem covered by trauma and abuse, about digging out the truth and the beauty among the Midwesterners.

Website: nelsonliu.xyz

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