In summer 2024 I was asked to redesign the front of the American Bar in Belfast.
This would have been an easier task if the American Bar wasn’t my favorite bar in the city.
I knew that I wanted to work in white paint pens against the already pretty dark blue of the exterior but coming up with the design was a bit of a challenge as, although the bar is called The American I wanted to steer clear of the star spangled banner.
I have been listening to a lot of The Fall of Civilizations Podcast (listen to it if you haven’t because it is amazing) and there are a couple of episodes on the fall of the Aztecs and the Incas at the hands of the Europeans. These episodes paint a a vivid picture of the weirdness of the out of context event of two cultures kept apart by a vast dark ocean of space and time coming across one another like something out of a first encounters B-movie.
These podcasts reminded me that The American could be any of the Americas and not just the bit in the north so I started work on a surrealist tale of the discovery, a journey not of plunder and destruction but of pints and tunes.
There are a lot of nice little hidden details in this piece but to get a proper idea of its scale you need to pop down for a pint.
Click on the image below for a larger view of the piece.
