New from PhanArt in 2011 is our weekly Friday Feature: This Week in PhanArt History. Each piece of art we share is from days of Phish in the past, typically from the 1.0 and 2.0 eras, something of note that fans of all ages can appreciate that is featured in the book PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish, with some commentary on the piece by PhanArt Pete.

This watercolor piece, ‘Bliss‘ from Derek Finholt, a Minnesota native living in Salem, Oregon who painted this piece. He saw his first show at the Target Center in Minneapolis, 11-13-96. At the show he tried drawing a few scenes with his eyes closed, to see what might happen.  The first two just looked like scribbles, but the third one was started right after they started playing, picturing the band in his head and this is what it looked like (hence the old, and current stage layout.)

To copy it exactly, he used plexiglass as a printing plate so he could trace the image, then flip the plexi over and retrace it (to account for it being mirrored in printing).  “Bliss” was printed in a S/N edition of 8 with one A/P, all on Okawara, a thin Japanese mulberry paper.  There is also one A/P on a much heavier cream colored watercolor paper (the first proof). The Okawara paper size is 12 x 17, with deckeled edges, and the platemark measures 6 x 8 3/4.  Color was added by hand with watercolor pencils.