Screens n’ Suds is a locally based and charity focused organization that provides attendees throughout the Richmond, Charlottesville, and Harrisonburg areas with a refreshingly original donation experience. In an effort to raise funds for various local and national charities, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Virginia Association of Free Clinics, Screens n’ Suds holds several events every year, all featuring a combination of music, small batch craft beers, and beer-inspired screen printed artwork. The group has seen a substantial increase in support since it was first started, and, as a result, has expanded from what was originally a single event in the Richmond area to an annual weeklong series of events across the state. 2013 marks Screens n’ Suds’ fifth consecutive year of operations, and the group hopes to continue the mission stated on their website, screensnsuds.com: “To unite communities through the appreciation of craft beer and screen printed art while raising money for the National MS Society and other charities.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW ISSUE OF RVA MAGAZINE!
Screens n’ Suds is a locally based and charity focused organization that provides attendees throughout the Richmond, Charlottesville, and Harrisonburg areas with a refreshingly original donation experience. In an effort to raise funds for various local and national charities, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Virginia Association of Free Clinics, Screens n’ Suds holds several events every year, all featuring a combination of music, small batch craft beers, and beer-inspired screen printed artwork. The group has seen a substantial increase in support since it was first started, and, as a result, has expanded from what was originally a single event in the Richmond area to an annual weeklong series of events across the state. 2013 marks Screens n’ Suds’ fifth consecutive year of operations, and the group hopes to continue the mission stated on their website, screensnsuds.com: “To unite communities through the appreciation of craft beer and screen printed art while raising money for the National MS Society and other charities.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW ISSUE OF RVA MAGAZINE!
By Mike Budai
The project was started in 2009 as the brainchild of co-founders Brian Gearing and Ric Hersh, in an effort to combine the duo’s mutual passions for beer, art, and music. The idea for Screens n’ Suds was developed after Gearing and Hersh, both longtime fans of the band Phish, met on the online conversation forum Phishposters.com, a website dedicated to the sharing and discussion of the band’s poster artwork. Soon, Gearing and Hersh discovered that they lived only three blocks away from each other. After realizing they shared not only a love for music and art but also an appreciation for specialty craft beer, the two friends began developing a concept that would combine all of their mutual interests.
Screens n’ Suds was originally intended to be an offshoot of Brian Gearing’s previous project, The Gig Gallery, an online web store that specialized in the sale of limited-edition signed and numbered screen-print concert posters. The plan was to hold a poster show featuring work by various screenprinting artists from around the Richmond area. After struggling to find a venue interested in hosting the event, the team was approached by Gearing’s friend Jason Bruner, owner and CEO of the Virginia Beach-based promotion/management company QuiVa Productions. He was interested in hosting the event at the downtown Richmond location of Capital Ale House, a restaurant and bar that specializes in local and imported craft beers. This pairing, along with Hersh’s role as one of the founding members of the Richmond Beer Lovers organization, led to Gearing and Hersh’s decision to incorporate craft beer into the project itself.
The name for the project was inspired by Sam Verrill and Jess Harris’s group, Screens n’ Spokes, established in Philadelphia in 2007. Screens n’ Spokes combines limited issue screen printed poster art with a love for cycling, as opposed to a love for specialty craft beer. After Gearing and Hersh had developed a fully formed concept for their project and had secured Capital Ale House as a location to host the events, they contacted Verrill about using the same outline for their own name. Verrill decided to allow the team to borrow the name, under the condition that they donate a percentage of their profits to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the charity that Screens n’ Spokes was established to support. Gearing and Hersh, who both have relatives who suffer from MS, agreed.
By Matt Leling
Although the first year’s event was not as successful as the team had hoped, they still managed to raise around $1000, and continued to make plans for the future. For the second year, the group made a number of changes. The decisions to make the event free with a suggested donation; bring in Marco Benevento, an experimental rock and jazz pianist and songwriter from New York, to perform at the end of the event; and to feature artwork from increasingly well-known artists (including David Welker from SoHo, New York) increased the attendance from around 50 people for their first event in 2009 to 200 people in 2010. Hersh emphasized that making the event free was one of the most critical changes that was made after the first year. “Obviously if you don’t have a price tag on something, you’re more likely to get people out,” he said.
Eventually the group’s main event was moved to Gallery 5, a multi-dimensional gallery of visual and performing arts located at 200 W. Marshall Street. Gearing explained that this move allowed the project to expand and diversify the beer menu for the events. “Having the event at Gallery 5… I think that was what really brought us to a point where people were starting to know about us,” he said. “At Capital Ale House, it was kind of difficult, because they’ve got their beer menu and they have their beers that they sell. We didn’t have a whole lot of freedom to pick the beers that we wanted to pour at the event. They helped us out as much as they could, but their hands were kind of tied. But then, once we moved it to Gallery 5, it made things a lot easier and gave us a lot more freedom to be a little bit more creative and get some of those more interesting, off the wall beers that we wanted to get.”
The brew selection for the 2013 event series includes contributions from five different breweries across the central and southern Virginia areas. Blue Mountain Brewery, which is located about half an hour outside of Charlottesville in Afton, Virginia, developed the largest batch of beer to be featured at Screens n’ Suds this year. This beer, dubbed Foxy Mama, is a red tripel that was hopped with French Strisselspalt. Itty Bitty Press, a Richmond-based screenprinting and design shop that has done work for Screens n’ Suds in the past, was commissioned to provide the label art for this year’s Blue Mountain contribution. Foxy Mama is the only beer in this year’s series that will be available to the general public following the Screens n’ Suds main event.
By Team 8
For their contribution, Richmond’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery combined three different stouts that were aged individually in Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, and Maker’s Mark Bourbon barrels, blended together with a Belgian Strong Ale, and then left to age for about two months in a rum barrel. This beer, aptly named Menagerie, is nearly 12% alcohol by volume, the strongest beer in this year’s series. Norfolk’s O’Connor Brewing Company prepared an imperial milk stout called Mermaid’s Milk. The label artwork for Mermaid’s Milk was donated by local designer and artist Ashley Phipps. Three Brothers Brewing Company, based out of Harrisonburg, brewed an India Pale Ale (IPA) with Brettanomyces (Brett) yeast, which was titled Meet Brett IPA. Brettanomyces is a wild yeast which gives beer a slightly sour and earthy flavor. Label art for this beer was done by Matt Leech.
The final, and arguably most unique, beer contribution for the 2013 series was created by Richmond brewery Strangeways. Starting with the same base beer, an oaked Belgian Tripel, Strangeways brewed three separate batches, which were fermented independently with three different types of yeast. These beers, collectively known as the Wyrd Sisters, were each named after tragic heroines from Shakespeare plays. The Cordelia beer, named for King Lear’s long-suffering daughter, was created with Celis yeast, which is known to give beer a slightly tart flavor. The Ophelia beer, named for Hamlet’s tragic, heartbroken lover, was fermented with the La Chouffe yeast, and is extremely pale. The last of the Wyrd Sisters was developed with a Trappist yeast, which often produces a very malty beer with a ripe flavor and some fruity characteristics, and is named after Othello’s doomed wife, Desdemona. Christian Leaf, the art director at Richmond based marketing and advertising company Gain Incorporated, designed the label art for the Wyrd Sisters beers.
The artwork for the 2013 Screens n’ Suds series includes between eight and twelve new prints, a slightly smaller edition than previous years. However, the lack of quantity for this year’s run certainly does not imply there will be a lack of quality. In fact, according to Hersh, who directs the Screens side of the project, this reduction in the number of new prints was intentional. “One of the challenges we always face is having so much beer art,” said Hersh. “We don’t want to over-saturate our own market.”
With contributions from a number of new and returning artists, the 2013 edition of Screens n’ Suds included artwork from Sean S. Berg, Ashley Phipps, Christian Leaf, Brian Mandeville, arts collective Bomb Proof, Andrew Stronge, Itty Bitty Press, Plastic Flame Press, Shawn Hileman, and Crazy Redbeard, among others. Because this is the fifth anniversary of the Screens n’ Suds series, the artistic direction that was given for this year was to utilize the term “quint-essential.” Artists were encouraged to incorporate what they consider to be quintessential to craft beer into their work.
By AJ Masthay
The future looks bright for Screens n’ Suds; the project has continued to grow and expand since their first event five years ago. In 2011 Ric Hersh (who lived in Richmond for sixteen years) moved to Chicago, where in 2012 he organized and held the very first Screens n’ Suds event outside of Richmond. The group plans to hold another event in Chicago next year. Hersh, who will again be organizing the event in his new hometown, described Chicago as “a great art and beer city, so it’s a really easy fit for our organization.” Along with the second upcoming event in Chicago, Screens n’ Suds are also working on potential openings in Oregon, New York, and Colorado. They hope this growth will help get more diverse and higher caliber musicians, artists, and breweries involved with the organization.
To date, Screens n’ Suds, along with their sister organization Screens n’ Spokes, has raised over $300,000 for charity, and produced over 130 prints. Brian Gearing attributed the group’s achievements to the support they have received from the community. “The fact that we don’t do a whole lot of marketing, and we don’t advertise, but we’ve still had the level of success that we’ve had, really speaks to how much we owe to the people who have supported us throughout the years.”
