Calvin "Cal" Schenkel is an American illustrator, graphic designer, animator and comics artist, specializing in album cover design. He was the main graphic arts collaborator for rock musicianFrank Zappa and was responsible for the design of many Zappa album covers. Schenkel's work is iconic and distinctive in style, a forerunner of punk art and the new wave era.
Background and education
Schenkel grew up in Oreland, Pennsylvania. He attended the Philadelphia College of Art but left after one semester and set out to build a career. As an unemployed artist in New York City in 1967 Schenkel was introduced to Zappa by his then girlfriend, singer Sandy Hurvitz. Schenkel's artwork, influenced at first by the comic strip Krazy Kat and by Mad magazine, had by 1967 developed its own "primitive" "ragged" surrealist style. In 1976 Schenkel held an exhibition of his artwork in Greenfields Gallery, at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The exhibition also featured artwork by musician Don Van Vliet. Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons, saw the exhibit and was an Evergreen student at the time.
Career
Schenkel started working for Zappa in 1967. Schenkel recalled: "When I first met him in New York, the art studio was in his apartment — but that was only for a brief period. I didn't actually live there , but I would commute to work at his place. When we moved to LA... he had rented the log cabin, I had a wing of it. It was my living quarters and art studio, which I rented separately from them." For over a decade, Schenkel, working in either an annex of the Zappa household or in his own studio, attempted to give visual form to Zappa's music while developing his own, distinctive style. Schenkel:"I love naïve and folk art, art that has an unfinished look. I don't like the polished for the most part. Now what that means or where it comes from I'm not sure. But I was probably influenced graphically by artists I saw in school. And of course there's the comic book look — like Krazy Kat. A part of it was just lack of skill, trying to take advantage of my own naivety. I'd really only had a semester of art school, so I hadn't evolved my style when I was doing all of this. It just comes natural, too." The first large Zappa project he worked on was the cover for We're Only in It for the Money, a parody of the Beatles' album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Schenkel built plaster figures, helped set up the staging for the photo, and put together the collage of people in the background. Schenkel also made advertising comics published in comics magazines, which promoted Zappa's latest releases. Some of these comics have been made available in Michel Choquette's compilation book The Someday Funnies. Schenkel worked on album covers for Straight Records, a label owned by Zappa and manager Herb Cohen. The records were by Lenny Bruce, Tom Waits, Tim Buckley and Captain Beefheart. For Trout Mask Replica Schenkel went to a local fish market to buy the carp head that he wanted to use on the album cover. He hollowed out the head leaving just the face, like a carnival mask. Beefheart instinctively picked it up and held it to his face and sat for over two hours while Schenkel took photographs. Inside the mask the smell was choking and intense but the Captain was good-natured about the whole process. At one point Beefheart picked up a saxophone and started to play something "raw" through the mouth of the stinking fish. Schenkel has film of the carp playing sax. The artwork for Zappa's Burnt Weeny Sandwich was originally intended for an Eric Dolphy album. Schenkel provided vocals for Zappa's album Lumpy Gravy and was production designer for the film 200 Motels. He created animations accompanying the song Dental Hygiene Dilemma/Does This Life Look Interesting To You? in the film. He can be seen in the Zappa movies Uncle Meat and Video From Hell. The inspiration and title for the track "For Calvin " was from an incident as related by Schenkel to Zappa. When Zappa came to register his son Dweezil's name, the hospital refused the unusual name. Zappa instead used a list of friend's names that came to mind: Ian Donald Calvin Euclid. By 1976 Zappa's output had slowed while he was in dispute with Cohen and Warner Bros. Records. Schenkel returned to Willow Grove hoping to jump-start an art career separate from Zappa and the record industry. There he began his own "mail order" art business. In the 1980s Schenkel resumed occasional work on Zappa projects. In 2012 Schenkel appeared on the television program History Detectives. He was asked to comment on a re-discovered collage, made in the early 1960s. With the help of Schenkel, the piece was determined to be an early work by Zappa. Schenkel illustrated the cover to Howard Kaylan's autobiography My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc..
