St. Louis stencil artist Peat Wollaeger breaks down his latest (caffeinated) project
By Thomas Crone
Peat Wollaeger has had a busy year. In March, the spray paint–and–stencil artist put his mark on San Francisco, turning a room at the famed Hotel des Arts into a Mexican wrestling–inspired space, complete with life-size stencils of luchadors, the masked piledrivers made semifamous in last summer’s Nacho Libre. Last fall, closer to home, he tattooed the front wall of an abandoned warehouse in the new Chouteau’s Landing complex with a do-ragged, big-bearded, peace-sign–flashing Tommy Chong look-alike.
He’ll have another career breakthrough this summer, when 70,000 aluminum Mountain Dew bottles emblazoned with his original artwork hit national retail markets. His design boasts a variety of influences, but they’re all rooted in the overalls-and-moonshine motif of the soda’s earliest look. The former ad designer gave us a sneak peek and explained the components of his intensely green, wild-and-crazy concept.
DewTube: A low-budget online commercial campaign (stencilbilly.com) will coincide with the bottle’s arrival this month. In the spot, which was shot in time-lapse, Wollaeger will play the Stencilbilly, who falls asleep while rafting down the Mississippi and wakes up at downtown’s graffitied flood walls, where he’ll “stencil” himself on the concrete.
Beard science: The central character in Wollaeger’s design was inspired in part by the soda’s original mascot, Willy the Hillbilly. “I’ve been into bearded guys lately,” Wollaeger says. “I originally pitched a hip-hop hillbilly—he’dhave a grill and missing teeth—then went back into the regular hillbilly idea.”
Consider them tickled: Again Wollaeger pulls from the past, adding the soda’s original, goofball tagline: “It’ll Tickle Yore Innards.” “I wanted to reintroduce that to people,” he says.
Retro is the new future: Wollaeger worked in the newer and older logos of the famous soda, although he prefers the older one. “They didn’t tell me to add that; I did it on my own,” he says. “I think it fits his beard better. What would you call it? Maybe future-retro—or maybe urban-retro.”
Nature calls: “I don’t normally do a lot with backgrounds,” Wollaeger says, eyeballing the rolling landscape in his design. Those hills are an hommage to the mountains in the original Mountain Dew ads, but he admits that they’re mainly there to fill space. The river, though, is another story: “It’s the Mississippi,” he says. “I put that in there to call out St. Louis.”
Web slinger: Though it’s not his site’s full URL (add a “.com” and you’re there), Wollaeger is confident that putting his site’s name on the bottle will herd people there and expose a new audience to his video and visual projects. “This’ll be huge in getting my name out.”
