He Drew The Music

“I Don’t Believe In Time Anymore“
Space 1026
844 N Broad St.
Philadelphia
Sept. 6, 2024

Andy Molholt scanned a wall of band posters crafted by his late friend Daniel Hughes and settled his gaze on a rainbow gummy bear print. The print once advertised — and now commemorates — Brockhampton’s sold-out, 2019 show at The Fillmore with the likes of Slowthai and 100 Gecs.

It’s one of several pieces currently hanging on the walls of art gallery Space 1026 as part of an exhibit entitled “I Don’t Believe In Time Anymore.” The retrospective was organized by several of Hughes’ pals, including Molholt, to remember the prolific artist around the anniversary of his birth.

“Do you know what split fountain printing is?” Molholt asked me while I attempted to process the layers of sketches, sculptures, posters and drum skins lining the room.

“Most won’t do it ‘cause it’s really complicated,” he said, explaining how the inking process allows for transference of multiple color gradations, like the sherbert rainbow captured in the Brockhampton banner.

“Dude was, like, insanely talented.”

When Hughes suddenly passed away two years back at just 36, he left behind an expansive collection of illustrations documenting 2010s Philly and the city’s tight-knit music scene. He also left behind a network of grieving creatives and close friends equally intent on preserving the illustrator’s memory.

Molholt flew home to Philly while on tour with his band Speedy Ortiz just to help oversee the show, which opened on Friday. He’s part of a crew of friends who have now spent years cataloging Hughes’ work, saving some while selling select others with the hopes of raising enough money to create a coffee table book chronologizing his career.

The whole endeavor was born out of the unknowing that comes with the startling death of a young person.

“It’s so fucked up that he died. What do we do?” Molholt recalled asking himself when he learned of Hughes’ abrupt passing. “I always knew his work was amazing. But going through it later, I saw so many things I’d never seen before.”

Though the show is intended as an homage to a lost artist, it is also an ode to a particular moment in time as seen through Hughes’ eyes. For those who didn’t know Hughes personally, such as myself, the exhibit still works as an emotional observation of the hardcore human spirit that goes into architecting artistry from the ground up. Many of the posters recall concerts that took place just before musicians like Clairo or 100 Gecs or Mannequin Pussy ascended to even higher ranks of stardom — or before bands like Brockhampton, who I admittedly was listening to in the car on my way to the exhibit, were “canceled” amid increased social reckonings with issues like sexual assault.

I always take the time to look at hand-drawn posters for DIY shows plastered around my neighborhood’s telephone poles, admiring the time someone took to draw attention to another artist’s creative endeavors. Hughes’ posters show a next-level commitment to cross-artistic collaborations. He used his visual talents to cement the memories of beloved musicians’ tours of favorite Philly venues. It’s a reminder that art isn’t supposed to be about snobby tastes or expensive tickets, but rather about the people and places that allow us to uncover human connection. The production of show posters alone is a callback to the importance of showing up in person to support generative art rather than consuming it passively, as we are increasingly tempted to do.

Speaking of passive consumption, I stumbled upon Hughes’ still-live social media accounts while scrolling the Internet to learn more about his life. The last Instagram post he made in 2022 was an announcement that one of his pieces had been published in a book about the changing style of gig posters. “It’s nice to have another artifact that I’ve existed,” he wrote.

Despite the secondhand role of Hughes’ work as a hall of fame for rising musical stars, my favorite scenes included in the show were a series of framed paintings with a cartoonesque, autobiographical feel. In one of those modest frames is a man with five o’clock shadow sipping a cigarette by the back of his car, whistling out a cloud of smoke that covers the city skyline and a crowd of distant people. It’s the kind of image that could be crafted quickly using digital tools, but is instead granted a tactile depth through hand-held, acrylic precision. Rough brushstrokes of gray make the cloud look like a second skyline, poeticizing the role of place and our pursuant interpretations of “home.”

Though Hughes immortalized a version of 21st century life that echo far beyond Philly (such as through sketches of mundanities like Cholula hot sauce on a kitchen counter), the fact of his own existence was clearly marked by far more than his artwork. Just as art helps us cut through the chaos of life and make sense of our own realities, the exhibit felt like a heartwarming display of friends without a textbook on how to mourn using their knowledge of how to celebrate in order to face life’s truest tragedies.

At the end of the day, “we just all really, really care about this guy,” Molholt said.