Pt 2. Coop - Poster Pop’s 2nd artist.

The Art of Coop

Coop’s Posters are like hotrods, pinups, and candy. Each excites the brain, with sweetness, delicious, smooth beautiful lines, alluring women, strong colors, and powerful punchy graphics. Just like the hotrods, the women, and the enduring American Pop culture they represent, Coop’s art is beautiful yet shocking when you get down to it, with 750 horsepower motors, high sugar content, and that shaking thing they do.

Coop’s beautiful and expressive hand brushed inked cartoon backlines form the backbone of his art. Coop drew and hand inked all his designs using India ink, and a real sable brush. Coop formed his healthy, curvy devil girls, sexy green aliens, Frankensteins, giant robots, and cool and correct, detailed hotrods into his posters. He hand drew his lettering, that soon became font sets.

I am sure Coop will be best known for his plump, sexy devil girls, but when you look into the details of his art, you’ll see lots more.

Hotrod Culture

Coop came out of the Southern California Ed Roth, Rat Fink, Hotrod Car show culture, that is still alive and strong today. The original 60s Rat Fink, Ed Roth Decals and T-Shirt designs I knew as a kid, were everywhere in Southern California in the 70’s, 80’s and 90s. These original Rat Fink hotrod stickers and the original artists, Robert Williams, Ed Roth, and the original car builders were still around at car shows in the 90s when Coop entered the scene. Coop was immersed in the culture, its people, car clubs, its cars and women, and started to make concert posters with his expertly curated imagery. Not only did Coop convey the original essence of hotrod and burlesque culture into his art, he took it forward.

Coop’s art is of course controversial. His nubile big breasted women, sexy devil girls, devils, and overt sexuality, expresses the inner high octane fueled adolescent minds in the 90s. You cannot deny that Coop got the culture, and communicated it through his art.

Coop’s Concert Posters

I discovered Coop’s posters, along with Kozik’s Posters around 1993. To find these Posters, you had to go to record shows, or record stores. It was fun, driving up to record stores in San Diego, LA, Long Beach, and San Francisco, to see what you would find. It was a great era, seeing the bright fantastic posters in person — before eBay and the internet. There were many Coop Posters you could never get even then, like Coops Man’s Ruin, the rare Devil Girl on the cards one, and the Garageshock 93 Frankenstein in the 57 Chevy Hotrod. There are still many I’ve never been able to get. Coops posters were definitely cool, fun and interesting.

Coop made posters and art prints of his own art, and for art shows, venues, companies and bands such as: Boss Hog, Cows, Electric Frankenstein, Everclear, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Juxtapoz, Lords of Acid, Ministry, Muffs, Nirvana, Pavement, Phantom Surfers, Poster Pop, Reverend Horton Heat, Rocket from the Crypt, Sex Pistols, Soundgarden Southern Culture on the Skids, Stone Temple Pilots, and White Zombie.

Coop's Merchandise

A small amount of Coop’s art, was pre-existing on merchandise before Poster Pop started in 1997. Coop’s iconic cigar smoking Devil Head, Sitting Devil Girl and the Wheel Girl designs, were already made into Zippo Lighters and water decals. Coop had a great eye, not only for his content, style and details, but for the bigger picture of making great art merchandise.

Coop was right there, with Kozik, as the 1st poster artists Poster Pop wanted to sign to make into our silkscreened stickers and T-Shirts. Coop and Kozik were a good combination. Coop, was the wacky Ed Roth, Rat Fink art that the southern Californian hotrod art and car culture all loved. Kozik’s art was more intellectual, and commented on more ‘important’ things, than Coop’s sexy women, popular comic culture, and hot rods. Coop’s Art sold to younger guys like me, while Kozik’s art sold in different circles, and intellects, especially internationally…

Working with Coop

Right after starting Poster Pop, my new Poster Pop partner Larry, and I went to Coops house, in LA, right by Paramount studios, to get some artwork, film and paper positives in order to make his initial designs. Coop’s house was immaculate, and contained the coolest original art by the likes of Robert Williams, The Pizz and others. Coop had the most amazing collection of 60s Godzilla figures, and toy robots. We got the art and an eyeful! His house was full of the coolest stuff I had ever seen, and was definitely quite a treat.

On the second sticker run in 1998, we needed Coop to draw a ‘bra’ on the very sexy topless girl from an Indie 45 record sleeve. It was a fine line that Poster Pop held to allow the artist to do ‘their’ art, but we wanted this amazing girl on the carpet design to be able to be sold everywhere. We asked Coop and he said yes to drawing a bra on his Coop girl. I took a black line printout from the original 45 record cover and was amazed, when right in front of my eyes, Coop inked up the most beautiful leather bra onto the girl. What was amazing was that Coop drew up the black leather Brazier shape onto the woman’s breasts while leaving the white highlight as paper white, revealing the reflective light on the leather. It was amazing to see him work.

Coop’s CPS23 Wild Devil Girl design and origins

Working with Coop, and his art was interesting so say the least. Many times, I objected to some of Coops imagery, but ultimately, with my partners urging, we just let the artists work speak for itself — guiding what we published.

Coop, like Kozik, and all of Poster Pop’s artists were great to work with, giving us blackline art to make their merchandise from. One of the secrets of Poster Pop is that as an Artist, myself, with licenses for my own artwork, I made sure the artists were paid their royalties, and on time. This is probably one of the reasons why Poster Pop lasted so long.

Coop’s Poster Pop Stickers and T-Shirts

Coops stickers were seen everywhere from 1997 to about the mid 2000’s. People loved them, bought them up, and stuck them anywhere they could! I remember seeing Pearl Jam in 1998 and saw Coop’s Stickers stuck on the backstage amps! Seeing the stickers on cars, guitars, notebooks and walls made me proud.

Poster Pop worked with Coop until 2003, when our T-Shirt Printer ‘friend’, knowing the contract was up for renewal, stole Coop away, signing him with an obscene advance and double royalty rate, and buried Coops art, and merchandise.

Coop is still making art, living in Austin, TX.

Check out Coops website.
Coop just came out with a cool hand drawn, inked Zine.

Here are some Youtube interviews with Coop.

Artist Chris "Coop" Cooper on Cool Cars, Hot Art, and Real Freedom 

ReasonTV

Sneak Peek of artist COOP's studio in LA

Dirty Donny Art

Matt Getz, Poster Pop
8-14-2025