The Art of Coop

Coop’s Posters are like hotrods, & pinups. They all excite the brain with delicious sweetness, smooth beautiful lines, alluring women, strong colors, and strong, powerful imagery. 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 into it. 700 horsepower motors, high sugary content, and that shimming and shaking thing they all do.

Coop’s beautiful and expressive hand inked sable brushed comic book art form the backbone of Coop’s art. Coop hand inked all parts of his unique designs using India ink, and real sable brushes. Curvy devil girls, sexy green aliens, hotrods, Frankensteins, giant robots, even the active portrayal of ‘viewers’ drawn into his art are all created and formed by Coops talents of his linework. Spa-fon* indeed! Even his Poster lettering was done by hand and brush. **Spa-fon is from EC Comic Books in the 50’s exclaiming in Martian or Venusian, “Oh Lord, or OMG!”

I am sure though, that Coop is and will be best known for his plump, healthy, sexy devil girls, but when you look into the details in and of his art, you’ll see lots more about the abundant life and artistic history we all live in.

Hotrod Culture

Coop came out of the Southern California hotrod car culture, that is still alive and strong today. ‘Big Daddy’ Ed Roth decals, Rat Fink stickers and even the original artists themselves, Robert Williams, and Ed Roth himself, were all at the local and national car shows in the 90s when Coop entered the scene. Coop, who built a ‘period perfect’ hotrod, was in a cool car club and was immersed in the culture, its people, its cars and life. From this ‘Coolest of Cool’ hotrod culture, Coop started to make concert posters with his expertly curated imagery, and linework. Not only did Coop convey the original essence of hotrod and burlesque culture into his art, he took it forward.

Coop’s art though, is of course controversial. His nubile big breasted women, sexy devil girls, devils, and overt sexuality, expressed the inner high octane fueled adolescent minds of the 1990s. Coop got human adolescent sexuality. He got the culture, and the people in it 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 silkscreened 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. Brilliant as they say in England. Coops posters were definitely cool, fun and interesting.

Coop made many posters and art prints of his own art, and for art shows, venues, companies and bands such as: AmRep Records, Boss Hog, The Cows, Electric Frankenstein, Everclear, Foo Fighters, Goldenvoice, 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 made into merchandise before Poster Pop started in 1997. Coop’s iconic cigar smoking Devil Head, the Sitting Devil Girl and the Wheel Girl designs, were already made into water decals and on Zippo Lighters. Coop had a great eye, not only for his content 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. Coop and Kozik were a good combination. Coop, was the like wacky Ed Roth, Rat Fink art that the hotrod art and car culture all loved. Kozik’s art was more intellectual, and commented on more ‘important’ things. 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 to re-create 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 all the art we wanted, 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 over 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 inked 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 Poster Pop, CPS23 Wild Devil Girl design and origins

Working with Coop, and his art was interesting to 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 the 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. The other secret to poster Pop was that we licensed and paid only for the production and sales of each item, so we were able to make 10-15 new designs from each artist every season!

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 amps and equipment on stage.

Seeing the stickers on cars, guitars, notebooks and windows and walls makes 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 his art, living in Austin, TX.

Check out Coops website.
Coop’s amazing posters and blacklines and new hand drawn, inked Beatnik’s Art 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

Stay Tuned

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Our next posts will be: Pt 3: the origins of Poster Pop, and then posts on Silkscreened Stickers, and early Trade shows, like ASR, MAGIC and Comic-con.

Read Pt 1. Kozik - Poster Pop’s 1st artist Blog Post here.

Matt Getz, Poster Pop
8-14-2025

Pt 2. Coop - Poster Pop’s 2nd artist.