Hello, My name is Chrishaun Keller-Hanna, and I love skulls. Skulls in general, but particularly the cranium of the good ole Homo sapien, the human skull.
This is a love that goes as far back as I can remember, starting with my mother’s wig forms. She, like many a black woman, had a collection of hair marked for different occasions. And with that, she needed a form to ensure that the banding and wig cap kept its shape.
One of them had worn out, and my mother went to a beauty supply store downtown to replace it, and I swooped the discarded one before it hit the lid of the garbage can.
I painted a face on it sat it on my dresser, and there it stayed for years, eventually becoming the home of a rather large earring collection (it was styrofoam, so all you had to do was push them in and they wouldn’t go anywhere).
I never had a collection of skulls as a child (that would have been alarming to my parents – fundamentalist cult and all that). But I do have one know that I’m an adult (my children have not indicated that this was alarming to them, although they did think the skull that opens into a clock is weird. I still have that clock.
All that to say that when it was time to think about a logo for Shaman States of America (SSoA), I wanted you to know that the Hunters were badass, a little dangerous, and living in a world that was just as badass and dangerous. But I also wanted to give the image of a cohesive, patriotic shadow country (notice that I didn’t say government – I wanted to create a world where authority and the people to be in sync).
So I counted the states (8) and placed them on the forehead as if to say, “this is our identity – we are one of the Eight and The Eight are a whole (and badass).”
And the Stripes? I just thought they looked cool and reminiscent of the American Flag.
I like it… and hope you do too!
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