Flyer girl in the news

An art-vertising woman takes her show on the road

Staff Writer
Daily Hampshire Gazette

FLYER Girl moves among us, day in and day out, but you've probably never noticed. Like the Marvel superheroes who protect Manhattan and know the city's dark corners, Flyer Girl stealthily plies her trade. A lot of people know Amy Sullivan; only a select few know her as Flyer Girl. Her line of work requires a certain element of invisibility. What she leaves behind is all that matters.

Sullivan, 37, has carved out a living hanging posters and flyers for everything from rock concerts to writing workshops. It's a rock n' roll lifestyle for sure, but rock n' roll has always been less about bloated reunion tours at 50,000-seat arenas and more about loud and sweaty midnight sets in dimly lit clubs. This is the world Sullivan comes from and the world she inhabits - where success is measured by the amount of beer sold, by that one new tune that went over, where word of mouth puts 20 more people in the pit at the next gig.

"I was never cut out for that 9-to-5 stuff," said Sullivan. "I tried it plenty of times. I like to make my own schedule."

Some of the flyers she's hung over the years were for bands she used to front - Chick Attack and The Inskirts, who once opened for the Stone Coyotes at the Iron Horse. Their 2000 CD, "Too Late for Lipstick," features six Sullivan-penned raveups, coupling a Graham Parker and the Rumour intensity with high harmonies. But that was then, this is now; who's appearing on what Valley stage is of utmost importance, and it's up to Flyer Girl to sound the alarm.

"Always looking for new places," she said, setting out one recent sunny weekday morn dressed for speed in rolled-up dungarees and running shoes, with a satchel full of flyers and a bag full of staples and tape. Sullivan knows locations the rest of us may never have thought of as venues for advertising - the out-of-the-way coffee shops, a restaurant frequented by the New Age crowd that has its notice board way in the back, little doorways you've passed a thousand times.

And Flyer Girl knows her clientele, too. A headbanging flyer that would seem right at home in the Masonic Street laundromat might stick out like a machine gun on the walls of a yoga facility. She has occasionally flyered for both sides of a political issue. Flyer Girl doesn't judge. A regular flyering gig with the University of Massachusetts' Fine Arts Center has put food on the table for a couple of years now and she counts The Elevens and the Green Street Cafe as regular clients.

"I think Amy does a great job with postering and distributing our promo materials," said Shawn Farley, marketing director at the Fine Arts Center. "Yes, it is old school in this digital age but there are still people out there who respond to posters they pass by in the local cafe or bagel shop. I want them to see ours as well. Amy is very reasonable with her rates."

For $85, Sullivan will distribute your posters and flyers over two weeks to Northampton, her home town of Easthampton and Amherst - or as far as Brattleboro if you're willing to pay extra. But it's a dog-eat-dog world out there; the poster you hung Monday may be buried under 16 others by Wednesday. Sullivan diligently returns to locations, making sure her work continues to be seen.

"I don't cover over someone's flyers," she said, shaking her head at some inconsiderate lunk who did just that. "I look at (expiration) dates. I don't like it when they cover me up. A client says, ‘I didn't see it.' Boy, I don't like to hear that." Sullivan will rearrange other people's flyers like a curator, moving this one over here, that one up there, creating a balance, what she proudly refers to as "art-vertising." What may look to the uninitiated like a hopelessly cluttered wall lapped and overlapped by ads looks to Flyer Girl like the elements of design. "I like to keep it neat," she says.

When she's done rearranging, her work is signed, so to speak, with her own flyer: "FLYER GIRL! Professional Distribution. All points Pioneer Valley. Call for prices and refs." She believes in what she does, and touts it as effective advertising that connects with people. "It's a special way of getting the word out," she says. "It's not like getting an announcement in the mail. Here, you find it, so it becomes more of a shared experience."