Artwork: Teenage Scrapbook

This is sketch from Zappa's very own teenage scrapbook

From The Mother Of All Interviews - 1992

by Don Menn and Matt Groening

Zappa:He had been doing painting and sculpting for a long time. My graphics background was I'd had some art classes in school. I didn't really want to go into that. I did earn my living as a commercial artist for a little while during that period, but -

Groening: What kind of stuff did you do?

Zappa:I did greeting cards, I wrote advertising copy for the First National Bank in Ontario, California, and I did some little illustrations.

Menn: Anything that was often out there?

Zappa:Some of the greeting cards were often out there. I convinced the guy that I was working for - this place in Claremont, California, called the Nile Running Greeting Card studio, that specialized in silk-screen, that cards of a floral nature would likely be considered entertaining by elderly Midwestern women.

Groening: Very focused on the graphics!

Zappa:Yeah, it was niche marketing. You knew what they liked, and you serviced the need. And I was in the silk-screen deprunent with the big rubber gloves, you know, going [makes squeaky, tugging noise] and pulling the Mylar off of these smelly things. And so I talked him into letting me do my own line of greeting cards on an experimental basis, designed some of these cards, and designed a little rack to dispose of them.