"You know, I wish I knew when I did the Nirvana poster that they were gonna be the biggest band in the world," sighs Bob Proder. "It’s cool, but it’s not that great."

The artist is an Edmonton prodigal son, having returned to the city 10 months ago after a long spell on the West Coast. If coming back to the place he spent his formative years wasn’t enough to induce an eerie nostalgia in him, Proder is now in the strange position of looking back on his entire career as a participant in Edmonton’s DIY culture. His nearly two decades of creating ephemera advertising bands he or his friends were in, or bands he was simply promoting, basically traces the rise of the local indie scene and even snags on some important music history moments, such as the aforementioned Nirvana show.

In this age of digital slickness and Internet-enabled social niches, it’s easy to overlook how much of a departure it was to crank out work from beyond the boundaries of the mainstream. Proder–1980s skate-brat, comic book creator, and bassist in punk band Unsound–claims the southern California poster art scene as an important influence during that era, but admits that the overwhelmingly punk DIY ethos in Edmonton at the time also fostered his art by simply making it possible to get it out there.

"The first one I did was for Rock Against Apartheid [a benefit event] at the Multipurpose Rumpusroom," Proder recalls. "Although we did fake gig posters for our air guitar bands in junior high." He adds that he begged the guys putting on the show, including Mad Bombers Society’s Richard Liukko, to do it. "And I was just this 16-year-old kid and he let me. I was pretty darn proud of it when I brought it in, but he criticized me!" Proder laughs.

It couldn’t have been that bad (though you can judge for yourself, since Proder managed to borrow a copy of the missing original for his retrospective, one of the rare gaps the self-admitted packrat suffers in his collection of his work to date). Liukko kept using his services, and in one of those cinematic "small world/the more things change the more things stay the same" super-clichés, Proder actually now works for his old mentor at Freecloud Records.

"Edgeware Road, Colour 9, Rock Against Apartheid," he lists his early subjects, alongside his own band. "It’s been 18 and a half years," he notes. "So, yeah, I feel old but cool. I feel pretty accomplished, actually. I dunno if people know I have been doing posters for that long, but it will be great to have them all in one place. You see a poster for Coffin Break or someone like that, and who remembers Coffin Break? There were a million bands like that who were kind of big at the time and just disappeared. Then there’s Nirvana or Green Day."

Gone are the days of Nirvana or seeing Green Day at a community hall in east Edmonton or even of catching "Five bands for five bux," but Proder’s retrospective will have that nostalgic residue on display. It will also cover his artwork for Corb Lund and other local alt-country stalwarts, and the burlesque posters that led to his later playful pin-ups. All these obsessions are echoed in his bohoser slacker-dominated comic books and even his skateboard designs (the original reason Avenue’s Mike Park noticed Proder’s work and later offered his venue as an exhibition site), much of which will also be available to peruse and purchase at the show.

"I have tons of stuff. A lot might get edited," he confesses. "I’ll hang the stuff that’s best, but the rest will be there to look at."

How will he define the "best?"

"Ugh. Tons of variables. Sometimes the gig was good but the art was terrible. Or a band got really big so it’s important to show it," Proder muses. "Sometimes you had to have a poster fast and you couldn’t think of anything, so you’d draw something half-assed or tear something out of a magazine, then it would turn out to be one of the best gigs ever. But in the end, I judge them on what looks great. Yeah, in the end, it’s the art."