Tshirts: Stiff Hairy Pelts

     The next upcoming series of posts will showcase selected designs and random logos from over the many years of creating tshirts. This is in part inspired by flushing out more from the storage unit: last weekend saw hundreds of shirts that have been accumulating in old, moldy boxes get purged, and I snapped pics of some before they got hauled away to the transfer site. Unwashed and un-ironed, which, come to think of it, pretty much the way they look being worn.

     One thing that constant migration has been good for is an objective perspective on maintaining this death-grip on useless shit... and the consequent loosening of it. As someone who obsessively collects books and music I am susceptible to hoarding other miscellany and ephemera, from plush beavers to baskets, xmas ornaments and comic books. And what with the rule of thumb being if one hasn't missed whatever's been squirrelled away after not seeing it for at least a year, well then regardless of it's sentimental value it can be done away with.
     One thing to be grateful for is that at least I'm not a painter or sculptor, as I'd quickly run out of room in both studio and storage. As it is, the archive of 2-dimensional originals already occupies enough portfolios without the added volume of printed samples on garments.
     This logo marked the start of a serious (cough) effort at marketing and self-promotion. Besides being the title of a ten-year anniversary exhibit in conjunction with an BFA show (and also for a fare-thee-well party), the Stiff Hairy Pelt logo was used on business cards, letterheads, tshirts, embroidered hats and even an extremely rare line of underwear (both panties & boxers. The mischievous rodent functioned as a sort of cartoon tabula rasa upon which people would project their innermost interpretations: in other words, like many works of art, the viewer only sees what they bring to the piece. It's just an innocent beaver. Honest.

     Also a big hat-tip to Trademark Screenprinting in Fairbanks, where I both pulled a squeegee in production for a couple years and also learned most of what I know as a graphic artist while sitting behind a computer in the art department.