shelflife by visitor

I’ve received a lot of email about a shirt that Thurston Moore wore on the Jimmy Fallon Show last night. That shirt was the fallout of the Choir Practice watercolor edition I released earlier in the year. That edition was the fallout of the wallpaper designs that all of the pages of BUT THEY DON’T BLINK are hand-painted atop.

Since I picked up my laser engraver, I’ve gotten into the habit of creating vector artwork from all of my ink drawings. I repurpose the artwork into all sorts of one-off projects that never *really* see the light of day. The shirt Thurston wore is exactly that. It doesn’t exist. It’s not a product. It isn’t for sale. In fact, I’m so perplexed by people’s infatuation with the issue that I’ve been addressing it via the following reciprocally confounding statement:

“It’s a graphic about america’s collective willingness to roll over and take it in the ass from industrial agricultural corporations. Eating, much like sex, should be an exciting interaction between two people–the consumer and a local farmer. Failure to pursue such interactions leads to freakish displays of primal boredom which, when finally placed beneath the microscope of tabloid gossip columns, generate whispers and speculation about the lifestyle choices we make–be they food, sex, fashion or art.”

My girlfriend responded to that with, “I thought it was about taking a shit in your partner’s ass as an alternative to procreating.”

I revised my perspective. “Well, yeah, but that’s more or less the same thing as factory farming.
They take a shit on your dinner plate as an alternative to sustaining life.”

a freakish display of primal boredom

So, that brings us to handcrafted leathergoods etched into deerskin likely churned out of some vile deathfactory somewhere–leathergoods featuring the design on the shirt Thurston *almost* wore on the show…

[ more custom bike saddles here ]

I’ve been fiddling around with variations on this pattern I drew in December–different contexts and constructions. I have a Canadian military surplus parka that I grabbed in Montreal while filming an as of yet unfinished documentary on the Ecstatic Peace More Hair, Less Bush tour.

The parka’s almost nonsensically fragile for a piece of military clothing. Knowing full well that it’d likely disintegrate if exposed to this caustic printing I’ve been doing, I played the nihilist card and hit it. Needless to say… it’s disintegrating.

I shot some photos of it today for posterity and plan on wearing the thing into moth-eaten oblivion. I need to note that light colored drawings on light grounds vex me. They look wrong. You never really know what you’re gonna get with this process til you get it though, so this little jaunt’s filed under, “just a study.” I’ll get the actual illustrations on here when the items they appear on in their correct and impossibly psychedelic configuration are done.