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Home > Articles > Historicar Society > Monster Threads by Ed Newton
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When I first started painting shirts, I had a clear vision as to what the idea was... To sell people custom designed shirts with pretty much any non-pornographic image they wanted. In other words, it had already become commercialized, which was the “draw” for guys like me in the first place. Only as I later reflected upon the discipline’s true origins did I realize that, almost instantaneously, the original art form had become compromised.
If I remember correctly, the very first custom airbrushed shirts were simply expressions of the creator. The customer forked over his three or four bucks for a sweatshirt that was a vision of the artist, rarely that of the client. “Do me one of your wild cars with a monster in it” was the primary directive, not “I want a flame red ‘57 Chevy 2-door hardtop with American five-spokes mags and side exhaust... Hold the onions”. The very first shirt artists “brushed some wild & crazy stuff”. That’s why the term “weirdo” was so appropriate... Because the artist devised a weirdo-looking shirt design which featured a distorted cartoon character that wasn’t totally human, but wasn’t exactly a monster (yet). The image was a Weirdo, and, to some, the artist was a Weirdo. But, hey, the shirt-buyer and his buddies loved the thing. It was just so cool! |
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| As time went on, the customer became more and more demanding, and wanted the product to be more of an expression of his tastes than the artist’s preference. With automotive subject matter, the original idea of having the monster dominate the design gave way to making the car the star. The “weirdo driver” shrunk in size until all that was left was maybe an arm sticking out (to “throw the shift”) and a pair of eyes visible through the windshield. Then, he was gone. The car evolved into a “static” body shell wrapped around a giant engine with oversized tires that generated nary a wisp of smoke. This was the state of the art during the 1970’s. After that, you may as well cut up a car brochure and copy it onto a T-shirt, because that’s what was in demand for the following decade. |
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Now, as we gallop into the 21st century, the hand-painted shirt has gone back to its origins. Well, sort of. There’s not a whole lot of weirdo-dominated shirts in demand at this time, but there’s retro-interest in the old-style “giant smoking slicks” approach, and at the other end of the spectrum, there’s exclusive demand for shirts that can only be described as “canvases that you wear”... $500 garments that are painted as one cohesive 360 degree design with tedious masking to support complicated graphics and intricate reflections or shading. Highly detailed and realistic imagery that constitutes a boutique look. Surely a piece of work dominated by the artist, not the client.
And so there you have it. Nowadays, it has finally become not only the same, but completely different. This evolutionary odyssey is just like the artist. What a Weirdo! |
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