I hand make our merch

and just found out that someone got proposed with my face on their chest

ah yes, our already iconic Non’s face shirts

this was our first band photo 💖

let me just clarify that I wasn’t just like “Hey guys I decided my face should be on our shirts.”

When we were initially starting up, I was playing around with what our “key art” would be (ugh, sorry, I spent too much time working in marketing for the arts it can’t be helped.)

And YOKO san was like, “what about your face?”

I don’t think anybody remembers that happened, but I do!! SHE said it first!

Our actual “logo”(?) “mascot”(?) is this guy

But the idea of shirts with my faces was too funny to not try.
I also have this whole thing about self-iconification by artists that I am sure I will eventually write about here. So naturally I was like “twist my arm, I guess the first batch of merch is going to be shirts with my face on them.”

As I mentioned before, I used to do a lot of marketing for theater and adjacent art organizations, so the potential of merch has always been my Roman Empire.

So with a band, I was at once like

MY TIME IS FINALLY HERE

but also like

DO I WANT TO ADD MORE STUFF TO THIS WORLD REPLETE WITH STUFF??

Realistically I can’t promise that this will stand for all future merch, but I decided if I was going to bring stuff into this world, it had to mean something to me and the person buying it. Something beyond “I went to this random show and got this kinda cute sticker I’ll forget I got and accidentally throw in the wash.” You know? The merch has to be a part of the experience. Not an extension, not memorabilia, not a simulation, a PART.

So I go to the by-the-pound Goodwill Outlet in Queens every few months to source blank tops that would otherwise go to landfill. I haul a granny cart full of clothes from Queens to my home in DT Brooklyn, wash the shit out of them, and then transport them again to studio and Bushwick (I have toppled in the middle of the road with the full cart, I am risking my life for these shirts, you hear?) and get printing.

The photos of my face are enlarged polaroids shot by my studio-mate, friend, and fantastic artist Anna Jekel. There are six different faces, each in black&white and color. 12 different possibilities of faces, and the shirts are all random, so it’s pretty HIGH level of 1 of 1. If these were NFTs, they’d be super rare or something.

Right now they’re iron on transfers, but I am hoping that at some point we will sell enough tickets or shirts (or paid Substack subscriptions? 😘) that I will be able to afford burning some silk screens.

Oh, of course the letters and the fpoj flower dude (they don’t have a name yet) are block printed, blocks carved by yours truly.

This is all to say, I just met someone today who had come to a show and bought a shirt!! (Sometimes I don’t catch people buying shirts because I’m coming off stage and not at the merch table yet.) And she showed me a picture of her getting proposed to.

And she was wearing the shirt.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something I handmade is now a part of someone’s love story?

What a fucking honor. I was really moved and felt the need to make this post. Because these are the kind of moments that make me believe in making art, and that there’s a reason I spend the time and effort it takes me to actually make each shirt, choose each one, iron each one, etc. etc. etc. when it could be as easy as click, click, wait for a box to arrive. But instead I ended up going on and on about the process lol.

I’m making more shits (and sweatshirts for fall!) in preparation for our next show. We also have pins now, and there are more merch ideas down the line… so keep coming to our shows and maybe you’ll meet THE 1 for 1 shirt for you, or a surprise new one.

It’s all up to my bandwidth and band fund, I know…