The Cotton Canvas
If Picasso, Chagall or Frankenthaler were alive today and struggling through early careers in search of a reputable gallerist, their predominant canvas might have been the front of a two-ply cotton T-shirt.
Over the past decade, artist collaborations have become a staple of many T-shirt lines and action sports labels. RVCA has its Artist Network Program, which uses graphics from artists including Ed Templeton and Ashley Macomber, while Threadless, an online community-based company, solicits work from the public that can pay starving artists $2,500 for an original run.
Neither brand invented the trend. But while they've gone on to popularize the artist-tee concept, at least one of its early innovators is still hovering (unjustifiably so) below the radar: L.A.-based T-shirt label Blood is the New Black, founded by Mitra Khayyam. If you’ve seen L.A. photographer Dan Monick's "cotton candy" shot or L.A. designer Brian Lichtenberg’s “Hedi&Martin&Nicolas&Hussein&Vivienne” shirt, you’ve seen Khayyam’s work—an idea that started as a Parsons thesis paper.
Dan Monick Brian Lichtenberg
Khayyam, 28, celebrates Blood’s fifth anniversary this weekend with a curated show at Junc Gallery in Silver Lake, featuring 23 contributing artists, many of them fixtures on the L.A. art scene. “The whole concept has always been to make art accessible,” she says during a recent visit to her grungy Echo Park office, where two dogs sparred and rummaged through a trash can for muffin crumbs. “I just love it when a 15-year-old boy buys our T-shirts and realizes that artists can make money through selling shirts, and become more visible as a result.”
With a high-end fashion background, Khayyam is not a likely purveyor of a T line. While living in New York, she worked for the Chloé showroom, and still sports one of the label's chunky turquoise bracelets (it’s now missing a few stones). Of the artists she's procured for the brand, Khayyam likes to see herself as a “mama hen” of sorts—“I used to like ‘curator,’” she says with a smirk, “until it became a buzzword in The New York Times.”
Whatever her title is, Khayyam has an eye for choosing witty and illuminating artists who rarely veer into cliché snark or retro-crazed imagery. Current stand-out specimens include illustrations based on Italian porn stills by Keren Richter, a Joy Division T-shirt scrawled in Arabic by Brendan Donnelly (“It’s not a declaration of jihad,” Khayyam clarifies), and Arcadia-born artist Milano Chow’s graphite ode to Tegan and Sara. The shirts aren’t branded with a Blood is the New Black logo; Khayyam allows the artists to speak for themselves.
Brendan Donnelly Keren Richter
T-shirts run from $36 to $45, and are sold on the brand’s website, with mass retailers like Urban Outfitters and at local shops like Apartment 3 and Atmosphere. You’d assume the digital prints would crumble and crack in the wash, but they hold up remarkably well. As does the imagery.
“We’re irreverent, we’re funny,” Khayyam says. “We don’t have to be super-serious. There has to be some sense of humor.”
Blood is the New Black hosts its fifth anniversary party on Saturday, Nov. 7, 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Junc Gallery, 4017 Sunset Blvd., www.juncgallery.com. The exhibition features original art by Blood is the New Black contributors.