this garden is a pipe bomb

actually just an idea set in ink on a highly visible cotton blend

spring 2024 line

Dan and Ian printing some ital gradient “fuck the police” Japanther merch mid-tour on the porch of The Charles Mansion on a hot summer day in Tallhassee, FL sometime in 2009(ish). photo by me (funny double exposure, hard to tell, it’s faint, but that’s film for ya, thank you cvs)

howdy pardners

this post is about my most recent garden project, which turned out to be a t-shirt.

in cahoots with my twin brother, SUPER HIT DAN, i have been pulling ink through screens without much regularity since 2005 when i bought a 4-color press with some friends the first summer of college. the press is big and awkward but amazingly has found its away through various punk houses to my brother’s studio/print dungeon in Galveston, TX.

t-shirts have always been cool, and continue to be cool, so i have tried to do my part to contribute to future finds at thrift store bins by every so often committing a silly graphic design exercise to cotton rib with heat set plastisol ink. kid shit, but hey, you do you, me do me.

the first california poppy to bloom in the garden, spring 2023.

so i have been thinking a lot about primitive accumulation, specifically about the commons and the act of enclosure as a perverted gesture claiming land as private property. gardens at their root, microcosms of paradise, are enclosed by their very nature. i don’t know what to do about this, so instead of doing anything about it, i am going to just try to think about it for a year. a meditation of sorts. v academic. i am into the idea of drawing my attention to this idea of enclosure as a way to contemplate and question, encourage critical discourse, putter and curse the sin of private property.

how to make an idea visible? paste it onto your chest and make it an annoyingly brilliant hue! the first poppies and the emerging mallows stop me in my tracks, that lovely respite from the drab, hi-viz safety orange!

my dear friend and mentor once forbid me from including any orange flowering plants in a garden design. its a tough pill to swallow, orange. this dude abided, but now i respectfully buck back and free of employment will shout “can you see me now!?”

we had a client, who i think it is safe to say is a respectable authority when it comes to color, pick this orange for a large accent garden wall. i was surprised and pleasantly reassured that my joy for orange was validated. but i do get it, not for everyone.

i have played with this idea before and have made “work shirts” in safety orange for when i am installing gardens. i think it works. i think maybe some people think i am a professional “worker”, one who is currently working. why else would he be wearing that gad-awful t?

while installing a garden in los angeles, a woman walking her dog stopped and asked what company we worked for and wanted a business card. success! unless, like me, the idea of another job gives you severe anxiety. susbatt working the FIRST EDITION “work”shirt (sold-out).

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so, over winter break, while spending some time with my brother in texas i decided it could be fun to order a bunch of insanely visually demanding garments and pull some ink. dan helped me do all the difficult parts, he is a maestro printer a magician of the ink. it looked something like this, i’ll just let some photos do the talking.

hit up dan, super hit press, the paddle out every day bicep squeegee man for your next art book project.

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that is what is news in my world. a lot of work for not much, but it can be fun to make things. seeds stuck in the muck.

if you would like to wear one of these garden shirts let me know by sending a message to info@onebigyard.com (sizes S, M, L, XL, some tees, long sleeves, and a few hoodies, all gildan brand, nothing fancy).

free gaza,

e