James Wesley, Lawrence resident, printed designs on t-shirts for the rock band Limbeck at Blue Collar Distro. Blue Collar Distro prints t-shirts for locally and national known groups such as The Get Up Kids, Appleseed Cast, and Mac
If you thought the "Jesus is my Homeboy" and "Not Everything is Flat in Kansas" T-shirts pushed the clothing envelope, think again. Eudora and Lawrence are home to some of the area's most progressive T-shirt designers and distributors. With prints that include everything from the human anatomy to your favorite band, Lawrence and surrounding areas have a T-shirt venue that is starting to gain top-notch billing.
Fed up with mainstream companies taking advantage of bands and their merchandise, Sean Ingram started Blue Collar Industries, Inc., three years ago in Eudora as a way to help out the "little guy." "Honestly, it pissed me off," says Ingram. "Clubs love to rip off bands and by the time they've raped you of all the other costs and charges, you've made as much as you've spent."
A former member of the band Coalesce, Ingram has taken his industry knowledge and talent for T-shirt design and built one of the region's most prominent T-shirt printing presses and Web sites, www.bluecollardistro.com. Boasting a client list of bands from the likes of Appleseed Cast to Linkin Park, Blue Collar Industries prints cutting-edge designs onto not only T-shirts, but hats, wrist bands and hoodies, something a lot of other companies don't offer.
Perhaps the beauty of Ingram's brainchild is the emphasis on the non-mainstream. Blue Collar Industries Independent designers and artists that are simply
houses a wealth of independent designers and artists that are simply out to create cool, individual T-shirts for music lovers. "Everyone's a designer here and very hip to what's going on in the music industry," Ingram says. "We're not looking to be millionaires, we're just here to do our thing and help out the bands."
The printing press at Blue Collar Industries, Inc. is also home to Breakdance America, whose T-shirts, hats and buttons are reminiscent of 1980's punk music, political icons and things that are "completely absurd." "We sell stuff you wouldn't think someone would make," says Jim David, co-owner and creator of Breakdance America. "As far as we know, we invented the 40 ounce koozie."
Jim David and business partner Kevin Kusatsu came up with the concept of Breakdance America in Los Angeles two years ago. After spray painting around the city, a logo was conceived and the duo started an online business. Purchasing a heat press on E-bay soon followed and the two focused on the idea of creating limited edition T-shirts. They asked, "why buy a shirt that's one in a thousand when you can buy one that's one in twenty?" Breakdance America was born.
Despite David being in Lawrence and Kusatsu in California, the cross-country partnership has worked well thus far. Working hand-in-hand with design concepts and orders, some of their tongue-in-cheek specialties include products like the "I Love Toxic Waste" T-shirt and the "Right Wing Cracker" wall-hanging series featuring Ronald Reagan and Bill Gates. And then there's the button collection properly titled "Drugs,"
v Dog, and even a flour-
Breakdance America is most easily accessible online, www.breakdanceamerica.com but has slowly started appearing in boutiques in Kansas City, California and even Australia and France.
"We're growing steadily and last year was our biggest yet," David says. "We don't want to be strictly T-shirts, but those seem to be our bread and butter right now."
Kristen Ferrell is another Lawrence native looking to T-shirts as a way to sell her art. With the hopes of printing her designs at Blue Collar Industries in the near future, she too will try to remain out of the mainstream with a small list of clientele and few boutiques. She is in the process of starting a catalog. Her fine-line ink drawings combine elements of the human anatomy and animal structures. They're "creepy cute," as Ferrell describes them. "Kids are getting more and more sick of commercial stuff," says Ferrell. "These are good for the underground art world and are in terms they can understand."
Ferrell started as an illustrator strictly for galleries, but nine months ago realized T-shirts were a much cheaper way to get her artwork noticed and make extra money. Distributing out of her home and on her Web site, www.kristenferrell.com, her passion to stray from the corporate and start a small but inventive T-shirt company spawned.
"There are a lot of younger people who really like my art but can't afford $300 for a painting," says Ferrell. "But $10 for a shirt is something they can do. It's something we as artists can provide without screwing anybody at the same time."
— Lisa Picasso can be reached at lpicasso@kansan.com.
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