Famous paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and the cats that refuse to stay out of frame.
I make t-shirts out of things that already exist, and then get interrupted.
It started with a cat. I was looking at Monet's "Woman with a Parasol" - one of
the calmest, most carefully composed paintings in the world - and I could not
stop picturing a cat wandering into the frame at exactly the wrong moment.
Anyone who lives with a cat knows that feeling. You set something up carefully,
and the cat arrives.
So I made it. Then Van Gogh's starry sky, with an orange tabby sailing through
it. Then Vermeer. Then Hokusai's Great Wave, with a cat surfing the crest.
The other half of this shop is much quieter. I have always been drawn to
Japanese woodblock prints and to old railway travel posters - the kind with a
temple, a mountain, and the name of a city set in heavy serif type across the
bottom. I have been rebuilding those for Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, Kamakura and
Hokkaido, keeping the faded ink and the paper grain of the originals rather
than cleaning them up.
Every design starts as artwork, not as a template. The paintings and prints
behind them - Monet, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Hokusai - are in the public domain, and
every reinterpretation is my own work.
Nothing here is kept in stock. When you order, your shirt is printed for you
and shipped from the USA on soft ring-spun cotton. That means it takes a few
days longer than something sitting in a warehouse. It also means nothing is
produced that nobody wanted.
One request: please check the size chart in the listing photos before you
order. Because each shirt is made to order, I cannot accept returns, and I
would rather you got the right size the first time.
- KENTARO
