Paste Designer Jason Laurits Celebrates 10 Years of Graphics
New York, NY, August 05, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Brooklyn-based artist Jason Laurits will bring back ten of the most popular and requested of his work with Paste thus far. Laurits started Paste shortly after teaching himself to silkscreen to make posters for his band. “I started doing tees at a market to fund my music,” says Laurits, “and the tees took off while the music didn’t.” Paste quickly picked up a following for its quirky graphics, eventually landing in 60+ retail stores in the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.
The Top Ten of Ten Years showcases Laurits as artist who uses whimsy, humor, and kitsch, as well as little satire and social criticism. In “Drunk Cat,” where a simple, digital dress up of a lounging cat with an accordion, sombrero, and bottle-of-something, exemplifies Laurits’s so-bad-it’s-good humor.
Though Laurits rarely uses text, as it “overexplains,” his “Like, Save the Whales, and Stuff,” tee, almost mocks the use of text and social activism through fashion. “Damn, Girl,” uses a Victorian woman with an amplified bustle being checked out by her male counterpart.
“Parachutes,” with parachuting elephants, shows Laurits’s sense of whimsy, as “Pirate Lincoln,” Abe with an eye patch, and “Coach Cat,” featuring a giant Cat with a whistle posed next to a vintage sports team, shows his sense of irrelevance.
“I am most asked,” says Laurits, “’What did you mean by that?’ People always want to translate art, like a puzzle to unlock, and perhaps meaning is there, but visuals are not necessarily meant to translate into words. They work on two different levels.” Laurits, however, certainly does send a message with “Frank,” where by simply adding a tiara to Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, he opens a whole new door to the metaphors of this classic monster. “Is Here,” shows the resurrection of Christ, well documented by a cluster of camera phones.
“Headdress,” stands alone as simply a beautiful black-and-white silkscreen of a Native American headdress. And rounding out the Top Ten is “Hang in There,” a beefed-up, macho version of the classic 1980s “Hang In There, Baby” poster. “It was my first of many cat t-shirts,” Laurits explains, “I was inspired by the die-hard, old cat ladies. People weren’t sure what to think of it when it first came out, which is hard to believe now that cats and kitsch have since become the thing. Now I can’t even do a series of tees without a cat on one of them, and for the record, I’m allergic and have a dog.”
And if there was an eleventh t-shirt to the Top Ten? It would certainly be Laurits’s staple, the “T-shirt T-shirt,” a simple white tee with a simple white tee on it. “One of my firsts, and that’s as close to a logo tee as I’ll ever get,” says Laurits.
Paste’s Top Ten of Ten Years is available for a limited time on www.pasteusa.com, as well as select stores listed on the site. Also visit the site to see a 10 Year Retrospective of Laurits’s work, over 150 designs and counting. Jason Laurits’s art portfolio can be seen at www.jasonlaurits.com.
If you would like more information on Paste, or to schedule an interview with Jason Laurits, please email info@pasteusa.com.
The Top Ten of Ten Years showcases Laurits as artist who uses whimsy, humor, and kitsch, as well as little satire and social criticism. In “Drunk Cat,” where a simple, digital dress up of a lounging cat with an accordion, sombrero, and bottle-of-something, exemplifies Laurits’s so-bad-it’s-good humor.
Though Laurits rarely uses text, as it “overexplains,” his “Like, Save the Whales, and Stuff,” tee, almost mocks the use of text and social activism through fashion. “Damn, Girl,” uses a Victorian woman with an amplified bustle being checked out by her male counterpart.
“Parachutes,” with parachuting elephants, shows Laurits’s sense of whimsy, as “Pirate Lincoln,” Abe with an eye patch, and “Coach Cat,” featuring a giant Cat with a whistle posed next to a vintage sports team, shows his sense of irrelevance.
“I am most asked,” says Laurits, “’What did you mean by that?’ People always want to translate art, like a puzzle to unlock, and perhaps meaning is there, but visuals are not necessarily meant to translate into words. They work on two different levels.” Laurits, however, certainly does send a message with “Frank,” where by simply adding a tiara to Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, he opens a whole new door to the metaphors of this classic monster. “Is Here,” shows the resurrection of Christ, well documented by a cluster of camera phones.
“Headdress,” stands alone as simply a beautiful black-and-white silkscreen of a Native American headdress. And rounding out the Top Ten is “Hang in There,” a beefed-up, macho version of the classic 1980s “Hang In There, Baby” poster. “It was my first of many cat t-shirts,” Laurits explains, “I was inspired by the die-hard, old cat ladies. People weren’t sure what to think of it when it first came out, which is hard to believe now that cats and kitsch have since become the thing. Now I can’t even do a series of tees without a cat on one of them, and for the record, I’m allergic and have a dog.”
And if there was an eleventh t-shirt to the Top Ten? It would certainly be Laurits’s staple, the “T-shirt T-shirt,” a simple white tee with a simple white tee on it. “One of my firsts, and that’s as close to a logo tee as I’ll ever get,” says Laurits.
Paste’s Top Ten of Ten Years is available for a limited time on www.pasteusa.com, as well as select stores listed on the site. Also visit the site to see a 10 Year Retrospective of Laurits’s work, over 150 designs and counting. Jason Laurits’s art portfolio can be seen at www.jasonlaurits.com.
If you would like more information on Paste, or to schedule an interview with Jason Laurits, please email info@pasteusa.com.
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Jason Laurits
718 554 0113
www.pastetshirts.com
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