Art has its way of flowing beyond its original expression. Taking new forms as it unfolds. Here are three pieces of art that you can now wear, along with their origin stories. In various colours, shapes and sizes. Nice to wear. Wear to feel nice.
Good-exploding-head t-shirt
It was February 2005 when a rabbit proof fence was built in our garden. At the base of the arbour. Between child-friendly lawned garden and maturing plant-friendly forrest garden. Materials bought, I had no idea I was buying a canvas and preparing it for painting by making a gate out of it and leaving it in the garden for a decade. Turns out its a pretty good way to get some lovely texture on a piece of wood.
As with most of my art I just wanted to see Good-exploding-head emoji exist. Fed up with the very unhappy looking exploding head emoji that never seems to represent how my head explodes at times, I wanted one that depicts the sheer, flippin’ awesomeness with which life can jolly itself along. So I did. I made it. And now it exists. And you can wear it on a t-shirt over your chest and belly.
Fence-Painting-T-shirt – Gavin-Birchall
Leap-into-life t-shirt
I wanted to write here that this one has a more recent origin, but that is likely not true. 5th October 2024. As human-at-large was taking form. In my imagination. I wanted some shapes for people to look at. While my son and daughter climbed problems inside our local bouldering wall, I set up a camera on a tripod outside, in the car park, with a massive corrugated shutter in the background. Then I filmed myself jumping about like a loon and pulling all sorts of yoga shapes for all to see. The video is hilarious.
I cut stills from it and then turned them into graphics which are all over human-at-large. One of those stills caught me ‘leaping’ with abandon into the… into a… well, into everything. Almost into a nearby van, but I managed to stop before contact. So, in February 2025, when at a lino-cut workshop, leaping-me felt like a good subject. Not an easy subject, for my first ever lino-cut I later realised, but a good subject.
Leap-Cut-Wear – Gavin-Birchall
Leap-Cut-Wear – Gavin-Birchall
The Lifesider story has become legend. Folklore. Myth. At least in my conscious awareness it has. It started in a garden. A simple, humble, sub-urban garden. It started with quietly sitting. Drifting. Listening. Then a voice. From elsewhere. ‘I am on the side of life. I am a Lifesider’. Powerful enough to bring tears and a conviction never felt before.
A spoken truth. A heard revelation. Found depth and breadth as poetry. First one poem, then three more spun from the first. They formed the spiralling, lifting energy that held the heart of the Lifesider Poetry Collection. Which brought along with it a front cover image collecting some of that energy and rendering it in colour and blissful, diversity in unity. Came then the Lifesider Reflections Lino Cut Prints. A second expression. Then an old but stout, abandoned chair became The Lifesider Chair. The third expression is comfortable. I’m sitting on it now as it happens. Where it goes, nobody knows. Not even me. But it does go nicely on the front of a t-shirt. To carry around with you in the world, as you go, every bit the Lifesider, on the side of life.
Unity-In-Diversity-Book-Print-Chair-Garb – Gavin-Birchall