Friends of Badknees T-Shirt #2 - Indiana Calls Us Home

Friends of Badknees T-Shirt #2 - Indiana Calls Us Home

Welcome to the Friends of badknees Series, a series in which I put my friends’ art on shirts because my friends do cool stuff and you should know about them. 

Friend #2 in this series is the incredibly talented Chris Mott. I befriended Chris at some point around the millennium. He was childhood Greenwood buds with my roomie Matte Cathcart (you know him from the Friends of badknees #1 shirt design!), and he would travel down to Bloomington from Greenwood during that time period to visit Matte.

My early encounters with Chris are a bit fuzzy. I remember Matte talking about how insanely good he was at skating and I do have memories of seeing Chris do some tricks in front of our house, making them look effortless as good skaters do. I’m not really even sure what we talked about in those early days. We were both shy guys.

It wasn’t until I left Bloomington and got married and moved to Vermont when Chris and I really started chatting up a storm over the emails and through the mail. Chris was a music maker/recorder like I was a music maker/recorded and we really dug what each other were doing. His two albums FITHY and FITHY 2 under his Obechoir alias were super inspiring to me, filled with great little songs he recorded by himself. I believe I proposed that we should make an album of music together through the mail, and that’s what we did, sending cassettes back and forth and making an album on our trusty 4-tracks. It's one of my favorite art projects ever and you can listen to it here! Check out all the other music on that page, too, as Chris spearheaded one of the greatest record labels ever, THIS IS BASEMENT POP.

Chris has played in many great bands over the years - see the door-keys and Landlord and Purple 7 and currently Evening Standards and they are all amazing, catchy as heck and great lyrics to boot. And in addition to all of this Chris is an incredible visual artist, too! Whether it was flyers or albums he designed or paintings I found out he was responsible for, I was drawn to it all. There is just something distinct about his style, whether it's abstract or concrete, that always hooks me in. I think it can all be captured through his web site and his insta and his TikTok (He is my most famous TikTok friend). He's been focusing on woodworking and painting for the last good number of years and I love it all so much and encourage you to check it out if you haven't!

Chris sent me this particular INDIANA CALLS US HOME design over the insta and said he wanted to get it on a shirt. I smiled right away because it is a very Hoosier shirt and the title, INDIANA CALLS US HOME, comes from a song some friends of mine and I cooked up 20ish years ago. I told him I was going to make it happen. This design brings him joy, it brings me joy, and my guess is its going to resonate with you. 

Shirts are printed and ready to go - unisex short sleeve 100% cotton Gildan Ts and 3/4 sleeves poly cotton American apparel Ts. Get them while they last because this a limited run.