HBML documentation

HBML was a storefront arts space in Worcester MA in the guise of a donation-based thrift store. HBML hosted exhibits by varying artists and sold used goods. In addition we manufactured items for sale in the store and sold other artist-made goods like books, music recordings, prints, and clothes. It was in operation from some time in 2006 to some time in 2009.

This is a series of web pages to serve as incomplete documentation. Pictures are not ordered chronologically, in themes, or in order of importance, but by file name. Things will be out of order, but related pics have a strong likelihood of being grouped. I think that's as good a way to approach the material as any. No one (except me I guess) experienced the store in a chronological way, it was always just, you'd come in, and there were layers of things, echos of the past, and areas of potential for future action.

These pics are not good documentation by art project standards, or by any standards really! They were just taken by people at the store, or by me for some other purpose, or by me for no purpose. Though it's hard to imagine in this day and age, for the bulk of this project I didn't have a camera. I feel a little weird about putting all this stuff up as a lot is childish or crazy or unpolished or whatever, more confusing than impressing. But who would I be trying to impress anyway?

IN SEARCH OF: more pics! pics of interiors, exteriors, events, items, and especially anything you got silkscreened at a live silkscreening day! if it's a piece of clothing please send a pic of you wearing it, if possible! :) email jacob@fujichia.com

Also, if you're in any of these pics and you want to be blurred out, please let me know, I'll do it!

This web page is just a long scroll of pictures with captions- my goal is to figure out a way to display this that's a little more elegant but that still falls within my standards for simple web design. My goal in advance of that goal is to just get something online for the time being.

Click the yellow dot on a pic to see extra notes, or click here to turn them all ON or OFF.

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nestar

tlinge

Little Andrew fixing lights or something-- this front wall was usually reserved as a rotating gallery wall, but I think there was a gap and we decided to try and make a green screen out of it with some leftover green paint. It really really didn't work :(

amedme

We got a lot of pretty basic clothes donated, I liked to sew stuff to them or alter them in some way, to make them *pop*. This shirt has a quilt part in the back, but my thinking on this weird tentacle on the sleeve was that if you bought this shirt, this part would drive you crazy and you'd have to cut it off, and this was a way of tricking people into getting more comfortable altering their own clothes. Like if they could bring themselves to cut off an objectively stupid part of a piece of clothing, they were just a step away from cutting away something they just didn't like so much on a regular piece of clothing.

tizats

ocangr

Sue Blanks modelling this shirt I made for an ill-fated project in which we refilmed a single episode of the Cosby Show... kind of a relief this didn't come to fruition-- i think the best idea to come out of it was making a one-off t-shirt by stretching a shirt over a computer monitor and tracing what was on the screen with a magic marker. Sue rules, she co-ran Re:Generation, which was a record store / venue (and later tattoo parlor) in Boston that was one of our "sister stores".

tatent

this was not taken at the store. Erin was a bartender at a local spot and offered a drink special if you came in with HBML gear.

wnpain

Mike giving some skate rat a mohawk shave, I don't remember what the deal was here.

orgysb

uteamp

uffeel

umbuts

Josh had a show on our gallery wall and played a music show here, a collab with Lilah Ringler. The huge boob way in the background was a Halloween costume someone made, you could wear it like a shirt and look like your entire body was just a huge boob, plus arm leg leg arm head.

limbri

I had a huge roll of adhesive viynl sticker paper, so I screened these huge stickers that had a blank face and then a bunch of face parts. so you could cut out the parts and stick the parts on the face and then the whole things was a huge sticker. Mike Leslie drew all the elements. This is a messed-up example but this is one that got put together. There were way more parts than blank faces, my hope was that people would find another use for the extra eyes, noses, mouths, etc..

avions

Keenan Cassidy getting his picture taken for the newspaper I think? Does anyone have this clip? Keenan was 15 and an avid painter, we gave him a show.

rasten

llysta

aryson

I really love the Worcester Art Museum and I was always scheming on how to link up with them and like "do a project together", but I couldn't really work it out. This sign is as close as I got. I had a plan for a zine about the Art Museum but then I talked to someone about getting it in the gift shop, and the gift shop is like a totally different organization! They're practically unrelated, it might as well be a 7-11.

ishous

I loved making new toys out of older toys, this was something me and Mike did a lot at first. Mike was kind of more free about it than I was, regarding what can go where. Protip: if you're doing this you can't use super glue- this kind of plastic is the one thing regular super glue doesn't work on. And you can't use hot glue because the bond is weak. I ordered special plastic-on-plastic super glue (which I can't find anymore). As a result, you could play with these toys without them falling apart. A lot of people might not think of a detail like that, but "yes, you can play with these toys" is pretty critical to me.

unimer

akarma

odstio

Russian Tsarlag played a show in the shop, it was great. I didn't like to have loud stuff at the store, because we had upstairs neighbors and neighbors in the back. but things that were like, stereo-loud, that was OK. Tsarlag showed a video and played a great set, there's video of the set on youtube. Carlos/Tsarlag only had 1 record for sale, it was a test pressing and despite seeming totally clean and almost unplayed, there was a small spot of mold on it, which he was excited to point out. "Check it out: actual basement!". I bought the record, obviously.

arrilt

No mic stand for the Tsarlag gig, had to tape a broom to a stool.

zinver

ML bugging out over new issues of Carlos' comic book "Slime Freak". a great comic, this one was in black and white xerox but with hand-colored crayon elements on the cover, and came with a Russian Tsarlag CD-R!

esssin

Keenan flossing at his opening

neures

hellad

ickett

we got a lot of really nice homemade Halloween costumes at the store, it was a great destination for something you worked hard on but will never wear again. Anyway I forget who it was but someone dropped off all these suits once with shit glued to them-- every year they'd go to the thrift store, buy a suit, and glue some shit to it! this one had CDs, there was one with googley eyes, and at least one more but I can't remember.

cconsc

view of the register from Keenan's art show

animeo

John Guida in a wig. Great dude. He had an art show of paintings and collages at the store. A really nice and smart guy, factors which this pic doesn't confer.

pitaga

We did this thing at the store where on certain announced days, if you brought in a blank garment (or bought one at the shop) we would silkscreen a design on it. It was a different design each time for the most part, this is the drawing for the last one we did, kittens.

lestom

EAB buying a shirt that we had printed a Japanese cherry blossoms design on. Around this time there was a show of Japanese "Ukiyo-E" woodcuts at the Worcester Art Museum-- seeing all the patterns and vibrant colors on everyone's clothing (in that era of Japan) was really inspiring. This cherry blossom design was one of our live silk screen designs, which we could print over anything anyone brought in. Usually on these live silk screen days I tried to get people to bring in blank garments, or I would say "we're printing in black so bring something light" or vice versa. For this I said bring something busy. Hi EAB!

tedide

uinges

Me and Amanda made these "traditional" toothpick-and-pea structures for the window display. I'm pretty sure this was her idea? I always thought of this kind of structure as utopic, and as any small-scale architectural fantasy build as a kind of prayer. This was fun. Hi Amanda!

apedes

nderma

view of the front door- Darby Crash, Beethoven. Beethoven isn't upside down because I hate Beethoven, he's upside down for like, a party feeling. Like he's dancing on the ceiling. I like Beethoven. The thing in the note about winning a Boston Art Award for Best Installation was 100% true.

ecurei

There's an exit sign on the highway that reads "Worcester Cultural District" but there's no indication (once you take the exit) that that's what it is- there's no other signs and no one ever talks about it. I decided to usurp it and bind the concept to my doorway.

Regarding the address-- surprisingly late in the game I heard from people who didn't believe that the shop was a real thing, because when I'd talk about it in emails or blog posts, it seemed too fantastic, and the address was a giveaway: 420 Pleasant St? It might as well be on 666 Weed Riff Junction or 1313 I Am Lying Boulevard. In my experience you can't really help these people. Anyway I don't feel too bad about limiting a fantastic experience to only those who believe it is possible. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I hope that isn't too cynical.

nappri

ervens

oubsid

ilbore

I made this sign for the window out of Russian candy wrappers my friend Polina sent me. They got mega faded in the sun but since so many were on metallic paper the sign still popped.

quilti

vercel

worsil

stable

View from across the street. Across the street there was an apartment complex with a lot of seniors, and in warmer months that side of the street always had folks hanging out on it. I was excited to hang this Santa above the doorway, and I put it upside down to be both a riff on the ubiquitous metal symbol of the upside down cross, and also to be like, he's diving in to the store. Like this is where Santa shops. When I put it up the people across the street were really yelling at me, but I don't think they were mad, I think they were just trying to be helpful, which I appreciate.

rsedsh

nicati

allsas

esteig

One of the first big projects I did was a year in which I made a unique stuffed animal every day. That was in 2004, there's a legacy webpage for that up here. I had done other stuff before that, zines and CDRs and performances and stuff, but that was the first time I did a project where I did it even though there were times when I really did not want to do it. I feel like that's a very important step away from basic hobbyism. Also I say "big" in that it was the first thing that got some notice, appearing in Reader's Digest of all places! Anyway I later remade a few of the guys I had made for that, in multiple, for the store. This was a long-time favorite: the Sphinx. There was also a parakeet that I was proud of.

enedge

I heard from more than one person who came through the shop in the early days that they didn't want to buy anything because that would take it out of the store. like if they bought it then no one would see it because it would just be at their house! Or maybe it was an over-stimulation problem. Anyway it was a flattering and interesting problem. My solution was to make these "Mystery Boxes" that had what I considered $5 worth of stuff (at least), grabbed from around the store. More than 1 of these boxes had a $5 bill inside.

I had a super deep riff about this (of course) wherein SINCE the store could have potentially anything in it, AND I grabbed from at random around the store, THEN the boxes, while sealed, had everything in the universe, in an unresolved state. Or anyway everything that I would price at five dollars or less and could fit in the box. The keys to the house you grew up in, for instance, exist in a nondual state in every one of these boxes. Until you open it, then things settle into a static reality path. I had this one guy buy one and keep it on his mantle, and he wrote to me years later, trying to decide whether or not to open it. His kids were bugging him about it. I gave him absolutely no guidance. Hi Tony, if you're reading this!

dellin

A one-off flyer I made for the last days of the shop. I think I was just hanging out drinking coffee so I drew a flyer to hang in the coffee shop. "Even the Ramones left home", that's a great line.

ganger

At some thrift stores they bag all the smaller toys, not individually but in groups- enough to fill a bag. You can't just buy 1 toy, you have to buy the whole bag. It's a pretty good style. At Savers they tend to group the toys by theme (small cars, farm animals, Barbies, etc.), I thought it would be fun to have more abstract groupings, and to declare what the grouping was. Here's Walker, psyched beyond reason to buy TIME WAR. Looks like we got some dinosaurs, some robots, and I can't figure out what else. It's not like people can't figure out how to play with toys, but it's fun to suggest something that might not be immediately evident, some latent quality in a set. I made a lot of these, but I only took pictures of a few. There's a shot of the back of the card further down the page.

clesul

This is from the Worcester Magazine, a free alternative weekly newspaper. In the front they had the Blog Log, where they excerpted various blog posts relevant to the city. This was a sweet though sad thing to read in the paper and really caught me by surprise. Livejournal!

oningh

when you silk screen a shirt you have to put a board in the shirt so the ink doesn't get pushed through the front of the shirt and onto the back. the day we were printing this dinosaur, mike benedetti told me about "brute force the problem space", which is when you try every potential solution to a problem rather than think about which one will work and then try that. I wrote it down on the board but then realized I was going to lose the board, or just use it as a shelf again, so I better take a picture too. That's why I have a picture of this board.

oments

i think Jon Shirley made this??? It was really hard to not hang earrings off this thing, but I didn't want it to seem like infrastructure. I wanted this to find a home. Well, it finally did, on what looks like our very last day.

oryste

Bert with a fan. I forget this lady's name but I remember she was cool and I remember her saying that she had a relative who named a street after her. Every now and then I'm in Webster or somewhere, on Briana St or whatever, asking myself "Was it Briana?".

tratic

Bert really wanted this coat, I couldn't figure out why but he kept hassling me about it. But he only wanted to pay a dollar or something, and it was a really really nice one of these coats! I didn't want to sell it to him. Nonetheless, here he is on the last day, he got the coat.

eastiv

ingste

erawbi

ndexpo

Little Matt! This dude was our street team- an extremely charismatic dude! He loved getting a stack of flyers and walking up to anyone kind of interesting-looking and talking their ear off. A very valuable asset and a really funny guy! I love this "Heismann"-esque pose.

ainess

these white plastic cowboy hats were hanging on invisible thread above the entranceway for a long time- it looked like a bunch of cowboys got really scared and then quickly moved. they all came from Spags, a Worcester institution (wikipedia: Spag's). These guys came on the last day for the hats, they said they needed them for their band.

mardle

changing the caption to a Family Circus cartoon is like, Situationism for kindergarteners. This is an unedited Family Circus cartoon that we printed illegally on sportswear. I think this is Nik Perry's shirt. The part that says "Warriors" was already printed on the shirt.

tingat

rain on our last day! chinese finger traps were the first item we had in stock-- Nicky Revs ordered them online and had them shipped to me before we found a location for the shop, and we were still just kind of talking about it. The box showed up at my house I asked him why he sent them to me, and he said "you have to do the store, you have merchandise now".

essise

I wouldn't have let anyone else drink beers in the store but Little Matt talked his way into it this one time and I think there were extenuating circumstances. I made these cover-ups so "no one knew".

ancloc

OK, following is an archive of all (?) the signs I hung in the window at one point, even the very basic ones.

sispos

inesti

I remember that when I wrote this, it was true, but now years later I can't think of a way how. I never took singing lessons a day in my life, I'm a natural. Maybe I gave singing lessons to someone else? Seems unlikely.

bances

My mom came in one day and did tailoring while-u-wait, but it was t-shirts only and you had to bring in a shirt that was too big and a shirt that fit you perfectly, and she'd sew the too-big one to the same size as the fits-perfect one.

dgeera

this was kind of harsh but it needed to happen, and I think everyone was better off. Bert still came in a lot, we stayed friends.

noritu

vistba

erwori

alspec

yingss

Bert made this one. One day while I was walking home a strong wind blew this 4" plastic witch at me, and we put it in the window for a while. It was one of those plastic blow-molds with a light inside, made in Leominster MA. It was just rolling down the street at me! I thought it was pretty auspicious but I could see someone else reading the same event as rather ominous. A cackling witch rolling down the street? Incredible.

ourenr

hicsse

holaub

ymptsm

tenwai

encess

Crazy Jimmy faked his death, and in the few days where it seemed real I had this in the window. Then he was spotted drinking a beer somewhere and it was a Bad Scene. Never do this!

utlima

Some people think the role of an artist is to make things clear. In my experience the artist translates some mysteries into other forms of mystery, with some sort of revelation as an occasional and unreliable byproduct.

ounduc

DKLR was Bert's pseudonym, you say it like "da killer". His dad was a pro wrestler who came in the shop once and talked to me for a long time about the ins and outs of wrestling-- it was incredible to have a pro break "kay fabe" with me.

stesec

alsabl

ampuls

there was this pack of lousy little kids that used to come in and one of them would distract me and the others would steal stuff. They stole a jar of change I had been using, maybe $30 in change? and who knows what else. I know- big deal. Anyway it really really got me down and I told them to never come back. But then I saw one of them in the street and he was really cheery and happy to see me- "Hi junk store guy!!!", I kind of got the feeling that they get kicked out of a lot of places and it was like, no hard feelings. Still, I wish I had handled this some other way and also I wish I worded this sign differently. I don't know what's going on in their life. And even if they never saw this, there were a lot of other kids I liked, and I used too broad a brushstroke here. Also "lousy children" probably don't self-identify that way, whereas cool quiet weirdos might be all too apt to see themselves reflected in this. Sorry, I was upset. Pain and trauma really bounces around from person to person... Drawing on this by Matt Thurber, from a letter he sent me.

erodho

drifyi

Why don't stores advertise that they don't play Christmas music at Christmas time? Not to be "War On Christmas" but I hate Christmas music and I would like to be able to drink a coffee or buy a pair or shoes without being subjected to it. Also the real War On Christmas is actual War. If you're pro-War you're anti-Christmas.

alycen

I didn't get any takers on this at the time, but after the store finally closed, a group of people reopened a similar sort of place in the same location, called the Fuck Yeah Center, or FYC. I liked those dudes a lot but the whole enterprise was a little too close for comfort for me.

powers

ticalk

this is the B side of our open sign.

nifear

indent

mildfe

ivirok

anchic

horpes

glaqui

owposp

rdserv

Jamie Buckmaster wearing a sick quilted t-shirt I made.

udephe

Drawing from (and from the life of) James Kuo, who if memory serves, won the diorama contest.

dagshe

Silk screen of a drawing I did of a Joseph Beuys piece, in which he's in a cage with a coyote for 8 hours over the course of 3 days. The piece was called "I Like America And America Likes Me" (wiki). Here it is in the wild as it were, sewn onto a tote bag. Decorative patches are great because you can just sew them over the logo on any promotional item, then you're not repping BankAmerica, you're repping a mysterious drawing or whatever.

hangla

Mike Taylor silkscreen in 4 transparent overlapping colors. Always loved this one. "Decent Value, Unpredictable Selection". It's inside a grocery store, gotta be Price Rite, right?

dedled

Dominic was a shop volunteer who I met years previous, when I was volunteering at the anarchist bookstore, and he was like, 11. A super super sweet and thoughtful person. He died suddenly and mysteriously at a show with his band, no violence or foul play, just from a blood clot that moved from one place to another. Extremely sad. One of the sweetest dudes you could ever meet. I miss you Dom.

ndemen

Tasty is a skateboard company run by Pat Scully, who is one of those people that just has boundless energy and drive. An extremely supportive person who was always truly excited about anything that was going on! This is a board he put out of a Mike Leslie drawing.

woonvo

ficupa

I was really into hanging stuff from the ceiling but I think it made a lot of people feel overwhelmed. In my defense I hung stuff really high up.

acysim

Jamie is a great musician and great artist-- luckily for us all he's pretty prolific, and always has a few bands going at once. When people did art shows at the store, I tried to get them to also make some kind of product that would be at the store after the show was over. Jamie made these beautiful little matchbooks that were hand-stamped in 2 colors. They looked like a child's toy from the 40s or something. We also stocked a comic book he made, and a lot of CD-Rs of various projects. My favorite was a solo banjo album he made called "Most Successful Poem".

athind

George came from Northhampton to shop and he really racked up. No problem! I would say that George is my most serious "collector". He used to run a CD-R label called Breaking World Records that would also duplicate CD-Rs in bulk for other labels. A great racket. Also him and a bunch of other people had this punk house in Easthampton MA that was the launchpoint for a lot of really incredible noise bands. Hi George!

onseyb

PKP modelling a shirt from one of our live silk screen days, it's the zombie from the cover of Lucio Fulci's "Zombie", aka "Zombi 2", the italian ersatz-sequel to George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead", which is itself one of two direct sequels to "Night of the Living Dead". Night of the Living Dead is accidentally in the public domain due to a distributor error, and because of this the sequels proliferated and branched. The bottom of the shirt says "We Are Going To Eat You", which is what it says on the poster for Zombie, but I put it in the CRASS font to give it a sociopolitical context.

umstle

My friend Jeremy's grandfather had this cool side hustle where he'd paint your name on a tie in this mirror-image style so it looked like just an abstract flourish. We had a ton of ties that no one really wanted to buy so I screenprinted this design, which says "BULLSHIT" if you tilt your head to the left, but just looks like a bunch of squiggles otherwise.

ynctsu

struss

this clothes rack made a really great sound when you spun it. luckily I had the foresight to make a video: [youtube link].

mnefor

Ashleigh Russell had a job at some online book reseller, and we had an art show of every picture, note, or piece of ephemera she found wedged into one of the books. It was a lot! I wish I had scanned in everything, it was really fun to sort through. here's the outgoing email:

Subject: [Go] HBML detritus andronicus
Date: 09/02/2008 04:00 PM

art opening this wednesday (tomorrow, september 3) from 7 - 9pm at HBML

ashleigh russell presents the best items forgotten in books of curious lore

ashleigh had a lousy job, hiding in a book depository like john wilkes booth, or that other guy, riffling through pages to remove foreign objects before they sold on the internet. well like i said the job sucked, she quit, and now the cream of the crop of foreign objects will be on display at HBML diabolical/angelical junk shoppe, for three weeks, starting tomorrow at 7pm, with cookies and perhaps tea available.

items include photos, notes, profanity, sublimity, stuff like that. what might be titled "memorabilia", if the thing they had in common was that they were remembered, but in fact the opposite is true.

wednesday night come out and hang and mingle. i've been reading a scholarly treatise on profane folklore entitled "the rationale of the dirty joke". watch me fight tooth and nail with my own id to refrain from starting sentences with "as an englishman was heard to remark on his wedding night..." or similar constructions.

i will also be displaying a new line of semi-durable plastic toys, which will be for sale.

interested in volunteering? let's talk!

jacob

HBML
420 pleasant st
worcester ma
01609

hbml.org
w th f 4:30 - 8
sat 2 - 5

ulcing

suking

fectin

gawayn

iarock

tinsia

smande

tionai

These pics make it look like there were constant mohawk shaves going on in the store but I think there were really just 2 instances, and I got pictures. Here's Pat Scully under the clippers and Mike Leslie above. Looking good!

vesssa

tionru

ML wearing some sort of hair appliance in front of the Ashleigh Russell found items exhibit.

ylemor

Silkscreen of a Tyrannosaurus Rex from one of our live silkscreen days. Great placement here! from the email:

Subject: [Go] HBML ssaturday silk screen dungeon of the dinosaur
Date: 07/09/2008 11:20 AM

yo...............
this saturday from 2 to 5 it's another silk screening day at HBML junk shoppe. bring a garment and we will print on it a design of our choosing, and this week we choose a design based on the idea 'DINOSAURS". if you love dinosaurs, and you love to think about them stomping around, eating things, evolving into birds, and so forth, well the path is clear- make your time. right now it's a toss-up exactly what the image will be, but what it will not be is goofy- it will be one or more dinosaurs rendered with as much precision as i'm available for. magestic and proud; fierce or possibly ambivalent; in black ink. the price is ssteady at $5 per. i will have a fabric marker, if you want me to write a swear word on the garment, that's free. and we will have cold canned coffee for sale, a summer treat.

ibaorm

Nik Perry's version of the ML face sticker- I think he tried to use every available piece. I hope I find a regular version of this, so far all I've posted are weird takes and rule breaks.

stsyle

Carolyn on the left here was our very first customer! I remember getting set up on our first day and then she walked in and I almost said "Um, we're not open yet" but then I realized that we were, and it was happening! This is not a pic of that first day, this is just A Nice Pic. Joe and Tobin (center, right) were in a cool band together called Opposites Day, with their moms!!! Who were also cool as Hell. I met Joe because his mom called me once to ask if a show I was booking (a matinee with USAISAMONSTER, Animental, Noise Nomads, Terribles) was ok for a nine-year-old. I said totally.

ilesto

Bert watching Bone Zone play in an alley at Start on the Street. Start on the Street is a yearly crafts fair in Worcester that takes place on Park Ave. in 2008 Bone Zone played, but instead of setting up on stage they set up in an alley behind a huge mountain of cardboard, and you had to literally climb the mountain to get to them. It ruled!!! I think they only played 5 minutes before someone literally pulled the plug, but it was one of those times where 5 minutes is the best show of the year. there's a great 27 second video here: [vimeo link]. About a week after this Bert's dad came in the store to say Bert's been bugging him to get an electric guitar, and should he do it or is this just a passing thing? I told him it might be a passing thing but if he sticks with it it'll definitely change his life for the better. I ran into Bert a year or so after the store closed and he told me he had a band called "Vesuvius". Can you believe it?!?!?! I told him he really hit it out of the park. A perfect band name right on the first go.

itions

Paula Van art show. Paula was the cool mysterious person who worked at the natural foods store and dressed alternative but you never really saw her at shows. Then she started going to shows and the people rejoiced! She stopped being as mysterious but she remained very cool! Hi Paula!!!

terste

rrappe

istari

ubditc

xicope

I wish I had a better picture of this, but when we finally closed down I found this HUGE mushroom growing under the zine rack in the front, right out of the floor tiles!!!! I'm not sure if there was a ceiling drip or if water blew in from the nearby doorway or what, but anyway conditions were right for this bad boy, it must've been 7 inches across. Nothing else was damaged in any way. Incredible.

My understanding is that mushrooms aren't really "one thing", they're just the visibile part of a larger organism. Or to put it another way, if you see a mushroom you're actually seeing just the fruiting body of a large underground mycelial network. Zines, bands, art shows, weird stores-- these are very similar to the mushroom in this regard. They are the fruiting bodies of a large underground network, which arise when conditions are right for propagation.

And no, I didn't eat this.

bteroc

ntsinc

someone grabbed a board i used as part of a live silk screen event and used it as flooring in their room?

kersho

angler fish silk screen! i had glowing blue LEDs and batteries that threaded through the fabric to create the glowing lure of the angler fish, which isn't in place here. does anyone have a pic with the LEDs installed? I believe this is James Kuo modelling the jacket. here's the email:

Subject: [Go] HBML carrier phantasm-- saturday silk screen
Date: 02/27/2008 02:11 AM

yo............
this (what day is it) saturday at HBML (420 pleasant st WORCESTER) we are having another of our successful silk screening days. you bring in a garment, and we put a picture on it FOREVER using ancient technologies. the last time we did this, it was a picture of a coyote. this time it will be a picture of an angler fish, which is a terrifying fish from very deep in the ocean, with teeth so big and curvy that it cannot even close its mouth. AND it has a bioluminescent lure to attract unwitting prey. this fish, is really quite a sight. if my stars are aligned, the light-emitting diodes i ordered for this project will have arrived, and the tiny batteries, and each garment will have affixed to it (in the appropriate location on the image of the fish) some sort of ACTUAL GLOWING device that cannot be turned off or removed, but will last probably a couple months anyway. and if the damn things don't arrive on time and in tune, well, we'll still be making the picture, you'll just have to get the light-up part later.

that's this saturday the first, from 2 to 5pm, bring a dark-colored garment (we're printing in white ink) and $5.

and of course we're also open W Th F from 4:30 to 8pm.

also the HBML blog is back, and someone please give me a half-way decent digital camera.

next week- friday is jamie buckmaster's art opening, saturday is our motherfucking FASHION SHOOOT.

UP THE PUNKS

jacob
HBML

i'm a email addict

backin

Here's Toni rocking the Coyote design from one of our live silkscreening days. I was very inspired by reading Lewis Hyde's "Trickster Makes The World", a breakdown of the trickster character as it exists across world mythologies. Coyote is a trickster, as is Hermes, whose intertwined snakes trademark appear in the background of this design (albeit from a non-Greek source). In time I changed what the store's acronym official stood for, from Happy Birthday Mike Leslie to Hermes Barnum Monkey Legba. I was really happy about this drawing- I like the coyote's indeterminate stare and the fact that you can see his little dink. I reused this image for a cover of Mothers News years later.

vallit

Mary with the tiger design from one of our live silkscreening events (this picture was taken much later at some kind of party). I wanted this design to be huge and ferocious, and you know what, it's really hard to make a ferocious picture of a ferocious thing! When I was drawing the design it looked too regular, so I cut it up into pieces then put the pieces together in a jagged way so it looks wrong. I think that helped a lot. Still not as ferocious as I had hoped, but getting there. Hi Mary!

nesser

Unknown person modeling a bicycle jacket featuring an image from one of our live silk-screening events. This image is from a book of Russian tattoo designs, most of which are pretttttty heavy! This one seemed ok though, if I remember correctly, it symbolizes "general hooliganism". Sales of this design were donated to Stone Soup, which is a community center in Worcester that had, in the week previous to our event, caught on fire. I like how this image was printed right over the vent of the shirt, which coincides with the bear's accordian. I really like how it's printed not on center, but that was of necessity, due to the snap. If you want to do silkscreening absolutely perfect, to perfectly imprint a design onto a surface, you're supposed to print only on things that are perfectly flat and even glue the fabric down to a board first with a low-tack adhesive spray, so nothing moves around at all. We were pretty fast and loose, and I think it paid off big time. In the rare event that one of the prints looked really wobbly, either because the garment was too lumpy or some ink had dried in the screen, I just looked the person in the eye and said "it looks great!". I never lied though- it always looked great.

ingulv

silkscreen in memory of Dominic. I think this is Cousin Joe modelling.

nhusev

Matt Fox repping the Godzilla print from one of our live silk screen events. at the bottom it says "If he behaved, he did so in a world he had altered", which is a quote from the Lewis Hyde trickster book. I talked to a few people who were especially excited that I drew Godzilla with his fins crackling with energy.

ackeen

every now and then I'd come across a toy that looked like someone I knew, so I'd just board it up and label it and put it on the wall behind the counter, marked NFS (Not For Sale). Here's a GI Joe that looks like my friend Jim, aka GT. If you ever go to Julian's restuarant in Providence you might be able to see behind the counter a toy from this series, it's a Joe that looks like the manager of Julian's, Brian O. I believe it's the hovercraft driver.

orrouc

Ian Cozzens and Andrew Oesch had a project together called either Magic City Repairs or New Your City-- they would silkscreen a bunch of architectural elements on heavy paper then cut them out (with kids i think?) and put them together. They did a window install.

asocke

erants

elygre

hevoid

Mike Benedetti took this self-portrait from deep in the back room, using a huge mirror that was leftover in the place from when the building used to be a salon. The back room was off limits for the first year or so, and was used just for storage and for the planetarium. But it was a mess and wasn't being used well, so we cleared it out and made it the clothing area.

wedero

I had an idea of putting in a bench here, because it was a bus stop and a nice place to sit in the summer. One day Ian Cozzens was in the store and we were talking about the idea, when there's a big commotion outside, it was a crew from the city installing this bench. I guess it's not a big deal, the feeling is more like "I fished my wish" than "I manifested my desires", but still the feeling was a little magickal!

razest

next door to the shop was a really great market where you can get fresh pita bread, tabouli, and many other delicious items. tabouli and pita is great, especially with the pita is soft and fresh. Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace. Really great spot.

frette

Neil getting a devillock haircut from Pat Scully on DANZIG DAY, June 7 2007. 7/7/07. Danzig has a song "777". We gave people haircuts and silkscreened the Misfits "crimson ghost" logo onto things. We also had a Roy Orbison silkscreen option. I feel like if you like the Misfits but not Roy Orbison then you probably don't really like the Misfits. In the background here is Jeff Hartford's gallery wall, which was up at the time and didn't really get any good pictures of.

entaim

deding

I loved having little drawers filled with stuff! buttons, hair junk, chick tracts, little dudes, really little dudes, swinging medallions... I love this kind of tableau.

hulchi

install pic from the Dioramarama. There were more in another window but I didn't get a picture of those I guess... This window was right at a bus stop so I really enjoyed giving people waiting for the bus something to look at. I don't remember who did what here, but I remember that Esther Hockett made the one on the top where it's me holding a sparkler and the words say SEX BOMB. I... was not very enthusiastic about this but what can I do? Esther was and is a very cool nut. Hi Esther!

oamito

Blurry view, I think that's Sasha Wiseman in the front center?? Sasha opened up her own store after this pic, in the back room of the Stairwell Gallery in Providence (what's now Analog Underground). It wasn't chaotic though, it was really nice and well-curated, just zines and prints and tapes. Sasha rules. Hi Sasha!

krequy

PUNKS ARE BACK IN TOWN O-HO, PUNKS ARE BACK IN TOWN!

ttognu

better view of Keenan's art show but you still can't really see it. It was hard to get a good line of sight on anything in the store.

hroler

videma

Snow Ghost! This dude came in the store and we had a great time talking about Bela Lugosi movies, then I notice he's been holding something in his hand since he came in so I "What's that, buddy". "Oh, I'm supposed to give you this". it's a CD-R and in magic marker it says SNOW GHOST. I said "are you Snow Ghost?" and he said "Yeah", and thus began a beautiful friendship. I ended up releasing the CD as a tape called "Death, Despair, and Redempshire". You can listen to it on archive.org. He also made a cool joke book and was the host of a show on Cable TV that lasted quite a few episodes!

buresn

shumer

lateat

llicen

on the left here you can see a diorama that someone made for the Dioramarama, that didn't make it to the window display. This one was from Ben Jones' dad, Bucky Jones, and it broke every rule I had! It had: live fireworks, meat (dried pig's ears), and an open top, meaning it couldn't be stacked. These were the only things I specifically asked each artist to avoid! Maybe he heard it in reverse? I can imagine that. "Oh, he said something about fireworks and meat, I better do that". Anyway I didn't want to tell him off because... it's Ben's dad! I always wish I was more of a hard-ass.

eshotp

Installation view of Joshua Vrysen's art show. I had planned on printing bandanas for this, and Josh made a cool design for them, but he has such a fine line and I'm such a sloppy screenprinter, it just didn't work out. :( I should've anticipated that, and asked him to draw it with a sharpie, or just shapes made of cut paper or something. Well, live and learn.

ectali

nessem

ldepbo

He we are in the act of filming The Cosby Show- it was this idea I had where people would come in, and we'd watch one brief scene of this one episode of the Cosby Show (the one where Lena Horne guest stars) and then refilm it. I made XXL t-shirts with the characters names on them, that was the only way you could tell who was who, because the actors changed every scene. The back room of the store was painted like a green screen so we could add in proper backgrounds later. I really thought we could bust this out in a weekend, but it was really much more work than I had anticipated, and also... I think people stayed away from the store because they didn't want to get roped in to this. Fair enough! We didn't get far, which is probably for the best, considering all the stuff we learned about Bill Cosby years later. I'm happy to say the tape got lost!

worpti

This was the first print for our "Rent Club", it was made by Jo Dery. The idea of the Rent Club was that if the store had subscribers like a magazine, we could be assured a certain amount of money every month, then we wouldn't have to worry about rent (which, incidentally, was pretty cheap). So we commissioned silk screen artists to design and print these posters for us. People signed up for 3 month chunks of time and got 3 different posters.

erusen

ilsedl

sfulis

Harry and the Potters play a set in the store. They did a tour where it was all different places around Worcester in 1 day-- They played the comic book store down the street immediately after this, a show somewhere before, and I think a big gig at night. Looks like we're eating soup? Was there soup at this gig? I can't remember. Harry And The Potters is a band where two brothers both dress up like Harry Potter and sing songs based on all the Harry Potter books EXCEPT the last one. It's pretty wild-- i think there are 2 documentaries about them! No one had thought of a having a band as a fan activity before, now there's tons of other Wizard bands. Really good guys too. Joe is on the left, his brother Paul is out of the picture.

abbing

gspent

Right when we opened we had a drawing desk in the back corner of the store, but I didn't like it, it gave too strong a feeling of just walking into someone's room. Not very inviting.

tedalu

both Harrys from Harry and the Potters- Paul in the center and Joe on the right. Paul opened up a store years later in Lawrence Kansas, it's like an arts supply store with a gallery component.

nrysmu

banger

I think Joe bought the keytar he's playing at this store?

dnedon

picture from the entranceway looking back into the store. Seah Chickering-Burchesky had an art show and she had a lot of paintings so the show was split between the front wall and the back room, you can kind of see it. in the middle distance looking at the clothes I think that's the brilliant playwrite and actor Madeline ffitch, of the Missoula Oblongata.

pabity

aillou

invara

here you can see a bunch of silk screen posters for sale, including a poster Mike Taylor made for a show at his house on Halloween that was so nuts (the show) that he put the poster up AFTER the event, as a commemorative thing only. if he put it up too early there would've been too many people!

liyamb

a linux evangelist I knew ordered these linux CDs for us to give away in the store, that's cool. Maybe the same guy gave us DVDs of the recent Battlestar Gallactica? I can't really remember. I do remember that the box on the right had a bunch of coconut halves in it.

rimphe

a bad picture of me (I hate having my picture taken) that I'm including only because it's a better picture of Jeff Hartford's gallery install. I like that you can see the line on the wall where "a bunch of crap on the wall" stops and "the gallery" starts. I remember asking Jeff what kind of snacks he liked for the opening, he said corn chips and salsa, and that gave me a really good feeling.

ershes

sign in the window quotes the ever-inspirational Mark Gonzalez. I was never really a skateboarder though Mike was, and a lot of my friends were. Mike gave me a hard time about this pic, specifically (i think) the left arm over the leg (the arm would have to be really bent or the knee turned in way more), and how there isn't really any motion in the picture. I guess if you're a skateboarder you're used to looking at a still pic for clues as to what happened just before and after. I appreciate that kind of feedback. I loved to draw this weird bird.

entint

Comfy chair in the back corner. Behind the chair is a poster of Jim Carrey as Tony Clifton, that Ben Jones made for the Andy Kaufman biopic. We had a huge roll of these.

meleds

tingst

kinces

the first two installments of the HBML Rent Club- there's Jo Dery's poster on the left and 3 small ones from Mike Taylor.

sposte

shaire

toxeco

any time a toy came through that looked like someone I knew I'd make a display card and wire the toy to it, and call it the "People I Have Met" series. CFL was the first one, he was kind of embarassed about this though, I think.

tatrat

nbeabl

I started boarding these chimeric toys to try to entice people to buy them. It was also a good opportunity to get a few more vibes in there, via text and graphic design. Also it's a good solution to the problem that some of them don't stand up so well. Some of these cards have mirror elements that were hard to photograph. Also some of these guys had aspects that aren't clear from this strict profile view. I'm sure some of the people that bought these kept them on the packaging, some threw the packaging away. There's no wrong way to play.

mbarga

vachiv

inecti

expled

pariat

redske

prootc

pretra

grieng

sintst

eustok

gallss

heving

intski

thskie

sonsch

rnerch

There wasn't really a live snake in here, that was a lie.

estage

tpider

i tried to get everyone who had a gallery show to make some sort of multiple that could be sold at the store oafter the show had ended. Mike Taylor made these cereal boxes, silkscreened in 4 colors. He figured out that it was cheaper to buy cheap cereal and take the boxes apart to print on them than buy cardstock and fold it. Inside each box was a bag of cereal that was a combination of the original cereal and homemade granola, the bags opened and then heat-sealed back together. "CONTAINS ACTUAL BREAKFAST". I still have 2 boxes but I could never decide if the "real thing" was to open it and eat it or to leave it MIB.

ranses

mblesc

Wall detail from Mike Taylor's art show. This guy playing the banjo was originally used on a poster he made for a Dan Higgs show.

ingsss

looking out the front door

boxies

ssatro

Dan Wars worked in a bowling alley in Boston and one day there was some sort of political event there for John Kerry. The Kerry people made and left a few boxes of baseball hats, maybe they forgot to give them out, maybe they gave out some. Dan Wars brought the left-behind hats to me (quite a lot of hats) and I glued pieces of colorful fabric over the insignia with fabric glue. This one appears to have a bubblegum wrapper stapled to it. We had so many of these hats that if one blew off in the wind I would just leave it where it lay and get a new one. Hat rich, and careless in wind.

thuade

urnsem

silkscreen in memory of Dom

redoun

silkscreen of the zombie from Zombi 2 (also known as "Zombi") which was the italian sequel to Day Of The Dead (which was one of two sequels to Night Of The Living Dead). I love how convoluted this family tree is! And the zombie looks totally gnarly. I wrote the film's tagline in CRASS font so it'd look more political.

chambl

Geisha silkscreen, from the collection of PKP. My desire with this one was to make a print where there was a big section you could color in with fabric markers or something, but then I couldn't get the fabric markers together in time, and besides you'd have to wait for the print to dry before you started coloring. Still a cool design.

fitaul

I reused this drawing of a coyote for a cover illustration for Mothers News. I had recently read Lewis Hyde's excellent book "Trickster Makes The World", about the character of the trickster in world mythology, and it made a big impact on me. Coyote and Hermes are both trickster figures. I was excited I got to put a little nod to Hermes via these Aztec or Mayan crossed snakes. Also I was satisfied that I drew the coyote's dink.

After a while I changed the name of the store from "Happy Birthday Mike Leslie" to HBML, and made a new backronym- "Hermes Barnum Monkey Legba", about different trickster figures.

iallau

xerox with 4-color spraypaint stencil by George W Myers

essink

nishme

iguinn

HBML rent club poster by Nik Perry

onsker

HBML rent club poster by Cybele Collins

arteri

HBML rent poster by Scott Reber

fulshi

aiatta

this was a one-sheet newspaper I made called "New Parisian". the idea here was to have something that would be fun to read, freely available around town, would pay for itself through advertising, and would point back to the store. Unfortunately I only did one issue. This same idea would return in my next project, basically the same riff, called "Mothers News".

nedger

rtrize

iersin

upsonf

nice writeup and photocollage from Blank Canvas magazine, a free magazine.

ostica

ibelle

for the first show in our gallery wall I painted over a bunch of old record covers, first drawing abstract mint green blobs over the cover, then dropping details in magic marker. Having a gallery wall was a good way to have events and keep things moving... I don't understand why more businesses don't do this. It's fun, there's a party once a month or whatever, community vibes, what's the problem?

hrater

Here's a calendar I made for the store, and if you pre-paid for it I printed your birthday on it. The copy pictured was mine, so it has some other crap on it too.

ingsho

serstr

oqueds

delcru

nestin

nkeunr

linglo

ssegra

tionga

owells

ilyhon

heatoo

ningth

agerin

dances

mcleek

tingst

horbet

mintio

small_4198_1168047966275_1380226557_457305_7804256_n.jpg

ancesp

photo from the russian tsarlag show, i think sam gascan took this.

sandam

kinda feels wrong to sell a four-leaf clover but I did it anyway.

reldio

ations

eraviv

horrible plush animal made on the premises.

ithori

ssette

Joe volunteered for a day, I remember the big impact he had was that he rearranged all the action figures so they were all reaching out and touching each other's noses. Here he is with a can of aloe vera drink- i bought a flat of this at a nearby market for a special event. it's refreshing but it's also chunky, which can be unsetltling

erprea

azatwi

forges

vatich

these toys were really really good, they were like little weird dudes standing on top of cars that were halfway in size between micro machines and hotwheels. the cars rolled great. I had to really fight to not just keep them for myself, but I did buy one.

kpitys

ellebi

ssolsi

back of the package for the toy bags

omingi

either one or both of these happy customers worked at ed hyder's next door, and they were bugging out on the handbags, trying to figure out if they were really Gucci (or whatever). I felt like it was too late to change the price ($3), although I could tell they were on the cusp of saying "you can get $300 (or whatever) for this".

footai

nerson

there was a website for the store, with a lively blog, but I didn't back it up and everything got lost except the photos. I forget exactly what this image was created but it's a good reminder that there was a blog too and it was weird.

iorker

sidepo

gatili

oksout

llbace

waryse

ckless

Mike Benedetti in front of Xander Marro's gallery install.

rtiche

Billy Blue for ties. Billy is a cool dude and a great musician with great style. This pic of him wearing a clip-on tie on a t-shirt is not an indication of that.

hellin

yperje

the dollar store had these resin sculptures of snow tigers, I bought a few of them and hand-painted them blue. Borges had a story called "Blue Tigers" which for him was just one of a large number of excellent riffs on tigers in general. I guess I made this as a bookmark for that story, like fan art that only communicates "I like this" or "remember this thing, which is good". Another of his tiger stories is applicable here too: Dreamtigers, which is about how no representation of a tiger will ever get close to what being around a tiger is really like. In this case, the fact that it's blue instead of orange or white is barely significant when you consider how many other things are enourmously wrong with this sculpture- its stillness, care, size, non-ferocity, etc.. In some ways painting it such a fantastic color can be viewed as a sort of honor to the actual tiger-- in japanese ukiyo-e prints, when there's a drawing of an actor playing a samurai, the eyes are crossed to indicate "this isn't based on a real samurai". the blueness of this tiger lets you know that nothing like this (small, still, knowable) can even approach the reality of the tiger.

stosle

oneupl

tmaohi

Louise Bourgeois had a show at the Worcester Art Museum, I put this little bit on the wall for inspiration.

evinom

mfouse

attill

reaver

redoch

tistsi

this was a lollypop, and all the candy inside was destroyed, but... this is pretty incredible, right?

nessic

pretty confusing shirt that Careena made for us... I understand the sentiment but... who would buy this and wear it on purpose?

ressso

inessa

cklizm

a little animated gif. I think we had a MySpace account for the store, and I posted this on your page when you friended us?

vamear

fulast

tandpa

imingu

ongsts

Chris Hart with daughter Lydia, at his gallery opening.

dewoke

urevol

olitch

matchboxes that Jamie Buckmaster made for his gallery opening, designed to look like children's toys. it's a three-color stamp! There were 3 different ones.

arlywa

ckstor

bropan

parder

repurs

entske

with Sheryl-Ann S1mps0n, about the paint the backroom. Mike Taylor painted this tiger during his gallery opening. Sheryl-Ann loves painting the walls a new color, I would say that was her most landlord-angering feature, although obviously our landlord did not care. I'm purposefully spelling her name wrong here so future potential landlords don't look her up. Hi Sheryl-Ann!

lamses

tedemi

irzove

adumin

onshoe

eddese

toonst

Frankenstein painting from Keenan Cassidy's art show

ialsol

Pat Scully with the clippers on Danzig Day, 2007/07/07. CJ getting the Devillock haircut.

poingk

mimost

palvan

nutuet

squess

reffae

I bought a new can of spraypaint every week and repainted everything on this shelf. My goals were somewhat at odds but I wanted to see the paint really pile up and I also wanted to see if there was a color that "really sold".

plaess

comals

odoggi

thydar

itchro

mulath

assses

this limited edition Crusty Tim glass POG was one of the very few items in the store marked "not for sale".

ctagen

ildsem

ciansi

ondogn

tarics

Dan Wars had some job with a color copier and he made us these great posters. I always loved the graphic design he did for his various bands (Poison Idea, Garbage Strike, Funeral Cone, Secret Wars, Das Beach Boys Experience, etc.). Favorite part of this is the CRASS logo but it says "Sex Pistols" around it????

obeces

Flyer for Danzig day! Black and White xerox with hand-color devillock hairdo.

isterg

I don't know who painted these but the painting of the clown appears on the label of an LP by Mike Taylor's band Flaws, from a photo taken in the store (of me holding this painting).

apeder

A great collage by Dan Cashman, of which we had a couple. We had planned on doing an art show with Dan but then just at the last minute I cancelled because I had an opportunity to take a break from the store and I had to take it. I felt really bad for cancelling. Later Dan had a show at Feeding Tube and it was really really good, which made me feel kind of good (in that something happened with that material) and kind of bad (because it was so good).

rasces

Ahhh, here's me wearing a devillock hairdo on Danzig Day-- this isn't my hair though, this was just cut off someone else and I taped it on.

vingst

taingl

nclari

ingsth

arasss

ongtob

Artist Mike Bell-Smith asked me to make him some "digital Pogs for his collection (which is here.

yrtwhe

terite

aeoper

tesses

prerva

comsys

vitate

Bert made these "junk store news" and asked me to put them in the window! i copied them onto the backs of a few flyers too.

dendia

ghtsam

midess

these were all items from a small drawer marked "do not eat". Bert had a digital camera and I asked him to help document the store. He did a very thorough job on this drawer and got a couple good snaps in otherwise.

igesss

dityss

ronces

eephoo

ristse

elflad

ersish

vightf

oplead

liashu

tatefe

Small Donkey. I started making these in multiple and designed the packaging for it (below, somewhere) but then something got in the way.

kersia

ntswam

ssssss

people kept trying to buy this Goonies (band) shirt but I insisted it go to someone that was excited about it because of the band rather than the movie. And I'm happy I waited because that person was Chris Dooley and look how happy he is! Goonies were a hardcore band from the late 90's early 2000's out of Milford MA. Like the movie, the band featured a group of incredible characters that went on adventures, and would go on to do many other great projects.

acensi

crianc

ogyste

uckimi

erents

strial

Damn, what the hell was this? It doesn't gross me out or anything but, who made this and for what purpose?

ionsim

estale

pintep

nicari

gerses

ntssit

icalsi

duslys

onessi

Jess Van Winkle gave us a TON of miscellaneous trading cards, from movies and other media properties of the 80s and 90s. My idea was to shuffle them up and repack them in these "Field Report" sets, and try to get people to put together some kind of narrative, message, or meaning out of it. No one ever sent us the completed questionnaire, but I wanted to make it seem like sending it in was part of a larger project, just to trick people into really thinking about it. "Kim Carsons" is a misremembering of "Kit Carson", who was a famous IRL frontiersman whose name got recycled for William Burroughs' "Cities Of The Red Night" trilogy (which I enjoyed). This idea of building a narrative out of disjunctive pre-existing parts is a big-time Burroughs riff.

ionsal

ylitud

rtemor

braver

onstso

Dennis Typhus was in town and I had him drop a little piece on our shelf. He asked if he could write something in Flemish, I said sure but I'd need a translator. Much much later I translated it, it says "Flemish translator for Jacob" :)

isthet

areffi

hiprea

that first FRuITs book was a real wig-twister. Huge inspiration.

urkeos

judsss

beding

mimitt

another animated gif to drop on someone's myspace page

xperns

unused packaging art for the Donkey pictured above. Some of these guys I got in multiples from the dollar store, then made a few of the same style. the Horse was the first one of these, the donkey was going to be the next one but something got in the way. this was going to go in this plastic clamshell packaging that I had from some other toy. The packaging had a little bump in the middle, so the center part of the design here would have to be cut out. I think the reason this never got made is that I only had like a dozen of these plastic clamshells so I couldn't make more of these guys if I wanted to. anyway here's the demo.

ionfou

berrys

dlyher

My mom. My grandmother (my mom's mother) was in and out of hospitals for a while, and whenever they would move her bed she would put on these huge novelty sunglasses and pretend it was a parade through the hospital, waving and shaking hands. This picture is my mom wearing oversized novelty sunglasses, but not the exact same pair. My mom made me take this picture.

nchrah

Found this in some books I got from my Grand mother, it's one of her old school books that she drew in. On the wall for inspiration.

ncilbo

enschc

I filled this gumball machine up with candy of course but I also put in divisive foods like black jellybeans and wasabi peas. "consider it a skill game" is what it says on the top. usually people would pick out the black jellybeans and give them to me, which was no problem (for me).

acapsi

great poster by George W Myers, 3 colors of spraypaint over xerox, on cardstock. That's a cool and rare style. "Don't Have A Lasagna Man".

petchi

mentio

izedes

I had Ryan Brigade draw us a crusty logo. It might take you a second to read but it says "HBML". We printed this on shirts.

phines

tiedys

llynct

ccummo

eassle

insanely sick 11 (?) color silkscreen for the HBML rent club, by Ian Cozzens.

chinsi

astors

oneffe

ilkism

mendwi

nicati

llberw

Donald Duck, Iggy Pop, Mr Butch, and Dr Doom. Mr Butch was a cool guy and legendary character who lived in Allston MA near (and sometimes in) our friends' record store / tattoo parlor Re:Generation. He passed away in 2007. His wikipedia page is really nice: link.

ndsmic

lestwe

small_HBML.flyer.hourofthekitten.tiff.jpg

tosten

small_HBML.flyer.internationalhatday.tiff.jpg

latert

small_HBML.flyer.jeffhartford.a.tiff.jpg

demule

small_HBML.flyer.jeffhartford.b.tiff.jpg

rucies

kingin

Julyoween was my idea for a way to confuse the calender and make my favorite holiday (Halloween) coincide with my birthday (in July).

rprosi

iciaha

small_HBML.flyer.MT.billybreault.tiff.jpg

epican

really bad one-off flyer for this great show

egisss

lyness

Great event from Pyramid Skeem, aka Jay Purdy, who I knew from music stuff, touring and so forth. This was... a rap business seminar? Personal motivation, etc.. Really cool and weird.

oticss

Me and my mom made a cool quilt together and had an art show when it was done. There was an African clothing store down the street from the junk shop, and they had lots of great fabric but you had to buy the whole roll. Me and my mom split a roll of this psychedelic green and purple fabric with eyeballs all over it, and each made half of a quilt, then met up and sewed them together. There was a lot of extra fabric so I cut out individual eyeballs and hemmed them and sold them as small patches for $.25.

ivirat

uliere

peates

ressne

algers

I had a lot of friends in Providence RI, and so I would send out info about events at store on the Providence underground email listserv (the Fort Thunder list). At some point I got word that some people there didn't believe the store was a real thing, they thought it was just an email prank or an ongoing electronic literature or something. So upsetting! So I made this flyer about how it was fake, so maybe people would think it was... actually real? Or more likely, I made this flyer because it was mad.

talmar

monsit

sityst

galstu

gift certificate design. these were printed on pink paper and affixed with "holograms" (mirrored sticker paper) and "authenticity stripes" (spraypaint).

oerces

difies

mobver

hentau

rent club poster by George W Myers

amstsi

lleseu

evacho

Nicky Revs had an HBML sticker on his car and someone left this note under his windshield wiper! :)

reness

conzeb

bencle

yanthw

pedeba

nnythr

mendle

eparde

atelle

eriana

couffe

cheaut

this horse was made in multiple and came on a silkscreened card with a small book and a miniature horse blanket.

ordolm

nglies

laryag

note given out to volunteers

achiti

tersel

iarksl

ntinsw

ffingw

estici

i moved into a new place and every day on the way to the store I walked by a sign that said this. It really got me thinking "Am I a Human Resorce? Am I a Coagulation Center?"

lantsc

inodmi

ughtes

berrov

chaird

What was the ice cream place that used to give you a little sundae in a plastic baseball cap? Someone collected them all then bequeathed them to me and I ruined them.

evelle

aysing

hyteme

okedet

rectus

eepuke

estarj

ityste

fripsy

nesang

enceno

jaurem

elyzin

unroil

hartio

icancl

caters

tysine

hemult

This event was really fun but all the pictures were hosted on a website that is now down! Live and learn on that one.

rnisss

ntaxed

blensf

ntiver

liaged

hedlyw

this is the transparency for a silk screen- it's just a drawing in paint pen on clear plastic, and you use this sort of like a photo negative- you coat the silk screen, which is a fine mesh, in light reactive goo, then put the transparency over it and expose it to light, and everywhere the light hits, the screen sets, and everywhere it doesn't (wherever there's black on the transparency) can be washed out. ink flows only through those washed out areas, making faithful reproduction of your original drawing on a t-shirt or whatever. anyway this one suffered some damage in storage but I don't have a pic of the finished print. this is based on John & Yoko's "Two Virgins" album and is heavily indebted to a painting in the Worcester Art Museum of Bacchus and his entourage banging on pots to induce bees to nest in a tree.

elywas

emines

tersie

encerw

a transparency from a Julyoween print based on a painting of Napoleon. I don't have any pictures of anything printed with this design, although I know made a lot!

rmishw

linnia

inests

potion

supiti

kimped

selles

cysing

I printed a ton of these Sun Ra heads in purple onto sticker paper. I still see these up in places :)

erepag

edashl

inessi

ardscu

turken

twartu

iestab

idynal

latera

I made three life-size giant squids for an installation in the window of the Dirt Palace, an arts space in Providence. The one that hung on the ceiling of the store was raffled off, Mike Benedetti won it and it hung in the Starship collective living room for many years. Now I think it's slated to get installed in a frozen yogurt store on Highland street. One I still have. As for the last one, my records indicate that I "traded it to Joanne for a ticket to Miami".

ectuth

hierea

frustr

fghtsp

urgari

gences

One time this kid came in the store and asked if we had any Iron Maiden T-Shirts, which was a reasonable question. I think the kid was like 10 or 11. We didn't, and I told him so, but then he asked "when are you getting them in?", which was bait I couldn't resist. I told him Saturday. I told him the truck with the Iron Maiden shirts was expected on Saturday, but there was something kind of weird about the shirts. He said what's weird about them? I was just talking out of my ass so I started stalling for time while I could think something up. me: "Well, it says IRON MAIDEN in that triangular Iron Maiden font, you know what that's like right?" the kid: "yes". me: "Then it has Eddie, real big. You know who Eddie is, right?" the kid: "yes, he's the mascot". me: "Well Eddie... (I trail off a little because I'm thinking of what I'm going to say)" the kid: "Is Eddie like, holding a hatchet, dripping with blood?" me: "No, he's... eating an ice cream cone. I think it's pistachio. Or mint chocolate chip. It says Iron Maiden, and Eddie's there, and he's eating a pistachio ice cream cone, and it looks sick as hell". the kid: "oh. ok, well I'll come back Saturday". I go home and whip up these shirts, simple black ink on a shitty white t-shirt, with the ice cream element handcolored with fabric markers. He comes in on Saturday, I sell him the shirt, that's it. He just comes in, buys the shirt, and leaves.

I think about this kid all the time. I put the HBML tag on there so it was obvious this is a "special release", but did he even think about what a weird situation this was???? Is this a vague memory? Is he getting stoned with his metalhead friends right now saying "when I was 10 I had a Maiden shirt where Eddie was holding a pistachio ice cream cone".

anyway i made a lot of these shirts, this was a big seller. Later I realized this was a subconcious nod to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the father of putting images on t-shirts. In the 80s he reworked some of his more violent monster cartoon characters so that instead of holding axes and chains they were holding ice cream cones and yo-yos and stuff. I wish I had thought of this at the time, but I think I was just pulling from the aether.

iducha

gentio

Dan Wars is obsessed wit JFK. There was talk of doing "JFK Days" at the store in November but we never realy riffed it out past the name.

rpetti

stesss

iliate

racsse

woonds

divism

ungssa

awbous

etable

lensil

I made this Germs Mirror in the style of those printed mirrors of band logos you used to see in the 80s. Here's Kickball Katy of Vivian Girls modelling it! Hi Katy!

igrach

medipp

yranic

lorney

holisi

aubunt

inuked

itacki

ipstst

inaing

iessar

neddes

merace

eongst

hoolin

bstrea

Package design for a known grouping of a few things we had in quantity that shared a certain je ne sais quoi. This would be folded laterally and stapled to a plastic bag, so the bottom half is the front and the top half is the back. "Working Skull Lightbulb" was just a regular lightbulb that I drew a skull face on with magic marker.