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Evil Chopper Elfs

About the artist

Mr Rocks (aka Blair Sayer)

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wotto

Teefury and I have teamed up with the powerhouse collective known as the Black Rock Collective. A group of amazing artists who work under this name to create some incredible pieces of design. They have won Tee of the Day at DBH and also produced one of DBH’s very first tees, (Robot Attack) setting the standard for DBH submissions. They have recently released a deck of cards and had a show at the Threadless store in Chicago. I welcome the BLACK ROCK COLLECTIVE…

So first up is Mr Rocks. Tell us Mr Rocks where did the name Black Rock Collective come from?

It was a name stolen from the location in the tv series LOST. I consider myself similar to 'Sawyer', but because I am one of the oldest BRC members, I'm probably more like 'Lock', just not as handy with a knife.

Tell us a little about the BRC, how did it start, how many members, etc?

Almost 3 years ago a few of us at Threadless started to communicate regularly, namely me, Rob Gould (aka Robsoul) and Graye Smith (aka Grayehound), and, more importantly, sharing design ideas for invaluable constructive criticism and feedback. The group grew to 5 with the addition of Stephenie McFeters (aka Mezo) and Ian Leino (aahhh... aka Ian Leino), and pretty soon a group themed submission was in the works. The first theme was TIKI. Over time the group grew to 7, then to 15 members regularly emailing each other, with ideas and themes etc. Inboxes started to get full, and I started to get a little grumpy at the amount of emails coming in...(I am the third oldest at the Black Rock, grumpy old geezer that I can be...)
Jan Willem Wennekes (aka Stingerstyler) had the brilliant foresight to see where this was heading, and set up the Black Rock forum and pretty soon the number of members started to rise. At present there are about 40-50 active members.

I believe this design was a collaboration too, spill the beans mister.

I have always admired the illustration style of Josh Agerstrand (http://agerstrand.com/) and asked if he'd do some evil elf's to attack and annoy my luchador chopper rider. He's a very talented young man, and we are both stoked to see this design come to print.

I hear you were the organiser and curator of the BRC deck of cards, must have been a nightmare to organise, tell me who was the laziest designer?

HA! Laziest has been me I guess, since I was in charge. It's amazing how long it took, but when you are curating 37 other artists, it takes time. Then there's the red tape of production costs, and then the production itself took forever (each original 200 decks were hand sanded!).
I got a little lazy in the end, but if you have a deck, you'll know it was worth the wait.

How much money would it take for an artist to become one of the BRC?

US$1,000,000 into my off shore account, and you're in over night!

Actually, we are not as elitist as we come across. We invite talented, inspirational artists who we have seen at Threadless. We haven't invited alot lately as we're still trying to get our online store and capital funds in order. Once we know what we are doing, we'll invite some more folks into the mix.

Who is your favorite member of the BRC? (Don’t be shy, I’ll be asking all the others too ;)

HA! We'll, I have different favorites for different reasons. Some have become real life long friends since I have meet them in person. Spending time and sharing a beer with the likes of Ross Zietz, Rob Gould, Steven Bonner, Adrienne Pitts, Olly Moss and Aaron Hogg makes the friendships alot more 'real'. Do you know what I mean?

What plans do the BRC have for the future?

Hell, who knows. We definitely want to produce more merchandise, and expand our numbers with more artists. It all depends on the group really. What we do next is up to the entire collective, but stay tuned. It does take us a while to produce some cool stuff (like the card deck) but it's well worth the wait. Just ask anyone who owns a deck (and thanks to those of you who do!) :)

Mr Rocks website

Black Rock Collective website