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Shirt Heads: Black Acid Co-Op

Airbrushing pornographic T-shirts and Jehovah's Witnesses.

In 2009, at one of the last shows at NYC's fabled Deitch Gallery, artists Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman put together the Black Acid Co-Op. The piece essentially showed the aftermath of what would happen if a meth lab exploded in an urban wasteland. Besides the obvious meth lab, the installation included newspapers strewn across the floor, astrological charts, sleeping coyotes, a torn up gallery, and, most strikingly for many, a Chinese bodega selling pornographic t-shirts. We finally found Jason Faulkner, the artist who airbrushed the shirts. We spoke about how the shirts came to fruition, the appeal of airbrushing, Jehovah's Witnesses, and his more recent work.

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Vice: I know the shirts were originally a part of the Black Acid Co-Op show, how did that come about?
Jason Faulkner: Well, my relationship to the artists in Black Acid Co-Op was my responding to a Craigslist post. My job was to drive the box truck around to pick up materials. I was involved in the heavy labor of everything, just kind of general building. I didn't really have any urge to do anything for the show with my own art, I strictly wanted to observe and just hang out and enjoy it.

And then they found out you were an artist?
They had initially talked about the idea of making pornographic shirts, but I didn't think about it. Towards the end they started asking, "do you know anyone that can airbrush?" That sort of thing. I've been working with the airbrush for over 10 years, so basically I kind of gave it a shot. They gave me a couple of shitty porno magazines and asked me to pick something to do. They really fell in love with them right away, from the first few sketches.

They're instantly memorable because you never see airbrushes of hardcore pornography. So the images are from magazines?
Yeah and a lot of them were from the internet. I spent a lot of time looking for something that was above the ordinary, something a little more novel.

The novelty definitely shows. Did you hesitate at all when making any of the shirts? Specifically, there's a bestiality ones with a woman having sex with a dog and there's the one with a piece of fruit coming out of a girl's ass. Did any of these make you squeamish, or was it anything goes?
Well, really I started out with magazines and then started finding things online. The more hardcore ones came at the end. There was sort of a build-up, I had like a dozen porn shirts and I asked myself how I could raise the stakes? It was kind of fun, the reactions especially, from people who found the shirts hilarious to the disgusted.

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I think the one of the lemon coming out of a chick's asshole became kind of iconic for me. I've done a lot of work that was dark or sexual in nature - I really kind of started out that way when I was younger, so I didn't feel nervous necessarily. But I did make two different bestiality ones. You know, sex with dogs it's just so fucking wrong wrong. Like, if you've ever heard of that as a real story, like if anyone you know participating in it, it's just like [shudders].

Yeah, I grew up next to Tijuana and I'd hear stories about people going and seeing donkey shows and I remember thinking how weird that was.
Dudes who like to get their dog involved. It's just twisted.

The t-shirts were never sold commercially.
I don't know that much about what happened to the shirts, the artists still have them, I presume. I think they were put into the aNYthing store at one point, but that didn't really last.

I know the show was a while ago, what have you been working on since? Are you still focusing on airbrushing?
I still use airbrush all the time, it's my primary medium. I learned a lot from people's reaction to the t-shirts, seeing a different understanding of how people appreciate art and images in general. I ended up doing a series of car hoods. I was friends with a junkyard owner and I'd stop by and he'd get me a couple of hoods right off the stacks of cars. I got really nice Pontiac hoods for the first one or two and after that he was like, "Whatever you want, as long as it's dented". I liked that they were dented, gave them more character.

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Why airbrushing? Is it the immediacy or the sense that it's like the urban equivalent of folk art?
Yeah, I like that airbrushing is totally folksy. I was in Costa Rica once and I saw this airbrushing of a cat and a dog for a veterinary clinic and they looked like aliens. It was really fresh.

You're working on a piece for a group show for Project Nim, the movie about a psychologist in the 70s who taught sign language to a chimp?
Yeah, that's in progress right now. It's an exhibition that's being held in proximity of the movie. I don't know all the details, but basically it'll be along the lines of t-shirts and airbrushing. They're interested in the darker side of the film, so it'll be me and other artists who are similarly dark.

I've also been working a sort of pseudo novel/sitcom book idea since even before I was working with the Black Acid Co-Op guys. It's about this building I was living in called "Crackhead Castle". It's really about this artist who's kind of like this other version of me who came to New York with a dream. He was working as an artist at the Jehovah's Witness headquarters on their publication.

Like Watchtower?
Yeah, exactly. So this character is spat out of the Jehovah's community unexpectedly and finds himself in the real world. It's sort of a series of misadventures and about his survival.

Wait, are you a Jehovah's Witness?
I actually grew up without any religious influence at all, never went to church, but I'm definitely drawn to those types of universes. I like to see how people discipline their lives living this way. Plus, I worked a little bit in advertising, which is actually one of the reasons the Jehovah's Witness thing appealed to me.

I can see how that's similar. Like, as an advertiser, you're selling a product, trying to attract new buyers. Similarly, Jehova's are trying to attract new converts. Is that what you mean?
Just the nature of working for something that doesn't exist, it's just bullshit, you know? That speaks strongly to me. So that's kind of the baby I have in the oven. I started making art for it too - I've painted myself in super-serene paradises, carrying a koala - it's just so calm and perfect like nothing is wrong, it's completely fucked.

HANSON O'HAVER