This collection of text-based T-shirts harks back to the early days of the graphic tee. Each shirt was created in collaboration with one of three contemporary artists active in the US and UK art scenes. We hope that their words and graphics will inspire you to talk about love and share in the joy of life. The last of the three collaborators for UT’s The Message collection is Trevor Andrew. First as a skateboarder and later as a professional snowboarder, Andrew cultivated his creativity and learned to express himself through his athleticism. After retiring as an athlete, he transformed the experiences and sensibilities he mastered on the slopes into a career as an artist. Now based in LA, Andrew creates works featuring bold, distinctive statements about love and chaos in a stripped-down style that fuses pop art and street art.
You take the most basic objects around you and find a way to be creative with them.
Trevor Andrew is a name that is well known in the world of snowboarding, but the retired professional snowboarder has turned his attention to a different form of art. After spending years carving his way down snowy mountains, it is now objects of a more mundane nature, like paper and computers, that serve as the canvas for Andrew’s art.
“I was introduced to snowboarding through skateboarding,” he says. “Skateboarding was my window into art in so many different mediums, such as music and video, and it also gave me a new way of looking at the world. In skateboarding, you take the most basic objects around you and find a way to be creative with them. I apply that way of thinking to my life every day. Snowboarding, to me, is the same—it’s about expressing yourself creatively on the mountain. I don’t know if my art fits into one category, whether it’s pop or something else, but I know that my whole style has been affected by my childhood and things I experienced then.”
When Andrew was young, he would accompany his mother and her friends as they went around to different auctions, looking for items to take home. This was his first experience with the folk art scene of Nova Scotia, Canada, where he grew up. It was only a few years ago that he realized the similarities between folk art and the pop art aesthetic that runs through his work—both involve stripping a subject down to its essential parts. This realization made it clear how deeply his childhood exposure to folk art had affected his own work.
“Looking back, I’m like, ‘Oh, wow! So that’s where I developed my style,’” says Andrew.
Andrew grew up drawing on rolls of paper given to him by his mother, spending whole days drawing things that he found exciting. Whenever he discovered something that he liked—such as drawing and skateboarding—he threw himself into it obsessively. He credits his mother for encouraging his art when she realized that he enjoyed drawing and for allowing him the freedom to go out whenever he pleased. As a young skateboarder, Andrew was frequently surrounded by older skaters who would take him around to skate in different places.
“I think it was really good for me to have that amount of freedom as a kid,” he says. “I continue to make art today, and it’s just so fun to be free to express myself creatively. I try to not only push myself as an artist but to find new ways to express myself through different mediums, like digital art and sculpture. I like to push myself to grow as a human and take everything that I’ve been through—or that I’m going through—and try to find a way to learn and grow and become a stronger, more compassionate, and better person. I think that what I’m really attracted to is growth. That’s what excites me about art, and that’s what excites me about skateboarding and snowboarding too—that it’s all just progression.”
Andrew’s children have recently developed an interest in snowboarding and skateboarding. He has found that sharing these activities with his kids has rekindled his own love for those sports.
“Art and chaos are a big part of my life,” says Andrew. “I wanted to find symbols that convey those words even when they’re not explicitly stated. The symbols and the words on this T-shirt both send the same message: even within the most chaotic and crazy times, you can always make something beautiful. I’ve been through that many times in my life—making something beautiful out of an experience that was really hard to go through, like a house fire. I want to take inspiration from chaos and transform it into something beautiful.”
Andrew says, “This design represents a lot of different inner concepts, like imagination. It’s about challenge and energy and life. The design includes a little bit of all that life brings, and I hope that comes across.”
PROFILE
Trevor Andrew | Andrew, born in Canada in 1979, is known worldwide for his artistic style—a blend of pop art and street art. He was a professional snowboarder before embarking on his artistic career.
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Trevor Andrew
