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Pat Ryan & Dave Sheridan Art

Pat Ryan and Dave Sheridan were two underground artists from an artist collective known as the ‘Artista Gang’ from the Emerald Triangle area of northern California. They released art collaborations under the name ‘California Homegrowers Association’. Together they created some really awesome cannabis brand parodies, spoofing the art style of the decals affixed to cigar boxes and produce crates. They were making this art decades before cannabis was decriminalized for medical and recreational use. Today it’s common place to see many cannabis brands with their own unique packaging, logos, and strain names, but these two visionaries (or at least just two fellow creatives with a sense of humor) were decades ahead of that. I suppose maybe it was like this quotable line from ‘Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie‘: “I figure it this way, dope’s going to be legal in a few years ya know, then, like, then I’ll be, it’ll be a legitimate job, and all these other dudes that aren’t ready for it, they won’t know how to do it, see, and then, like, I’ll have a job man.”

Dave Sheridan was also known for his work in underground comix. Pat Ryan, whom later released more cannabis themed parodies under the name ‘Pat Ryan’s High Again Designs’ for print and t-shirts, was also known for his poster art and Native American influenced artwork – some really impressive art inspired by the American Indian Movement and Occupation of Alcatraz, which I plan to soon discuss in depth in a future post. Pat Ryan also created legitimate cannabis branding for Mendocino based Martyjuana Farm.

Dave Sheridan passed away in 1982 and Pat Ryan passed away in 2022, but their legacy lives on in the artwork they created. You can use the Archive.org Wayback Machine to view the last/latest snapshot of Pat Ryan’s website here.

In the image slider below is a set of their artwork that I have scanned from my collection of prints. If you would like a set of the highest quality prints for yourself, the easiest and most comprehensive way to do that is to purchase Pat Ryan’s ‘Sinsemilla Sinsations: Cannabis-Inspired Art Spanning Four Decades: Postcards‘ while it is still available. For now, I have watermarked these images with copyright Pat Ryan. It is not my intention to take away from any potential royalties that may still be paid or due to their heir(s) from the proceeds of this book, so for now, sorry, but they are a bit obstructed. If at some point Pat Ryan’s book goes out of print and becomes difficult to obtain new, I will reconsider providing these scans without a watermark.

– CPX

Pat Ryan & Dave Sheridan

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nc17 Streetwear

nc17, also known as nc-seventeen, was a counterculture streetwear company in business during the 1990’s and early 2000’s and they printed their designs on tee’s and stickers. nc17 had a few different styles – drug or sex themed brand parodies (like THC), movie or TV spoofs (like Serial Killer), double entendre, and social commentary. nc17 had some very original ideas and I believe that they were the streetwear pioneer of the double entendre that walks the line between obscene and misunderstood.

I am always looking to expand this article with more information and art. If anyone out there has some information or history that they can share about the nc17 company, please reach out to me on Twitter (@CPXART). Also, a large part of this hobby of collecting vintage streetwear stickers and prints, is the hunt. A lot of these original stickers are difficult to find and therefore I will shamelessly use this platform to solicit pieces missing from my collection. If you have nc17 stickers (no reprint), that you are willing to part with, and that I do not already have in the image slider below, I am interested in purchasing them for a fair market price. Please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) so we can make a deal. It will also benefit the visitors to this site to see more examples of this underappreciated art in one place.

– CPX

WARNING: Contains explicit content

nc17

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Alexander

Alexander was/is an underground artist and he released his designs as stickers (and possibly t-shirts) in the early 2000’s. The topics of his art were mostly skateboarding or drug parody related, and more often than not, he used a blue and white color scheme. Unfortunately, information regarding the origin and history of this art is very difficult to find (partly due to the simplicity of the brand name) and therefore I do not know if the artist is still active or not.

In the unlikely scenario that Alexander, or someone that knows him, happens to find this post at some point, please reach out to me on Twitter (@CPXART). I would like to learn more about the brand and share that information in this article. Also, if anyone has any original Alexander stickers that you do not see in the image slider below, and that you would be willing to part with, please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and I will gladly pair a fair price.

– CPX

Alexander

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Skunk Wear

Skunk Wear was a cannabis themed streetwear company founded in the 1990’s. If the streetwear brand THC was like ‘Mad Magazine‘, Skunk Wear was like ‘Cracked‘ magazine – similar but a different art style. They made some really funny drug themed parodies and I have appreciated their art for many years. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of information out there, that I was able to find, regarding the Skunk Wear brand history, so I don’t have much else to tell you about this one.

If there is anyone that was involved with or worked for old school Skunk Wear from the 90’s and early 2000’s that happens to read this post, please reach out to me on Twitter (@CPXART) as I would like to learn more about the company origin and history, learn what you or your artist(s) are up to these days, and I would be honored for CPX.ART to be the source of that information. For anyone that happens to have original Skunk Wear stickers (no reprints) that you do not see in the image slider below, or not-crazy-expensive new old stock t-shirts in L or XL size, print advertising, or anything that you think I would be interested in from Skunk Wear, and that you would be willing to part with, please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and I’ll gladly pay a fair price for it.

– CPX

Original Skunk Wear

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Big Brother Magazine

Founded by Steve Rocco (also the founder of World Industries), Big Brother was a skateboarding magazine in the 1990’s. The magazine was notorious for its hilarious written articles and how-to’s, profanity, naughty advertisements, oh, and skateboarding sequences. That infamy ultimately led to the attention of, and sale to Larry Flint (of Hustler fame) in the late 90’s. It’s also where several future Jackasses (Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, Jason Acuña (Wee-Man), Chris Pontious, and Rick Kosick) worked at one time, so there’s that too. By far, the BEST source of info on this topic is the documentary ‘Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine‘, which you can and should watch on Hulu.

The purpose of this article is to show some of their art from my scans from my collection of stickers, and some PDF’s made from scans of the magazine which I am not responsible for. However, considering the company is defunct, the magazine is out of print, and back issues cannot be purchased from the original publisher(s), I would at some point like to expand this post to include more complete PDF scans of the issues for preservation and enjoyment. But that will obviously cost some cash and time to do by myself and I think the better strategy is to ask that if you have some issues of Big Brother mag already and a good quality scanner, direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and let me know if you’re willing to help out on this.

– CPX

WARNING: Contains explicit content

WARNING: Contains explicit content

Here are a few PDF’s made from scans of Big Brother Magazine issues that someone else made and I take no credit for: [1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, 16, Oct. 97, Mar. 98, Mar. 99].

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Old Ghosts Designs

Old Ghosts Designs was a veteran streetwear company founded in the late 1980’s by John Grigley, 80’s professional skateboarder (and artist) of Vision team fame, whom released his designs on t-shirts and stickers throughout the 90’s. The name ‘Old Ghost’ originated as a pro-model skateboard deck designed by John, followed by the Vision Guardian, and Vision Aggressor. There are a lot of articles and discussion from other sources that focus on the skateboard deck designs, and while I’m certainly a fan of those too, the focus of this post is to show Old Ghosts Designs art from scans of my collection of stickers.

I really dig the style of the Old Ghosts Designs. I think to fully appreciate this art, you have to recognize that this was before the age of Photoshop and computer graphic manipulation, so a complete image is really comprised of several stacked layers of graphics and text fonts – created the old school way. The lack of color and the stark black and white contrast (the exception being the Barbara Kruger ‘I Shop Therefore I Am’ parody) is also really cool, and I suppose partly due to the photocopy and/or photo negative technique. The theme of sex & drugs & rock & roll (Ian Dury) is also apparent. It’s pretty obvious that this style has gone on to inspire a lot of other street artists and designers over the years. John was way ahead of the pack of unconventional artists producing politically incorrect and bawdy designs, and he is truly a pioneer in the streetwear scene. Respect.

Shamelessly, this is the part of the post where I solicit pieces for my collection that I do not already have. So, if you have any unpeeled, original (not a reprint) stickers, print advertising from Old Ghosts that you do not see in the image slider below, and that you would be willing to part with, please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and I’ll gladly pay a fair price. I am not a reseller. I am an avid collector of average financial means. Also, you can and should follow John Grigley on social media (Twitter: @johngrigley) / (Facebook: facebook.com/grigley) to see how he is spending his time these days.

– CPX

WARNING: Contains explicit content

Old Ghosts Designs

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Skateboarding Video Preservation

With its classic fish eye lens perspective, music selection, rider style, lines (tricks performed consecutively), editing, and production value, skateboarding video is an art form. Also, with the likes of Spike Jonze and Stacy Peralta, some of the most creative talents in videography and video production coming from this film genre, it’s no wonder there are several skate videos that are renown, even decades after their release.

Here are some of the best and most renown skateboarding videos if you’d like to watch them on YouTube, but truthfully watching them on YouTube really doesn’t do them justice. A few of these are so good they have been re-released on DVD or digital download, and you should definitely purchase them directly from the team / company that made them, if possible and still available.

There are so many more really excellent skate videos out there. Frankly, it’s kind of sad that I even have to limit this list to these 10 or so, but I’d be here all day listing off great skateboarding videos, and that’s really not the point of this post. If skate videos are your thing, or even if they’re not, you may find it interesting to know that there is a group of archivists / preservationists that have a crowdsourced project to video capture and digitize all of the 411 Video Magazine (411VM) issues from VHS tape. There are so many awesome segments from that skateboarding video magazine that deserve to be preserved for future generations to view and enjoy, and thanks to these guys, they are now. You can join their Discord discussion group here, and/or follow Tim, whom digitized the majority of the 411VM VHS over at Archive.org.

– CPX

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THC – Grown in the U.S.A.

In the mid-1990’s, when I was a teenager not yet old enough to enter the head shop in the back of a long running hippie / bohemian store called Greeko’s, some of the rad things available for purchase to my teenage self in the all-ages area of the shop was a huge assortment of some of the funniest parody stickers, patches, and t-shirts I had ever seen before. Forget Wacky Packages; these were all weed and drug related and many times more creative, more clever, and better drawn than those. I was a fan as soon as I laid eyes on the art and humor for the first time and I’ve been collecting it ever since.

The counterculture streetwear brand that I am referring to is THC – also known as Totally Hip Clothing, The High Command, To Higher Consciousness, Trees Hills Clouds, Teaching History Class, Towards Harmonious Civilization, Too High Comix, and so on and so forth. In my opinion, THC was the best and most successful counterculture streetwear brand, with the best artist(s) producing the best parodies and characters. THC obviously inspired other brands like Skunk Wear, nc17, Chronic Fatigues, and a bunch of non-branded imitations since then – and has inspired CPX.ART too.

Besides having a reason to get all nostalgic about back-in-the-day (Ahmad), this post is really for me to show scans from my collection of THC stickers that I have collected over the years from several head shops and literally tracked down, purchased, or imported from different parts of the planet Earth. I have quite a few and the scanning for this post took up my free time for a few nights, but I think it’s worth it. I have not found a more comprehensive collection of scanned original prints in one place on the Internet before.

So here we are, at the point in the article where I shamelessly solicit pieces for my collection that I do not already have. If you have any unpeeled, original THC stickers with “thc.com” repeating watermark on the paper backing or legit pre-watermark (it’s easy to tell the difference from these and out-of-focus and oversized reprints from the past decade or so), patches, not-crazy-expensive NOS t-shirts in L or XL size, print advertising, or anything that you think I would be interested in from THC or related (Dementia, Wings of Light, or We the People) and that you do not see in the image sliders below, and that you would be willing to sell me, please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and I’ll gladly pay a fair price.

THC.com is still active and I encourage you to visit the website and show your support for this classic counterculture company. You can even receive free stickers!

– CPX

THC

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Pedal Powered Art

Over the years I have customized my fair share of bikes. There’s just something about making it your own and unique from the rest that I can’t resist and the customization becomes a form of creative expression and art – same as customizing a motorcycle or other vehicle. My most recent lowrider bike build is the subject of this post. I still consider this bike “unfinished” and a work in progress. I have additional ideas that I will implement as time and focused interest allows.

Started as a COVID lockdown project in 2020, dubbed the “Chrisler”, I envisioned a fusion of old school style Schwinn Phantom and pedal scraping custom. This is a 26″ cantilever style beach cruiser frame with matching black painted fenders, chain guard, bent lower fork bars, and rear rack. Flat single twisted chrome parts are used for the extended crown, upper fork support bars, fender braces, rear rack braces, mirror arms, steering wheel, and rear bumper.  The kickstand is square twisted. The wheels are 72 spoke. The cruiser grips are made by ODI X Vans. The saddle, hub shiners, speaker holder, and air tank holder are made from real leather. The front and rear lights are all functional. Additional custom touches include a “Chrisler” brodie knob on the steering wheel, Arizona state license plate, phone holder, and my favorite feature, functional air suspension for a smooth and adjustable ride.

– CPX

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Serial Killer

The Serial Killer Inc. streetwear story is a familiar tale unironically as old as the court system, where a unique and creative idea brought to market runs afoul against the United States legal system. Personally, the brand is one of several inspirations for CPX.ART. Started in 1997 by a couple dudes in El Segundo California (where Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest left his wallet), their idea was simple but brilliant; appropriate a still image of famous movie scene(s) or person(s), cultural icon, or has-been, maybe manipulate the image a bit with a photo editing program, and add no more than a few words for humor and/or lampoon. Their artistic creations were printed on tees, hats, beanies, hoodies, stickers, and skateboard decks, and the brand was popular among teens and young adults (and upset a lot of older ones) in the late 90’s and early 00’s. The same idea today is essentially an Internet meme.

Not only was Serial Killer the first to do this genre, but because fair use of copyrighted material has always been subjective to whichever judge is deciding it, and because the legal process is a stressful and costly burden to take on, it takes balls to take a risk and put your mark on this type of artistic creation and sell it as merchandise; but unfortunately those types of lawsuits led to the fall from the company’s pinnacle of success. Not because it was a bad idea or what they were making was not marketable or popular, far from it in fact, but instead because of the unfair copyright laws of the United States, a few plaintiffs that can’t take a joke, and lawyers – what a shame. The creations that Serial Killer produced without permission or consent was a disruption to the system and a middle finger to the establishment, and many of the tangible goods that remain out there as proof of that would not be otherwise had they not taken the guerilla approach that they did.

I am an enthusiast and collector of the Serial Killer art and the purpose of this post is to show some of that art from scans of my collection of stickers and prints. Shamelessly, it’s also an opportunity for me to solicit pieces for my collection that I do not already have. So, if you have any unpeeled, original (not a reprint) stickers or print advertising from Serial Killer or their old copycat’s (American Psycho, nc17, Killer Life, and non-branded) that you do not see in the image slider below, and that you would be willing to part with, please direct message me on Twitter (@CPXART) and I’ll gladly pay a fair price. Also, if you enjoyed this post, and if it’s worth it to you, feel free to donate a couple bucks to me, which will undoubtedly go towards purchase of more art prints to share and write about.

I’d also like to point out that the Serial Killer brand has seen a reboot in the past few years in the skateboarding space and that you should visit and support https://www.serialkillerbrand.com/ and or follow them on Instagram (@serialkillerbrand). I do not receive a commission from nor am I affiliated with them. I just think they’re awesome and respect the guerilla bravado they have to bring their ideas to reality, and I am glad to see they’re still around.

– CPX

WARNING: Contains explicit content

Serial Killer

Here is a PDF I made from a scanned Serial Killer catalog with some more art for you to look at, and a few advertisements [1, 2, 3] I scanned from late 90’s Pop Smear magazine.