Some of you might remember the Burton Artist 13 program I worked on last year, well it’s back-actually it has never been gone, it’s just been 5 months into development already and I am happy to say the first in the series just went into the stores.

To explain, the Burton Artist 13 tee series involves 12 artists that each have designed at least one tee that will be released on the 13th of each month, starting a few days ago. The only stores that will carry these tees will be the Burton Flagship stores, so that’s Burlington VT, New York, Chicago, L.A., Innsbruck, Tokyo and Osaka. The US will get the tees first and then the month after, again on the 13th, the rest of the world will get them. The tee’s are limited to a few tee’s per store also.

The theme for this years series is almost a natural reaction to what I feel about the world today. Even though I am a firm believer in democracy, as a theory not necessarily what it has turned it, I feel as if I am being forced into open dissent against our rulers thanks to their careless, arrogant, ignorant and mostly illegal acts in the name of the people. I actually blame them for being so openly ruthless in their misappropriation of their jobs which is pushing me into a corner of openly refuting them, rather than me being a natural anarchist, which I am not. Through many a conversation and email I have selected a group of artists and friends that feel the same way and asked them to participate in this program.  I’ve been working a relative large piece addressing the state of the western world and essentially my starting point translated into this series. The theme for this series is: The Design of Dissent-which essentially means that I am asking 12 different artists to interpret “dissent” for themselves and in whatever situation they see it manifest or would like to see it manifest for themselves. The first 6 months are done and the results are amazing. Consider this to be Burton’s, the artists and my way of saying “no” to the bullshit we’Re being peddled.

We all decided to start off with Don Pendleton’s interpretation of dissent. The tee is now available in the US at the above named stores. Enjoy.

The design.

the tee.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 12:06 and is filed under Burton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.