Tom Burns is on Fire!

Tom Burns is probably my only other t-shirt hero out there right now, as you’ll know from the praise I’ve lavished on Glennz before, I am a complete and utter sucker for well conceived, beautifully drawn, corny one-liners. I know I’m probably in the minority, it isn’t what you’d call beautiful art, it just does the job. Perfectly.

Take a look at the history of graphic arts, advertising, poster design, Modern Art in general and you’ll see the same approach. It’s the backbone of any conceptualist artist’s oeuvre - you gotta’ have a sense of humour! Without that essential ingredient you’re left cold, or even confused. I’m not apolitical, if anything I’d probably be classed as a ‘lefty’ by most Americans, but essentially there’s more to it than that. I live in Britain, and it isn’t all that great, but we’ve learned to live with it because however dire the situation, we can still find humour in most situations, however tragic. Or rather we used to before the worldwide media and the rise of political correctness got in the way. My point is this, Tom Burns understands the world of the cynic, the lampoonist, the subjective rewards of critically appraising the tiniest details in life to undermine the greatest. It’s a revolution my friends and Tom’s not just burning down the roof, he’s on fire!

You can find many his greatest t-shirt designs at the venerated tee designer store LoiterInk.com - I suspect you’ve seen a few of these classic tees before, but it’s always worth giving Tom’s work a mention, even if it’s simply to remind us all of the standard set for success in the t-shirt industry.

Communist Party (redesigned) is perhaps his most well-known work, I’d guess it has contributed a fair amount to Threadless.com’s coffers in the past, it’s a genuine classic in the t-shirt designers’ world, and in truth was a total inspiration for myself and many others (I’m sure) looking to make their own mark in the market.

Treading a careful balancing act between absurdism and illustrative craft, I adore the simple and concise imagery and message here, essentially playing on the political irony and misappropriation of the word ‘party’. Let’s get it clear there is no such thing as a ‘political party’, a party is no longer merely a congregation of like-minded people. The word party conjures up notions of revelry, which in essence is where most political parties tend to lead us these days. This redesign side-steps Threadless’s selfish flat-rate payment process. The original is at Threadless.

One cannot live on bread alone, nor empty promises of a brighter future. I can’t imagine the world even needing political parties in the future, no matter what their ideology, people just aren’t as gullible or as misinformed as they were. The age of mass-communication has spread far more than organised political message, it’s actually helped to explode the myth of culture versus counter-culture. Although most governments still don’t respect the idealism of the individualist, it’s what we all can agree on, we are not all the same and somehow we have to learn to live with it.

God Le$$ America is a new one to me, I love the treatment in this design, ever-so-slightly grunge yet clear enough to get the point to a tee. Essentially America, and indeed the West in general, and let’s not forget the North, the South and the East, have sold out.

Patriotism was most probably a vital for the stability of most societies and cultures, in the past, but with the enormous rise in materialism, extending to the point where we’d rather see the earth die than miss out on a new car or the latest Wii game, it has to be said we’ve sold our communal race up the river, the heart and soul of the world’s population is being sold off at a cheap price, bought off with what our ancestors would tell us are nothing more than gaudy trinkets.

The biggest money earners in the world make their money from money, when the stock market fails the worlds’ media convinces us that we are all to blame. Our properties are over-valued, our greed for fossil fuels knows no bounds, and that if anyone is going to have to pay, it will be us.

I wonder, just how much does government cost? I general, a fifth of a nation GDP? Would any country consider war if it was always put to the popular vote, and everyone who voted yes was immediately conscripted. You see lives are the only things going cheap these days…

Puppet Master is another highly insightful and perhaps inciting piece by Tom, as always he is totally on the ball, and not afraid to stick out his neck when it comes to laying down his own political opinions for the world. There are a lot of designers, and even fine artists out there who wouldn’t take the risk, and I commend him for having the cahunas do create and sell Puppet Master.

It’s horribly painfully true, politics is b.s at the best of times, but now the world economy is collapsing perhaps it is time for the people, no stuff that, the individual to take more responsibility for their life. I’m not talking about a little bit of recycling, a hybrid car, a solar panel. I mean the lot. I mean everything.

What if your local community was self-sufficient, how far would you need to travel then? What if you woke up one day and realised you didn’t need to buy branded clothing, or food from around the world, or all of your garden furniture from China, what if you and friends grew and made the stuff. Even ran cars off it. What do they tax then?

Nothing, and then politics would lose its sheen, no one would want to stand, because the money isn’t there anymore, people stopped playing the game, they just woke up one day and opted out and now all the politicians look like crazy old men shouting at each other at the street corner, and now one else is listening anymore.

Rock and Roll is just plain hilarious. It’s a great pun and what’s more so true, so painfully painfully true. This goes way beyond the old rockers (who’ll apparently never die), this to me cuts to the nub of the problem with society today. No one wants to grow up let alone grow old, we don’t respect our elders and in turn they don’t see the need to respect their successors. I’d like to apologise right now for what my generation has done to this planet, and how little respect we’re going to show the next over the following decade or two.

We will drill, we will mine, we will chop, we will burn, we will purge the earth of any semblance of nature, and by the end we’ll still be grumbling at you, the next generation, about the damn blasted ‘good old days’, which as far as I can tell is a myth perpetuated by the ages.

In most cases you’re too young to know or care, or too old to do anything about it. It’s the final miserable encore that hits us all in the end, we all age and die. I wouldn’t want to live forever, and I know the aches and pains of decrepitude are on the way, I just hope that the Buddhists have got it right and we all get another stab at it in some form or other. I just hope I can pick and choose the next time I come back (are there any other planets on the menu Buddha?), I’d rather wait until all the screw-ups have had their way with poor old Mother Earth and someone with a little sense has fixed this planet up before I return.

You can see plenty more of Tom’s designs (as well as other artists) at Loiter Ink - well worth bookmarking this one