TenBills.com – Art Tees On A Budget

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What can you buy for $10 these days? A couple of gallons of gas, or a family-sized Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket, or a few beers? Wow that sounds like a dull night. How about some art, some great art, art you can wear, a t-shirt designed by a top artist, produced by a company that loves every tee they produce, heck they even wear them themselves! If you’re suitably tantalised then head on down to TenBills.com and stretch your dollars further than they’ve ever been stretched before!

TenBills.com is run by a team of t-shirt fanatics lovers who had a dream of not only making t-shirts they could afford, but t-shirts that they’d love! TB describe themselves as “an online-based t-shirt design, production and retail company that prides itself in delivering solid illustrations to our members” – I’d say there was more to it than that, an arts collective using the medium of fashion to evoke a public response to their work. Their ethos is very much akin to ours here at Buy Tees, they see the humble t-shirt as a powerful arts medium, a way of communicating an emotionally charged message across the world. Compare how many of us will see a piece of art in a gallery to the thousands who will clock a cool t-shirt on the street and you’re probably getting the message loud and clear. Society is run by cold hard logic, emotions take second place, especially in these economically turbulent times, and so it’s a proverbial breath of fresh air when we come come across a company with such an emotional commitment like Ten Bills. They have turned their dreams into reality and have never lost sight of their goal, to deliver fabulously artistic tees that they’d want to wear themselves, to the general public, on a tight budget.

There’s a great community spirit at TenBills.com, run by a dedicated team, every tee is designed by a member of their t-shirt “family”, each with a solid background in the arts and a unique vision of how much further the envelope of t-shirt design can be pushed. There’s a highly informative blog and news section to keep you updated with all the latest happenings at the site you can follow them on Twitter, hook up with them at Myspace and Facebook, track their progress (in pictorial form) at Shuttercal. If you’d like a chance at winning a free t-shirt then simply register as a friend of Ten Bills and then read this blog post for the rules. Essentially the offer is open until the end of April, it may continue we will just have to wait and see. There’s a different stipulation to qualify each day such as following and contacting them on Twitter, making them a top 8 favourite at Myspace and so on. What’s great about the contest is you don’t have to purchase anything to qualify so why not give it a bash, who knows you may just win! Even if you don’t $10 is still dirt cheap for a high quality tee, plus they offer a generous flat fee of $5 1st class shipping for all USA orders which can’t be half bad and all the t-shirts are available in sizes S to XL for women (as girly t-shirts) and up to XXL for men plus a few youth sizes to boot.

If you hurry you can get any of their older tees for half the price right now, yes just $5 until 04/05/09 so take a look around and see what you think, the site/store design is slick yet simple to navigate, the ideology extremely sound and the enthusiasm behind the label impressive to say the least, or keep reading this post as we take a look a what t-shirts Ten Bills are offering at the moment…

Robot Dance T-Shirt by Bobby Liquori

This tee rocks, there’s no two ways about it, it was originally released as part of the “Robot Rebellion” series at Ten Bills, back then they themed each collection of t-shirt designs, but now it stands alone as a testament to a great concept brought to full fruition. I love a lot a things about this design, for a start it affords a great deal to classic 80’s retro design, the colours are superb, the illustrative quality quirky yet inviting really sets this one off. It’s one of the most subtle humoured tees I’ve seen in a while, taking an entropic stance towards technology, it will all run out in the end, energy, power, materials, resources, even a robot’s enthusiasm for dancing will take its toll. Absolutely superb offering currently available in black and charcoal and for a limited time only as a girly tee.

Flying Horses T-Shirt by Eli Clark

This has to be one of the strangest subjects for a t-shirt out there, and I mean it’s way out there, I really like the style √† la Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas, Gothic yet not at all gloomy, fluid and a fantastic composition. Flying Horses is available as either a silver or black tee in sizes up to XXL and personally I prefer it on silver, as with all their shirts, it’s 100% cotton and beautifully printed. But back to the strange yet wonderfully mad story behind the inspiration for the design. The fact is there isn’t really such thing as a flying horse, I wish there were, William “Doc” Carver did run a Wild West show back in 1885, he shot at flying glass balls and other objects but no flying horses (what a pity). However he did run a spectacle that featured diving horses, which sounds a little more feasible. I found myself musing over the idea of a catapult for horses saddled up with some form of over-sized parachute for a while, it’s wonderful to reinvent history as we wish it could have been, the design reflects this so well.

The League Of Extraordinary Lovers T-Shirt by C Manuel Galvez

The League of Extraordinary Lovers is certainly an extraordinary t-shirt, the latest release at Ten Bills by C Manuel Galvez and it is certainly going down a storm with the Ten Bills community! The shirt is printed front and back and the image of the skull is formed from writhing lithe bodies in a state of ecstasy – this truly is a brave new take on an old favourite for t-shirt design iconography. There are plenty more photos of the tee here, as are there for all of Ten Bills products, in fact it’s great to see a t-shirt label take the care to display their wares so well, I’ve always said if you can’t risk showing the detail of a print there must be something wrong with it. Ten Bills definitely have nothing to hide, in fact their presentation skills are almost unrivalled. I love the two-tone colours in this piece, it’s also available as black on silver and also as a “girly” silver shirt so you’ll have plenty of choice for TLOEL. Superb, strange, almost psychedelia meets Goya, a very brave choice for TenBills.com.

Spread The Love T-Shirt by Tishon Woolcock

To finish off our review of TenBills.com here’s a very sweet and rather nostalgic tee by Brooklyn based artist Tishon Woolcock. Spread The Love (available in red and lemon tees up to XXL but currently sold out!!!) conjures up a lot of memories for an older (hey not that old) generation of kids who never grew up. Dealing with the leaps in technological advancemnt over the past decade or two, these days most kids grow up practically holding onto a cell phone, but back in the days the best many could manage were two tincans held together with a piece of string, I know, I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s true, even I and my sister tried it once, we couldn’t hear a word the other one was saying but still it was fun. We then progressed onto a pair of cheap walkie-talkies that were hardly any better, nowadays I’d do anything to avoid a world filled with constant communication, but hey, I was always a moody old so and so. The illustration in this design is deceptively simple, the cans are drawn in a beautiful retro style, something akin to a 1950’s magazine, and the string spells out the word “love”. Oh how I do like to end on a positive note!

If you’d like to see more of what TenBills.com have to offer as a unique online collective of t-shirt loving artists, get down there now and pick up some bargains, win some freebies, and support a growing yet thriving community of real people with a passion for what they do!

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