by: Neil Harrison
I remember the exact time the Featured Artist series was inspired. Jamie Lynn and I were in Seattle floating around some shopping area (like an outside mall) and a guy was there with his portable cart selling t-shirts with Salvador Dali paintings printed on the front. First it was Dali's art that caught our eyes and then it was the soft feel of the the screen print and the reproduction of these detailed paintings. During this time Jamie and I were spending a lot of time drawing and painting together and then seeing these Dali t-shirts hit us with thoughts of creating artist t-shirts and what better person to start this project then Jamie Lynn. So we bought the shirt, I still have it in the Volcom archives, and when we got back to Volcom Jamie went to work on a water color of a guy sitting in the corner of a room playing the bass guitar with all these colors flowing around the room inter-twining into the stone. We printed the art using a 4 color process, which was new to us at the time, using water based inks for the soft touch. It's still one of the best t-shirts we've ever made and was a truly defining moment in Volcom's history.

That was in 1995.