Art, anti-capitalism & Kanye, with COME TEES' Sonya Sombreuil
The indie LA designer TALKIN’ BIG TOPICS ONLY
Los Angeles’ COME TEES: It’s one of the coolest lines out … if you’re anything like us here at Blackbird Spyplane, u may periodically suffer from “GRAPHIC TEE EXHAUSTION SYNDROME,” but Come’s Sonya Sombreuil transcends the GENERIC WEAK S**T with distinctive design after distinctive design.
Nothing else out there looks like her clothes, and even though Rihanna & Kanye r among the cultural JUGGERNAUTS who have rocked her joints and gotten PAPPED UP in the process, she’s stayed true 2 the idiosyncratic-vibe-riding ethos she had when she first kicked off the line in 2009, selling books thru Printed Matter and super-limited-edition tees at art fairs…
Oh yeah and along the way she happened to make the most iconic POLITICAL JAWN OF 2020 with the tee she designed in support of the movement to elect Bernie “Would Have Won” Sanders …
Since we r the No. 1 source across all media for “unbeatable recon” on dope under-the-radar joints, we asked Sonya to tell us about a rare & cherished possession of hers — she sent us pics of a button with a handwritten WARNING : “I’M AN ARTIST — YOUR RULES DON’T APPLY.”
We hit her up to talk about this button; Bernie, Ye and RiRi; the future of “left merch”; community mutual-aid efforts; the redistribution of wealth; and the ups and downs of having a rule-allergic creative soul …
Blackbird Spyplane: Tell us about this pin & what it means to you…
Sonya Sombreuil: “This is something that just speaks volumes about my psychology. When I was 7 or 8, my dad bought me a pin with this phrase on it: ‘I’m an artist, your rules don’t apply.’ And I lost it. So when I was in my 20s, he visited me in this little town where I was living, and we went to the little art store there. The guy had a button machine out, and my dad remade the pin for me.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Why do you think the idea stayed with him?
Sonya: “It sort of encapsulates the way my dad saw me — which created a lot of confusion in my reality, because I really don’t think the rules apply to me. Like, some people, when they’re told no, they back up. There’s certain laws about the universe, and a lot of people learn them — but I didn’t, and I refuse to. There’s two sides to it: Being impervious to rejection and believing in yourself are good things. Defiance of the status quo is great. But on the other side is not letting go of things when you need to let go of them — like, there’s a rule in the universe that things change and you need to be in flux with them, and I pretend that isn’t true. So when I saw this pin the other day, I really thought, Yup!”
Blackbird Spyplane: You’ve talked about moving from painting into designing t-shirts as a way for you to transmit yr ideas that much farther, and how for years you’d set up tables at art fairs and be the only person selling t-shirts. Obviously that market has gotten crowded, to the point of over-saturation — and you’ve since made stuff like denim, baby clothes, perfumes, and skateboards… Do you feel any fatigue when it comes to graphic tees these days?
Sonya: “Yes and no. T-shirts sort of keep me on the threshold of art making, and there’s some kind of psychology there — for some reason, I’m hanging back from getting deep into my art practice again. But I’ve always been obsessed with things like album art, or books — the whole package, all the things that accompany the content, all the material things around the ethereal thing. And t-shirts are a really great version of that, because they have all these little conventions that it’s fun to play with. So I do feel fatigued but it’s general — consumer fatigue, over-stimulation.”