NoBadDays For A Cause | 2017
In 2017, Jess Lacroix launched NoBadDays' "Established Never" Clothing Brand; "Through the building of my own silkscreen presses, I developed a unique film emulsion image transfer method which allowed me to burn my illustrated designs onto the screens I built – and began hand-screenprinting my artwork onto sustainably-and locally-crafted lightweight men's surf tees in limited runs, innovating with eco-friendly botanical inks.
In its launch year, I hosted underground NoBadDays pop up shops all over Canada (Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, Vancouver), New Zealand (Auckland, Raglan, Whangarei), and Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Byron, Hobart, Launceston, Newcastle), contributing to the empowerment of some meaningful non-for-profit initiatives close to the heart of my passion project - through the production of hand-silkscreened, botanically-dyed and sustainably-sourced tees, vinyl stickers, prints, and skateboard decks.
Designing skate decks came into play initially through my graduating body of work from the Australian National University, through the designing and construction of skateboards, one for a city in every state in Australia. I moulded each deck from veneers made of wood native to each specific region and exhibited the series of hand-made (ride-able) boards with a room-size half-pipe skate ramp that I built within the gallery space, inviting guests to test out the artworks.
Each hand-made deck displayed the distinctive flavour and flow of a particular chosen Aussie city, in an ode to its street-art through hand-painted graphics interwoven into an etched cartographic design on the wood grain. The work invited disenfranchisement, and re-enfranchisement of a city for oneself through psycho-geography and through embodiment of the object, rather than fetishisation of the object, while ultimately the purpose of the artistic creation of the decks was to be ridden, shredded, and wrecked, on the streets they represent – as opposed to being framed on a gallery wall. I’ve since had the pleasure of collaborating with a few epic skate brands in deck art design.
NoBadDays is about the thrill, the grit, real'ness, broken decks, scrapes 'n bruises, bearing guts & glory, laid-back vibes of sun-drenched slide jams or high-octane days in the bowl. We are rolling stones, beach bums, mountain nomads; We don't follow the beaten trail, we carve our own. We are wanderers, established never. In an ode to the makers, the shakers, the breakers; NoBadDays is for the pot-stirrers, for the plot thickeners, for the wanderers, for the blood-thirsty adventurers; For the ones who carve, grind, and ride or die.
Limited runs of hand-silkscreened NoBadDay AS Colour Tees & DieCut Vinyl Stickers Available upon request
Thanks, legend!