Although Starkville is a small town, more than a handful of Mississippi State University students produce innovative, hand-crafted, artwork and they know how to support each other. Wild Life Prints, created in 2012 by sophomore art majors Paul Prudhomme and Mark Slawson, is firmly rooted in this category: Wild Life Prints produces hand-printed T-shirts bearing hand-drawn designs that Prudhomme said come straight from the pages of their sketchpads.
“We use (Adobe) Photoshop and Illustrator, but we really don’t alter our designs much from their original state in our sketchbooks,” he said.
The images that Slawson and Prudhomme ink onto T-shirts are unsurprisingly related to the outdoors; totem poles, slingshots, arrowheads and trees are just a few of the emblems they emblazon upon cool gray, blue and green shirts. The whimsical style of the drawings, as well as their ties to an almost scout-like wilderness, form what Slawson said is the intended message: regaining a sense of youth and adventure.
“We’ve tried to create a feel of childhood nostalgia and trying not to lose that sense of being carefree,” he said.
David Lewis, junior architecture major and proud Wild Life Prints T-shirt owner, said he enjoys his shirt bearing a tree line and the mantra “Explore more” for its restraint and clarity of intent.
“I like the simplicity of it, and I prefer the iconic qualities of the work; it’s one short little statement. It’s one thing,” he said.
The simplicity of Wild Life’s themes (“Just being outside,” as Slawson said) informs the transparency of both the meaning behind their designs and the business title itself. For instance, Prudhomme said the name Wild Life Prints stems directly from how well it represents their outdoorsy intentions.
“I wish we had a cool story to tell about how we came up with the name but we don’t,” he said. “We just like it a lot, and it gets across what we’re trying to say pretty well.”
Prudhomme and Slawson’s involvement in screen printing, Prudhomme said, came when his older brother developed an interest in the process over a summer break. Prudhomme said he and Slawson learned to screen print through multiple avenues, from professors to the Internet and trial and error.
“My brother played a big part in teaching us. We also learned a lot through trial and error and YouTube videos,” he said. “Also, Jude Landry, who teaches screen printing, gave us a much appreciated crash course at the beginning of fall semester this year.”
Slawson said the process of creating a finished Wild Life Prints product involves quite a few steps from sketchbook to final printed T-shirt.
“There are a lot of steps to the process, but we basically just scan in the image, print it on a transparency and basically put the image in a tanning bed and burn it to a screen,” he said. “This creates a stencil that you can push in through onto the shirts.”
Originally intending to print on paper alone, Prudhomme said he and Slawson began printing T-shirts and it just stuck.
At a recent art show in a house on Greensboro Street, Wild Life Prints teamed up with other MSU students to display and sell their work. Senior art major Mollie Simpkins, senior art major Anna Ballard, senior geology major Mary Boyett and sophomore art major Charis Boyett, along with Wild Life Prints, displayed their work on the walls, tables and wooden-slatted porch of the house. Slawson said the experience was one of the best he has had since he began living in Starkville.
“We got to hang out with friends and print shirts on their front porch, which was really cool,” he said.
Prudhomme said he and Slawson are thankful for the support of MSU as the student base in Starkville has become the wind in the sails of Wild Life Prints.
“We appreciate everyone’s support and encouragement,” he said.
Lewis, an attendee of the Greensboro Street art show, said the event was an example of the relentless support MSU students provide for the arts.
“I would say in Starkville, especially among students, everybody’s pretty supportive of each other in the arts department,” he said. “A lot of people came. It’s kind of a supportive community, that’s how they work really well.”
More information about Wild Life Prints can be found at wlprints.com.