Consciousness - Squid Youth SS Tee

A giant squid, lit red as if to underscore its distance from the sun in the depths below the surface, lies motionless. Yet it appears ready to jet away in a split second, as indicated by the nozzle prominently poking out from under its mantle. We see one huge blue eye facing us. The other, we must imagine, is focused on several swordfish, his would-be predators, dark shapes in shadowy waters far behind and above the squid.

The art draws the large fin at the top of the mantle as if it were a huge hat, exaggerating a similarity between the squid’s face and a human face. The giant squid’s mantle can be as much as two and a half meters long, and the diameter of a truck tire. That’s a lot of calamari! The tentacles, in their curliness, and the pose of the two longer tentacles seemingly made into fists, make it appear the squid is ready for fight or flight, fully aware and conscious of the predators’ plan for him.

The title of this work by Peter Agardy, Consciousness, works at many levels – some of them very deep, pun intended. Historically, the giant squid has played an important part of the understanding or our own human brains. In the 1950’s scientists found similarities between its neurons and ours, and subsequent research enabled many important investigations of human neuronal physiology.

This work is one of Agardy’s most dramatic attempts to draw similarities between marine lives and our lives. Shore Thing uses a state-of-the-art screen printing process using up to eleven colors to reproduce Agardy's art. The giant squid’s moment in which he must choose between fight or flight is exquisitely reproduced on the shirt.

The shirts themselves are of the best quality preshrunk 100% ring-spun cotton, in a high stitch density fabric. They have shoulder-to-shoulder taping, a double-needle cover-seamed neck, and double-needle sleeves and bottom hems. The short sleeve shirts have a five-point left chest pocket.