, a local illustrator, designer, and tattoo artist. The shirts feature Nagy's artwork, taking inspiration from his life and career. They act as a canvas for designs that he creates as chest or back pieces. The plus side is, you can wear his awesome designs for the day, instead of having them on you permanently. Plus, you get to change them out when you want to and the cost is quite a bit less than getting ink.
We had a chance to catch up with Nagy to get the scoop on this new line and the idea behind it. Read ahead to see what he had to say.
Adam Nagy- "Wor$hip is currently an apparel line that I came up with in October during my Illustration and Design II class, with Stephen Schudlich (
itsfinnished.com), in my final semester at College for Creative Studies. I obtained my BFA towards Illustration where the field of branding illustration interested me, so I turned that class into creating my own brand. The name came from every aspect of my routine life for over four years: Full-Time school, which I was paying for in cash while the student loans built up, the gasoline to get to school, the constant art supply consuming, rent payments, eating hand-to-mouth from only Part-Time tattooing income, material possession bills, Hallmark holiday gifts, dates, alcohol to keep me going, and so on. I’m not religious, but I felt controlled by what seemed like a higher power, the currency that ran my daily (and future) life is worshiping money. The word ‘worship’ and the symbol for the dollar sign centered. I want my website name to be wor$hip.com, but domains don’t accept $pecial character$, thus Worship from the land of Détroit dot net it is."
HID- What made you want to start a clothing line?
Adam Nagy- "Shirts are just the baller on a budget starting point! My favorite instructor at CCS, Dave Chow, was asked to create designs for a startup clothing line around two years ago. He could’ve killed it, but he knew it suited my art style, so he gave me the gig. That group of guys wanted a Rat Fink/Kustom Kulture/Shawn Dickinson look that my pass time doodling falls into. After that job, came another shirt design, and another logo for a tee, and some more visuals for a hoodie, and underwear, then some socks, onto hats, and so on. I liked that my work was getting around on products, but I only received an initial design payment and never got to see who was buying what and wearing what. I wanted to be the investigator of seeing my “clientele” and conveniently the piercer at my shop (
Studio SEVEN Tattoos) screen prints through his business
Seven Graphics."
HID- Where do you get the inspiration for the designs?
Adam Nagy- "People that can’t afford tattoos over a thousand dollars. All of my designs are how I ink tattoo stencils, which would be my outlines for large back pieces, thighs, and possibly chests. For example, a portion of the
Pe₮ design (the three eyed sphynx) was tattooed many months before I had my pen on paper creations on shirts, but that was a three-hour tattoo, at $120 per hour, and only the eighth of the shirt design. The logo came first, then the ideations were written down. The inspiration for the Black Mariah designs came from playing poker. I was out close to $100 in the game called Follow the Bitch, where the queen of spades being dealt means all players’ hands are redrawn. This kept forcing me to toss away my great hands and my earnings. In the final round, before everyone decided to call it a night, my all-in hand turned my anguish from the queen, known as Black Mariah, into deciding she’s okay in my book and should be my first line of designs. In the illustrations I aimed for viewers not liking her rude actions, but thinking she could do something positively badass."
HID- How long have you been a tattoo artist?
Adam Nagy- "I got into my tattoo apprenticeship in November of 2011. It’s a wild and wacky trade of love and hate. Currently I’m on a steady five, or six, days of tattooing per week so far in 2018."
HID- What is your least favorite thing to tattoo?
Adam Nagy- "Anything someone else already has. It takes imagination, or good drugs, from people to request ideas like a classy pizza fencing a donut in a top hat, and those suggestions are fun to draw and funner to tattoo! Even a mundane request like an individual rose can be turned into excitement for me if I can run my style, but when someone shows me a screenshot on their phone and says, “I want this. Exactly this. Don’t create a rendition in your own style of art. Trace this on me.,” it takes the ‘artist’ out of ‘tattoo artist.’"
HID- What are your plans for Wor$hip?
Adam Nagy- "Sell shirts. In the future I want to expand to printing dad hats, snapbacks, wallets, underwear, bags, postcards, posters, stickers, backpacks, giftcards, socks, jackets, flannels, lanyards, sunglasses, pens, bottle openers, phone cases, beer pong tables, videogame controllers, beer mugs, growlers, disc golfs, vinyl wrapped cars; I want my art on everything! Wor$hip is the name, Adam Nagy is the designer+illustrator, and the products are endless! Before my emotions take over my logic, or my income over my well being, I’d like to build a team of professionals that’ll photograph models+clothing, vector my designs, ship my apparel, update the inventory, advise me, make changes to my website, and all of the things that I’m not experienced in. Being the boss, the behind the scenes creative is my ideal position!"
HID- How often do you plan to release new designs?
Adam Nagy- "I’ll let the demand decide. Presently, I have three future “worshiping money” lines in mind; sticking to five designs, in black and white (possible variations of purple), for each."
HID- Where can people purchase your goods?
Adam Nagy- "
www.worshipdetroit.net or by stopping into Studio Seven Tattoos Tuesdays through Saturdays, from noon to 7PM, where I store the arsenal of tees."
HID- Any plans to sell apparel in stores or at shows?
Adam Nagy- "Most definitely, but I haven’t stepped into the researching portion of who, what, where, when, or how to contact vendors and event coordinators."
HID- What else would you like our readers to know?
Adam Nagy- "My shirts are cool, and they’ll make you look cool, so wear one or twelve! Buy Wor$hip."
