Session 56 summary
Jared is 33 years old and he has been running a brand since 2009 when he was going to college so he has about 13 year experience and most of that is non-schooled experience. Jared didn’t go to school for design, doesn’t have a degree in it, everything that he has learned and put into action has been mostly self-taught and learning on the job. He is thankful to his brand that he has to work with every day, it’s his main source of income now and he has a storefront on Tempe, Arizona.
OXDX clothing is a brand he started in 2009, which specialises in streetwear graphics. He isDiné, so he has a lot of influence from where he grew up; seeing pottery designs, seeing red designs and the situations that the native people go through like how the indigenous populations there are fighting for different land rights, water rights, representation, etc. There’s so much spectrum of what they have to go through to exist as people and Jared hopes that at OXDX they tell these kind of stories, share these struggles with a larger population and show representation the best way he can and the best way he can do that is through fashion and production, working with native models, native designers, native photographers, native videographers, etc. they like to keep everything indigenous made. He also did a showcase at fashion week which was an indigenous Fashion Week hosted in Calgary Alberta. The mission statement of OXDX is, “To preserve culture by passing on stories through art, fashion and creative content. To be socially conscious, constantly connected to our community and ambitious as hell.” Jared created this mission statement to guide his team through the work they needed to do, if they ever have any kind of questions about their next projects they can look at the statement to see if it serves their purpose and if it does then they would feel whole-heartedly that they can commit to a project.
Graphic design is something Jaredhappened upon, he was actually going to school for engineering, and he had a Fulbright scholarship to the University Of Arizona, where he was trying to be an engineer. His family is very math-oriented but Jared felt a lot of pressure to continue on that legacy. Both of his parents are the first and only kids to graduate from their families and they both come from large families raised on the reservation, so it was very important to the parents that their kids got an education. So it was actually tough for Jared in the transition to do a lot of art. Jared was doing art on the side not paying attention to class and eventually grew to love clothing and screen-printing. He made designs called; ‘The Future’s Indigenous’ which showcases a Navaho indigenous women dressed in red, sitting on a stack of books and each book having a different title showing indigenous futurism. The ‘Support Indigenous Resistance’ was a collaborative work with another brand. More of his works are ‘Grandma Anarchy’, ‘End Police Violence’, some florals and ‘Beaded Woman’ which is created as if done with bead work so it’s made up with a ton of tiny dots representing beads. His works also include content creations and fashion photoshoots. He tries to host as many in-person events, a lot of fashion shows, art shows, art events, etc. as he can. A big part of his work is screen-printing. He has been a screen printer for about 8-9 years. He started at his brother’s house who had a press in his garage, the brother had a friend who had a brand he was printing for and Jared used to watch him all the time and go and ask him a lot of questions. After some time the brother’s friend called him out for practise and Jared would help with print jobs and pretty soon he got his own screens made, getting his own art put on the screens, he started to put his own stuff and eventually he got his own press which was very introductory screen printing press. Another part of his work is collaborations. Jared feels that collaborations are very important, especially nowadays to get a broad spectrum of ideas and to never be tired always learning. He did a collaboration with a well-known beadwork artist Jamie Okuma. Jamie is working out of California, she had the idea for a couture dress that she premiered at the Santa Fe Indian market in 2018, Jared decided that he would design the fabric so it was actually a fabric piece that Jareddesigned which was repeated and then printed on silk to create the couture dress.Jared also handled the photoshoot which was taken at the Rio Grande River with a Navaho model who is wearing a traditional bun. It was fun working with Jamie as she wanted something pieced out of the chief’s blanket, so the design was based on the Navaho chief blanket.Another collaboration was with Eighth Generation- a native-owned company in Seattle who are getting on the map with war blankets, war blankets specifically are an industry that is primarily taken over by Pendleton brand.Pendleton is known for some of its bad practises like, they use a lot of native artwork but they don’t compensate the native people. So it has a lot of stolen artwork and is sort of a company built off the backs of native art and nothing was contributed back to the community. It is ironic that the native people have a reliance on a brand like Pendleton to supply them with these types of blankets to gift out for different occasions and different ceremonies. Even Jaredwas gifted a blanket when he graduated high school, so one can expect this gift in certain occasions. Now they have the option to gift something different from a native company that is native made soJaredwas excited to design the war blanket with a generation. The blanket was a collaboration with his grandmas- through their work that they left behind. Both maternal and paternal grandma’s were weavers, they left when Jared was still young, so after he heard that he was doing the collaboration, he went home and asked his mother about it who actually had some blankets and rugs put away which she brought out, laid them out and tell him stories about them. She would tell how his maternal grandma would teach his mother how to weave who replied that she didn’t have the patience for it. When observing the blankets and rugs he was able to see patterns in them that were same across each piece, so he realised that people had favourites and colours which they leaned towards. As Jared was asking a lot of questions about them, his mom directed him to his aunt who is still weaving where he was able to speak with her about it and be able to learn about the different designs, the stories behind the different patterns, etc. He also learned that one can certainly identify someone and where they are from, from what they wove, the patterns and dyes used found in specific places. For him the blanket designer was an identifier of who she was and he wanted that to reflect on the design that he created. So the design he made had the incorporations from both of his grandmas and a flare of his own. He also had the permission from his aunt and Jaredfeels that, that’s how a design should be, it should be a learning experience, it should have a meaning and tell story. He also did a collaboration with the brand The Hundreds– a huge L.A. street brand which is considered to be the grandfather of street wear, they approached Jared to design an Indigenous People’s Day 2019. They have a store on Fairfax Downtown L.A. and Jared had the access to the billboard above the store where he put“Tongva land coz tongva people are the original people from L.A.”He was able to give recognitions to the tribes that were around there and a reminder to others of the people whose lands they were on.
When Jared first started he did a lot of hand painting on clothing, he would do a lot of stencil work and just use a tape with different types of ink. He created his own patterns and he also created a sort of plastic scraper to apply the ink down and create one of the pieces which he would post online and see how people thought of them. Afterwards he created an auction on Facebook, if someone wanted the piece Jared can tell them to bid on them. Very soon Jared realised that people were bidding over 100 dollars and he found that people did like his designs, as starting a business is little tough because it is unpredictable to know if people will buy it, so it was good experiment to see if people wanted something which Jared was making.
Jared gets a lot of questions about where the name for his brand came from. The hip-hop artist named Lupe Fiasco has a song called The Cool and this song is a spoken poem work which is the first track in the album. It’s a woman speaking the poem called ‘Baba says cool for thought’ from here Jared took the word ‘overdosed’ and as the poem itself spoke a lot about how he was feeling at the time the ‘overdosed’ word stuck to him as he saw everyone around him seemed overconsumed and he feels that people should pull back. He thought people should go home and see how their ancestors lived and remember it, not forget it. Remember the important things like land, taking care of their people, the water, etc. Those are the things one forgets when leaving home and he wished they could return back and sort of remember what they should be fighting for. The logo that he is using is taken from a basket design- a Navaho wedding basket and there is a lot of different interpretations of the basket depending on where one is. The version Jaredlikesis how the basket is woven starting from the centre, grows and weaves out and it’s a story of a lifetime. It’s a person’s journey, the centre is about the time one is younger/toddler, once they get to theMiddle Agesthey hit the dark parts/the rough parts/the busy areas, the ups and downs of life and at the end it becomes more peaceful. The younger generation was always told that the blacks and patterns were mountains on the outside and the red stripes is land and the middle area was the water with the mountains reflected in the water. To Jared it told the story of life, story of land and water and everything which he wanted to incorporate in his mission and his brand.
The very early phase of the brand- the hustle phase, Jared set up a flea-market which was interesting because people were usually focused on survival type items like wood or coal, tools, etc. Hewould use social media to say where he was at for a certain amount of time and if people wanted to they could come by. He usually had a few people come by and buy some stuff and that’s how he operated. He got as far as he can, tried to make money as they come and make money to get back home. It was like this for first two years. One of the big breaks he had was being part of the Native Exhibition called ‘Native Fashion Now’, which was an exhibit to showcase native fashion but more importantly the native fashion existing today by using the native artist who are still alive and working. A big problem with the museum type settings is that native people are always placed in black and white photos, known to look archaic and of the past, like not alive anymore and forgetting that native people still exist and are doing a lot of work. ‘Native fashion Now’ was an exhibit that showcased all the native people who are still doing work. Jared was accepted with his two t-shirt designs, one of which was a simple text piece that he did back in 2010 saying “Native Americans Discovered Columbus”, which is a play on the history lesson that is taught in U.S. schools and greatly celebrated, which is blatantly a lie as Columbus was someone who was lost, needed rescuing and who only brought genocide, so he is not a hero to the native people. Jared showcased his views about it without having to get into fights with the non-native people just to defend himself. The Columbus T-shirt that he made had an impact on Columbus Day that the U.S. celebrates every year as a lot of native people started wearing the “Native Americans Discovered Columbus” t-shirt on that day as a sort of protest. After some time a lot of people started making gatherings to protest Columbus Day and shout out the truth about it. There were many different groups that were created and one called ‘Indigenous People’s Day Arizona’ asked him to make a logo for them. Their initiative was to change the holiday from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day and Jared is happy that Phoenix is the city which celebrates Indigenous People’s Day, so there was an actual change made with the collective efforts of different artists and group and a single piece of artwork contributed to this. The other t-shirt which was selected for the exhibit is called Mis-Rep, which played off the logo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team who had a long standing relationship with the logo, used it for years, even fans dressed up like that, had stereotypical sayings and racist imagery, which was celebrated by the entire town each time the baseball season came. The baseball team recently made it to the world series so there was a racist mascot in the big event and a lot of people were getting exposed to it and in the native community there have been problems with mental health and the contributions to it are because of stuff like the racist imagery of them shown in a dehumanized way and they were looked down as second class people which reflects on the youth and how they think about themselves. So, Jaredmeshedthis logo with a punk band called the ‘Mis-Fits’ and blended them together, he used the Mis-Fits’ logo as the skull as he wanted to showcase the baseball logo as a dead thing and instead of Mis-Fits he put Mis-Rep at the bottom which stands for misrepresented and people wore it at the actual world series game to protest. His other works are; ‘Chemical Warfare’ which is based on the chemical mining on the Navaho reservations where uranium was found. Another piece is called ‘Together We Rise’ which showcased the three sisters- the pike people, who have been fighting against the copper mining happening on their traditional lands.
Jared says that with his work the people who he wants to fight for, the people he think back to, the ones he want to make proud- are his mom, his paternal grandma and maternal grandparents. These are the people he want to have a remembrance for, have considerations for whenever he pursues other collaborations and jobs. He tried to honour them and show them in his work and their legacy.
About the Speaker
Jared Yazzie
artist, designer, and entrepreneur
founder, OXDX Clothing
Holbrook, Arizona, USA
Jared is a self-taught graphic artist and screen printer who started by selling T-shirts out of the truck of his car and from his dorm room at the University of Arizona. He currently runs a storefront and workspace in Tempe, Arizona. OXDX is a fashion label that specializes in digital art, cut’n’sew apparel and collaborations as an ongoing project to bring Indigenous stories to the forefront. OXDX was founded by artist, Jared Kee Yazzie, a Diné self-taught graphic designer and print maker. Yazzie has been producing fashion design since 2009 and now operates a workshop and store front with partner Allie Stone in Tempe, Arizona. Allie is a textile artist and weaver who acts as OXDX’s head seamstress and business manager. OXDX is an acronym for the word “overdose”, which Yazzie uses to describe the state of the world and how it relates to the Native experience. It’s a statement to check your consumption, question your contribution to land and water, and to think back on ancestral teachings.
