Almost 20 years ago, a young Christian Brewer picked up an acorn somewhere in East Nashville. He took the pointy end to the side of a car in his grandmother’s driveway.
”I was probably 9 years old, maybe younger, and I just picked it up and started carving — just some little people into the side of the car,” Brewer says, grinning. “I can remember I had a little work desk in my grandma’s house that I always drew at.”
It’s an early snapshot of how his idle hands prefer to draw or sketch. In middle school, Brewer spent computer classes browsing websites like Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Givenchy. He rattles off early pieces still lodged in his memory.
“ I liked the unorthodox stuff — two-headed monkeys, a pink dolphin shirt,” he says. “I remember this raver shirt of a pig in a bikini by Yohji Yamamoto. Eventually, I wanted to see my drawings on clothes.”
He printed his first item at 17 — a T-shirt reading, “Fuck College.” That first run started an ongoing cycle of drawing, printing and selling apparel under his brand, PlentyFuckFaces. Today, at 25, Brewer spends his daytime hours filling orders at Grand Palace, a small screen-printing outfit off Nolensville Pike that likely produces your favorite local merch. The job provides Brewer more than a steady paycheck. At Grand Palace, he has access to industry insights and, critically, a multi-armed lime-green automatic press that enables PlentyFuckFaces to print in two colors.
Non-human characters dominate his designs, which often depict two main subjects: a masked cat and a feminized intestinal worm, both always surrounded by disorder. Brewer unspools each dramatic scene on sneakers, T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts in a seemingly infinite drama; slime and syringes dot the nightmarish chaos as if Nickelodeon hired Hieronymus Bosch. He sets them on warm backgrounds that lean toward earth and pastel. Brewer reassures me that everything he draws is grounded in optimism.
“My pointy-ears guy, I refer to him as a cat, he comes from a bad place,” Brewer explains. “He saw a lot of evil growing up, but a good guy, you know, he tries to do the best he can. My brand — PlentyFuckFaces — it stems from a lot of people that seem unhappy and don’t wanna do the right thing. The needles hold a serum for helping people to do the right thing, to focus up and be more human.”
Find his work on Instagram and at pop-ups around the city.
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