Misplaced Screenprinting
If you follow Portland’s local music scene at all, chances are you’ve seen the work of the Misplaced boys, Henry Gibson and Andrew Clyde. The two have become a go-to duo to print an array of merchandise for Portland’s bands and businesses; creating posters, shirts, hoodies, stickers, magnets, onesies, and well, noting the time a guy handed over his leather jacket, Clyde says “Literally whatever you can bring that will lay flat we can print on it.”
They call themselves “Misplaced Screenprinting” as transplants from Alaska and Texas who found themselves as roomies in Portland. Gibson had experience in screenprinting and earned a degree in graphic design, while Clyde admits he was a bored bartender looking to change things up. When a mutual friend was selling an old press, the two were able to start a venture together. Playing in local bands themselves (The We Shared Milk, Charts), they knew that musicians make most of their money from the merch table. They got started with some Charts T-shirts and Sallie Ford Posters.
“I kind of feel like we fell into it for the most part, and people kept coming back to us, and so we kind of had to keep doing it. And we love it. I wouldn’t have thought back then that we would be actually legitimate business owners with rent, and bills, insurance and clients.” says Clyde.
Last year, they moved from their bodega style “Happy Market” shop in Southeast to a location in Slabtown, a place of bro-hugs and banter where you can find wearable art from lots of artists like Charles Ben Russell or Ursula Barton. And yes, you can share your own design for the Misplaced boys to press into soft cotton. Or just pick a mystery shirt packaged in a chinese takeout container (I snagged a sweet Shivas band tee with a Jodie Beechem design). They alos provide shipping in a pizza box because it’s funny to get a pizza box in the mail with a shirt inside.
A big part of the fun is the live printing with a mobile studio, where they’ve helped people make their own shirts at events in collaboration with Tender Loving Empire, Treefort Fest and Lose Yr Mind. They also use it to teach youth how to make their own merchandise for workshops with WomenCrush Music and Friends of Noise. Expect to see them set up at an end-of-year concert series (TBA) in collaboration with New Move Entertainment. They’ve worked and grown with the spectrum of Portland’s maker’s scene, especially bands.
“What I love about this whole thing is that a lot of the people that we work with have been trying to get the Portland music scene to be a bit little more cohesive, more solid. Everyone working together,” says Clyde, “Not just indie kids and punk kids and metal kids. We’re trying to get all of the genres together. That’s one thing that we love about our job, the fact that we work with so many different kinds of people.”
