 About
the Art
The
future’s just not what it used to be.
Once upon a time
– while we were exhausted from the Great Depression,
vulnerable to corporate propaganda, riding a wave of technological
change, and reading comic books and pulp magazines –
we excelled at dreaming wonderful things into the days
just ahead.
We had to. Times
were just about as bad as they’ve ever been.
And despite how
terrible those days were we had plenty to be optimistic
about. Electricity was beginning to power even the remotest
of rural areas. First the telephone, and then the radio,
tied us together by voice, while of course the automobile
was now a common sight on the roads. We were beginning
to see almost daily advances in technologies that genuinely
did make our lives a bit easier. As a little girl, my
grandmother loved to read Jules Verne – and later
in life she said that she’d lived to see those books
come true.
So by now, according
to our dreams for the future, we ought to have our own
flying
cars and faithful
robot companions. We should be filling our retro
rockets at Interstellar
Gulf’s hygienic and modern filling stations.
Every now and then we ought to be having a furious ray
gun battle with the forces of evil. It’d be
clear who they were because they’d be green,
with the wrong number of eyes, and they’d be clutching
shrieking, politically undeveloped space women in tight-fitting
outfits.
Then
again, Buck Rogers' friend Wilma was a pretty tough cookie.
 Here
at the Retropolis Transit Authority I want to
remind you just how cool the future almost was. Have a
look through here and consider a shirt of your very own
that will keep you mindful of how nice it'd be to have
that retro rocket, to converse with that faithful robot,
or- only when strictly necessary - to subdue that
Awful Green Thing From Space.
The
thing is, there's still an awful lot of future out there.
We always have the chance to fill it with what we want
it to be.
Above
all, of course, I
still want my flying car.
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About
the Artist
I
came of age in the 1970’s, when the cool new digital
technology was watches. And in those days, when printing
technologies were much more expensive – and unavailable,
mainly, to the masses – an artist’s possibilities
were very different. So while I did do illustration work
for publications and small businesses that work was mainly
in black and white or, sometimes, in spot color for silk
screen and offset printing.
I worked at one
time or another as a printer, a draftsman, and a sign
painter. In the remainder of my time I was painting and
sold those works, mainly in watercolor, just about anywhere
I could. I illustrated role playing games and small press
magazines, painted covers for LPs and cassettes and even
those wacky new CDs. I took a break from painting in the
late 80’s and built musical instruments; but that’s
right about when computers began to get really interesting,
 and
before I knew it I was back to image making – but
digitally, this time, and not on paper.
I spent about seventeen
years wandering through the woods of the computer games
business - but I found my way out, finally, to settle
in a little harbor town in northeastern Ohio, where I
spend as much of my time as I can making things that I
think want to exist.
Bradley
W. Schenck
More
by me on the web:
About
the Shirts
The
Retropolis Transit Authority is pleased to announce that
using the latest and most modern manufacturing methods,
it's been able to offer a wide variety of apparel through
the services of Printfection.com - an Earthbound but ground-breaking
enterprise located in Colorado, USA.
The
shirts themselves are high quality garments (information
on each is available on their product pages) and the designs
are printed using digital direct to garment printing.
The quality of Printfection's printing, especially on
dark colored shirts, is simply second to none. I'm extremely
pleased to be able to offer these because I'm crazy about
the products myself. I think you will be, too!
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