By: Kimberly Swetland

Amid the backdrop of the Tacoma art scene, Carrie Foster’s intricate hand-drawn designs and Bob Jewell’s entrepreneurial acumen have converged to propel Shroom Brothers to the forefront of the city's cultural zeitgeist. From their humble beginnings in a makeshift studio to the big festivals that now showcase their creations, their journey is a testament to resilience, creativity, and the power of collaboration.

In fact, Foster hand-drew the artwork for the cover of this issue in collaboration with Angela Jossy, who owns the Weekly Volcano. Her partner, Jewell, handles the screen printing and financial side of their business. This dynamic duo plays off each other’s strengths—Jewell is the frontman, and Foster is the talent.

As Jewell tells it, the first Shroom Brothers shirts were created in 1991. “The original Shroom Brothers were myself and my best friend. We’d been hanging out for quite a while, and there were a lot of magic mushrooms involved—both taking them and selling them—and we just called each other the Shroom Brothers. My first marriage came about, and I asked him to be my best man, and another friend hand drew the first two Shroom Brothers shirts for us. So that’s how the name originated.”

“In 2010, I moved out here from Maine on kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing—just a backpack and a duffel bag—and here I am, fourteen years later. I met Carrie out here, and we started hanging out. She had all this super cool art that she had created. And I asked her if she sold it, and she said no. I thought that was ridiculous because I thought people would pay money for it.”

“And I thought he was crazy,” Foster said.

The idea didn’t go anywhere until the fall of 2011, when Jewell’s brother, a tattoo artist, and one of his apprentices made some shirts featuring Foster’s illustrations. Jewell thought that T-shirts would be a great vehicle for Foster to get her art out into the world. “So, we just started kicking it around,” he said.

When they were trying to think up a name for their brand, Jewell thought back to a hand-drawn shirt he had from years ago, given to him by his original Shroom Brother, and that became their name. “The cool thing about it was that it all evolved, because what we wanted to capture was a hand-drawn look on a shirt, and we were going to outsource it. And I decided, ‘Well, I want to play in the art world too,’ but I’d never screen printed before. How hard could it be? And it’s not totally easy, haha! But I decided I would print the shirts, so I basically just taught myself.”

“We started with this little one-color rig in our living room, spread some sheets out on the floor, and tried screen printing. That was the spring of 2012, when we started, and we came out with four, maybe five graphics. By June of 2012, we decided that we’re good enough at this screen printing stuff that we’re going to show the world. We did our first festival. It was down behind the Museum of Glass. We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. Our screen printed designs were all pretty rudimentary, except there was one that was a Tacoma graphic—our very first one—and it had a Celtic knotwork T and ‘acoma’ afterward. It was super cool, and Carrie’s whole vision with that art is that she was sick of seeing things that were making fun of Tacoma.”

Foster’s intention was to lift Tacoma up with her art, rather than keep it down, and Tacoma responded. “We sold a few shirts, just to friends and family, at our first event,” Jewell says. Then they did Music & Art in Wright Park, followed by Art on the Ave in the following year. “We did the whole Spaceworks [Incubator project] thing because basically, we wanted some business knowledge,” he adds. “Neither of us are businesspeople. We needed to know how to make a business function, but we didn’t necessarily need the space.”

For the first three years, they literally operated this company out of their spare bedroom with no professional equipment. “We were setting ink on shirts with a hair dryer,” Jewell laughs, “and Carrie would take a piece of paper and put it on each one of the graphics and iron it, to set the ink. We did thousands of shirts like that until we saved up enough for a real press.”

The hallmark of Shroom Brothers lies in Foster’s hand-drawn designs. Whether it's a graphic of the iconic Pacific octopus or the captivating medusa, each piece bears her unique imprint. She also says they don’t have a specific artistic niche, enabling her to take on different creative projects as they come up.

To produce her images for the shirts, Foster first figures out the parameters, then does a sketch, lays down the ink, transfers it to a clean sheet, and brings in the detail. Then she goes on a sort of autopilot from there. “I don’t necessarily always know how I’m going to ink something out, like I do with a painting,” Foster says. “I have a vision of how I want it to kind of look.”

Sometimes Foster just makes random art and Jewell will say, “Hey, I’d print that.” And then Foster turns it into something that Jewell can experiment with.

Jewell says that since Shroom Brothers was accepted into the Spaceworks Incubator program in 2015, they’ve stuck true to their business plan, which is to make cool shit so people can buy it. One of the great things about running Shroom Brothers, they add, is that Foster got to step away from the 9-to-5 world. Jewel still works a full-time job, while Foster works part-time, giving her more time to focus on “continuing to make art and experimenting with some other art styles, and trying to grow creatively.” She doesn’t take her time for granted and adds, “I’m out in the studio at least every day, drawing, painting, sewing—or blowing it—with something I’m experimenting on.”

One of their most iconic designs features the Pacific octopus under the Narrows Bridge, with TACOMA spelled out in the towers and cables of the bridge’s architecture. Foster and Jewell call this one their Metallica shirt, because it sells so well. The raven-and-mushroom design is a close rival, and Foster just came out with a new skull-and-mushroom graphic this year that they expect to do well. Another one of their shirts that is quite popular is the Tacoma V.2 design, featuring an upside-down octopus with its tentacles wrapped around the city of Tacoma and Mount Rainier above it. “There’s so many iconic things in it that it doesn’t have to say, ‘Tacoma,’” Jewell says. “If you know, you know.”

Foster’s got a killer medusa graphic too, with super clean linework and detailed snakes. There’s also a cool mycology shirt, and a Shroom with a View shirt that was made with a special Swarovski crystal dust. “There’s really a lot of mushroom-themed things,” Jewell says.

A major highlight for the pair was being featured in South Sound Magazine, and a close second is when people send them photos of their shirts from all around the world. One lady sent in a photo of herself on the Great Wall of China wearing one of their shirts, and another woman sent a pic of herself in a Shroom Brothers shirt at Machu Picchu. Foster mentions that one of her pieces was shipped all the way to Oslo, Norway. “Every time somebody buys a piece of art from me it’s a milestone,” she says. “It’s the same feeling as the first time, every time, because it doesn’t happen all the time. Also, having someone contact me because they got our card from an event to do a piece of art—that’s something that’s happened a few times that I’m pretty proud of.”

Jewell shares this sense of pride in their work. “I’m super proud of Shroom Brothers! To do something cool with your time, with your art, and even better to do it with a partner like I have. Man, it’s a vibe thing, it’s a life thing. It’s super cool. The WHOLE thing’s a highlight.” He’s additionally proud of the fact that their shirts get noticed. “People will literally stop someone wearing one of our graphics on the street and tell them, ‘Hey, man, that’s a cool shirt,’ and then ask them where they got it. I’ve heard that I don’t know how many times.”

Both Foster and Jewell agree that “If you’re going to go into business with a friend or a significant other, you better make damn well sure that you don’t value that business more than you do your relationship.” A lot of it comes down to grit, as Jewell explains. “I’ll work eleven to-twelve-hour days and have to print for four hours afterward. You just gotta be prepared. You gotta make sure what you’re doing is right. I wouldn’t say to just jump into it.”

There’s a lot of thought that goes into their designs and the process behind creating each shirt. They print their octopus design on a heavier work shirt, for instance, because Tacoma is pretty working-class. “Those blue-collar guys like those heavier all-cotton work shirts. Something they can wear to work and it’s not going to wear out fast.” On some of their ladies’ apparel, they use softer material. “Except for the Tacoma ones—those ones are 100% cotton.”

They can also vary the process of creating the design. “On the skull-and-mushroom shirt, I’m doing a discharge print. It’s where you don’t put ink into the shirt, but you remove the dye from the shirt.” According to Jewell, this is a process that can only be done on 100 percent cotton shirts.

If you’d like to shop for Shroom Brothers gear locally and can’t wait for a festival, Grit City Grindhouse on South Seventh Avenue, by Puget Sound Pizza, currently carries the most variety of their graphics. Pacific Northwest Shop has a couple of their shirts as well. “One design, we only make for them,” Jewell says. “It’s a Northwest compass design. We don’t keep it in our own stock.”

The next event they’ll attend is Art on the Ave, and they’re also planning to appear at Proctor Arts Fest. They’ll also be doing live printing at the Tacoma Wayzgoose next month, on May 3 and 4 at the Moore Branch of the Tacoma Public Library—although they won’t be selling anything, just demonstrating. As well, Foster is available for custom artwork, portraits, logo designs, and tattoo design, if you’re looking for an artist for hire. You can get in touch with her through their website.

Read more about Shroom Brothers, order their stuff, or contact Carrie Foster for freelance work through their website at https://shroombrothers.com. Their Etsy profile is at www.etsy.com/shop/ShroomBrothers.