Cabezabomba Art, culture, and the conversations that matter. Browse Latest Posts We think culture writing should be as fearless as the work it examines. Our critics and contributors tackle music, visual art, film, and performance with the attention and sharpness these art forms demand. We’re not here to play it safe… Topics we cover: Visual […]
Look at the black rectangle first. In the artwork for the Got Too Silly bird shirt, a white goose-like bird stands in an orange prison uniform, holding a black mugshot board at chest height. Above the bird, in block capitals, the shirt reads GOT TOO SILLY. The board itself is empty. No name, no number, […]
On 5 May 1871, a decree signed by Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla and King Amadeo I created the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Madrid inside the Real Conservatorio de Artes. The school taught arithmetic and algebra, geometry and descriptive geometry, physics, chemistry, natural history, mechanics, machine operation, tool use, construction principles, surveying and leveling, geometric […]
There is no comma after WAIT. That is the first thing I check on any shirt that tries to sell me a pause, and the Wait I’m Goated cat shirt passes the test by refusing the punctuation. The top line is just WAIT, white, set above an orange cat in black sunglasses. Below the cat, […]
The first thing I notice is the hand. Not the words—those come later, in a block of warning-sign lettering that reads NOT FRIENDLY DO NOT TOUCH—but the hand, a flat silhouette inside a yellow caution triangle, with a diagonal bar struck through it. The triangle is the shape of industrial hazard: wet floor, high voltage, […]
The shirt says TWEEDLE DUM in letters that look like they were pressed into the cotton by a steamroller, and then, smaller, almost as an afterthought: I’M WITH DEE. Between the two lines sits a right-pointing arrow. That is the whole design. No illustration of the bulbous Disney twins, no teacup, no mushroom, no Carrollian […]
Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner. This is not an independent review. The cat is wearing the hat backwards. That is the first thing I see, before the letters, before the lollipop, before the deadpan. A red cap, brim turned to the rear, perched on an orange tabby who is […]
The bell is the first thing you see. A small, white, rounded notification banner, the kind that slides down from the top of a phone screen, with a bell icon at the left edge and a sentence running to the right: There is motion at your front door. Below the banner, inside a circular frame, […]
The first thing I notice is not the sentence. It is the soil line. Four root vegetables—carrot, radish, beet, onion—sit in a row, each with a face, each with its taproot and fibrous roots drawn down into the dirt. The lettering wraps around them: LET’S ROOT FOR EACH OTHER AND WATCH EACH OTHER GROW. The […]
Let’s kill the sentimental version first. The story of the Taller de Gráfica Popular and Spanish Republican exile printmakers is not a tale of Mexican masters generously teaching grateful Spaniards how to carve linoleum. It is a story about infrastructure: a workshop that functioned like a small factory, with statutes, quotas, assemblies and a distribution […]
The first thing I notice is the period. Not the word—the word is almost nothing, four lowercase letters set so small and so centered on a dark shirt that from across a room it reads as a smudge, a printing error, a fleck of lint you want to brush off. The period is what makes […]