- Two Crow Collective is a small batch clothing brand that blends punk culture and tattoo inspired streetwear with storytelling.

Its founder, Jame, created the PBS Is Punk design and is now using T-shirts to share chronic and mental health stories.

[music] - I think that what we do is a testament to authenticity, transparency, and a little bit of dark humor.

Forget Me Not is probably my favorite design I've ever done.

This one was for me.

And so this is kind of like a true testament to like, don't forget about us with chronic illness.

Like we do still want to be invited.

[music] My name is Jame.

I'm the owner of Two Crow Collective.

We make T-shirts for chronic illness, mental health challenges, and disabilities, while we also love just storytelling and helping people express themselves through what we create.

I consider myself to be a jack of all trades, and it took me a very, very long time to fall into the art form of screen printing.

I always loved art growing up, I drew a lot.

I loved creating with Lego.

I love just making things.

[music] It wasn't until middle school when I met Dave Anderson, my middle school art teacher, who really cemented some core art philosophy in me.

And that's just try new things.

- My name is David Anderson, and I've been teaching for 30 years now.

I remember Jame as a student, as someone who came into the art room quite often outside of the class time.

He wanted to go around my room and pull out drawers and see what was inside.

Getting students to try new things is really important at this age.

There's a lot of reservation and hesitation for a middle school boy to take chances.

- I grew up with a sister who's 12 years older than me.

She was a goth.

[music] She listened to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Incubus and all these cool grunge bands, and that was my influence at home.

And I became an alternative kid at a preppy private school.

I was more of a musician more than anything.

I thought I was going to end up being a professional musician full time, and I did for a little bit.

Art wasn't really my main focus at that point in my life, but I still was very inspired to do art and learn more about what bands need.

And it wasn't until college that I found screen printing through our on campus record label, and I screen printed my first T-shirt ever.

I see PTSD, which is complex PTSD.

I lived in a household that was not perfect.

My dad was an alcoholic.

My family didn't deal with that very well.

[music] For my Crohn's disease.

I had a quarter of my colon removed in 2010.

It was my first semester of college.

The cool thing about the band that I was in is everyone knew.

Everyone was super cool with it.

They said, if you need to stop, we'll stop.

And being able to build a community basically around that has been amazing.

[music] My business originally was called Dirty Bourbon Clothing.

We actually were a printing company.

First I was just printing shirts for bands I worked a 9 to 5 at a desk, and then I would come home and from 6 to 11 I would print shirts every single night.

I got extremely burnt out.

And then Covid hit.

[music] From there, the printing side, I stopped printing for other people and I started printing for myself.

I started making my own art instead of doing designs specific to chronic illness.

I do designs based on symptoms because somebody with cancer can connect to somebody like me with Crohn's.

So I like to make those connections and draw people together instead of separating people into their their label of their disease.

[music] Eventually, when I realized that the market I was hitting and the community I was building was for chronic and mental health folks, I had to take a step back.

And dealing with alcoholism in my own life and dealing with addiction myself, I had to realize that addiction is a disease too.

And if my friends who were addicts or alcoholics wouldn't wear my shirt because it said bourbon on it, that needed to change.

So we spent a lot of time trying to come up with a new name.

Two Crow is important to me.

My grandmother used to always say and write, "Tutti Two."

She believed that good and bad things always come in twos.

People see one crow and it's supposed to be a bad omen.

But I think, like when you see two together.

Honestly, like I see my grandparents in those crows a little bit, and I just thought that was a very good representation of the balance between the good and the bad.

[music] We can put purpose behind our pain.

And that's what I've done every day since changing the name.

The idea of Two Crow started out there, and it started with my story and seeing that other people connected with it.

And then I realized if other people connect with me, other people can connect with other people.

So the I'm Okay collection is an annual little event.

We put it on in the spring each year, and every year we make a new flower that says, "I'm Okay," and they're typically wilting in some regard as a means to say it's okay to not be okay, or it's okay to be okay.

[music] The PBS Is Punk design for me is a little out there.

It's not something I typically do as Two Crow Collective.

I got upset when I read the article that PBS was getting defunded because it felt like a part of my childhood was just kind of being ripped away.

I had an image in my head of the PBS logo with a mohawk and piercings.

[music] And I posted it on a whim and then it went viral instantly.

[music] - When I look at his work today, I think it's great and amazing that he is pushing that envelope further and doing it through T-shirt designs and doing it in a really a way where there's this sort of punk rock dynamic of tattoo culture and skateboard culture.

[music] - The biggest message that I want to send to folks with chronic illness or mental health challenges is that you're not alone, and that we're all going through something, everybody's going through something, and you're not alone in that.

[music] - Explore more of James art and his PBS Is Punk design at twocrowcollective.com.