Designing Hasbeen

            A Sharpie-drawn octopus tentacle holding an ice cream cone snakes up an art gallery wall. Tiny gnomish characters wearing pointy hats stick to its suction cups. The tentacle wraps around a three-by-three square of colorful canvases that contain drawings of Lego men and women. They are dressed as pirates, painters, totem pole-headed skiers, astronauts and fornicators. It’s Huy Nguyen’s debut exhibit at the opening of University of Oregon professor Michael Salter’s Lump West art gallery.

            Last winter, Nguyen was in the process of designing prototype t-shirts for a line of skateboarding apparel under his new business, Hasbeen Designs. Then one morning, a confused, disoriented Nguyen awoke in a puddle of sweat. At first, he thought it was still morning and continued packing for class. Then he glanced at the clock. It was 8 p.m. After telling friends what happened, they took him to the hospital for a CAT scan. Within 24 hours, surgeons had sawed open his skull to remove a bacterial brain infection.

            Since Nguyen’s surgery, Hasbeen has new meaning for him. “We can die at any time,” Nguyen says. “That’s what [Hasbeen] is sort of about-- leaving your mark on the world. It can all be over tomorrow.” Alongside high school friend Seth Beckman, a lanky skateboarder with fine long brown hair and a lip ring, Nguyen created the business because he believed he could create superior apparel for the skateboarding community.
“I was sick of paying for stuff I knew I didn’t want to wear,” Nguyen says.

            Now it’s fall term 2006. Attendees shake Nguyen’s hand at the art show, congratulating him for his success. Long gone are the two and a half months Nguyen spent in bed recuperating. During that time, he wore a peripherally inserted central catheter in his arm, pumping penicillin into his bloodstream every four hours. “That machine would turn on and wake me up at night,” he says. “It was like a man-purse I had to carry around.”

            Upon returning to the UO spring term, Nguyen entered an independent study program under multimedia design Professor Michael Salter’s supervision. “I was all motivated to get shit done,” he says. Salter helped Nguyen focus his artistic abilities in designing and printing shirts for Hasbeen. A multimedia design major and business minor, Nguyen also took Salter’s digital illustration class, which helped him land the exhibition. Salter says he invited Nguyen for the opening show because he is irreverent and doesn’t adhere to the constraints of conventional art school teachings. “I found his work completely fresh,” Salter says, “a perfect launch show for Lump West.”

            The Lump West exhibit hall features a compilation of Nguyen’s work titled, Sharpee Sity (because Sity with an S is close to shitty, he says. “I just thought it was funny.”) Next to the exhibit, a group of college-age students, alcoholic beverages in hand, surround a display shelf. On it sit painted ceramic gnomes and two spider web-designed slip-on sneakers made by Nguyen. Beneath it, students sift through shirts hanging on a wooden dowel, which reads, “Buy a shirt, spend all your $$$, Huy accepts personal checks.”

            Nguyen runs into the exhibit hall holding a Pabst can. His face scrunches into a grin. He wears a brown fake suede jacket, Levis with a hole in the back pocket, and moccasins. His shoulder-length black hair whips his face. “I just cracked myself in the jaw with a bourbon bottle!” he exclaims happily. Then he turns to a woman examining a shirt with a black stain. “Does that have crap on it?” he asks. “I’ll sell that to you for less if that has crap on it.” The shirt features an octopus creature named Zorlack. A friend’s pug for which Nguyen and his roommates, Beckman and Matt Hartz, pet-sit, inspired the octopus’ sharp- toothed underbite. Atop the pug-inspired octopus rides a young boy dressed in a teddy bear custom––a Nguyen self-portrait. Within the first two hours of the exhibit, Nguyen has sold twelve shirts.

            Nguyen and Beckman first conceptualized Hasbeen while living in their Ducks Village apartment sophomore year. Nguyen picked the name by pointing at a random page in the “H” section of the dictionary (Nguyen’s favorite letter). In 2004, the pair started designing buttons with a newly purchased button press. The most recent button designs features Hasbeen’s initials in pink, surrounded by a blue border and Zorlack the octopus.

            A year later, Beckman’s father loaned the company 2,000 dollars to buy a four-station silk-screening press reminiscent of a gigantic metal spider. With it, they print designs including an abstract, blocky depiction of their logo, a rockin’ electric guitarist and the simple phrase, “We’re Fucked,” (the most succinct Bush insult in recent memory). They also purchased four screens, chemicals and a Mercury Flash Dryer. Beckman had to take out a credit card to cover additional expenses. He is a political science, economics double major and business minor. “That’s why all the bank accounts are in my name,” Beckman explains.

            Over the summer, a friend of Nguyen’s from the UO dorms, Matt Hartz, joined the Hasbeen team. Hartz, a skateboarder from Los Angeles, is a public relations major and multimedia design minor. He has blond wavy hair hanging in his eyes and carries a Lomography fisheye camera, snapping shots of the 40-some exhibit-goers mingling on the covered patio outside the gallery. Shortly after partnering up with Nguyen and Beckman, Hartz traveled to L.A. and introduced their product to Val Sports, a popular skateboarding company in Southern California. Val Sports expressed particular interest in carrying Hasbeen’s 3-D logo shirt. Hasbeen shirts and buttons are also currently available at Buffalo Exchange, Eugene Jeans, Deluxe, Boardsports, and Midtown Pipe and Tobacco. But Hasbeen isn’t all shirts and buttons; Nguyen also makes album artwork for bands like The Empty and sponsors a number of skateboarders.

            To collaborate with other friends and artists, they’ve created the Hasbeenartnetwork. “It’s basically a group of friends that are more talented than I am,” Nguyen says. Through the network, Hasbeen obtains other artists’ artwork for its apparel. In return, the artist gets a cut of the profits. After his surgery, Nguyen “really wanted to push the network of artists,” he says, “because I get sick of looking at my own art.”
So far, the Hasbeen guys are pleased with their progress.

            “It would be my dream if this works out,” Hartz says. “Being able to work with your friends is fucking fantastic.” Hasbeen has become a pervasive part of their lives; they talk business when they wake, at the bars, between classes, even at the art show. Instead of skate boarding or going out, Hartz says, “It’s like, do you want to stay at home and make shirts?” Hours before Nguyen’s exhibit, the three finally added the finishing touch to their printing workshop—a door. Before moving into their current residence south of campus, they printed out of their garage. In their new house, they hired a friend to build an enclosure around their carport to serve as a workshop. The friend happily accepted the payment of shirts, beer and bong rips. Despite its start-up expenses, Hasbeen has managed to make a profit selling shirts during University of Oregon football games.

            During the UCLA game, the week after Nguyen’s art show, his crew sets up shop along the asphalt path on the stadium side of the Autzen Bridge. They tried selling shirts on the other end of the bridge, but UO police kicked them off for selling on University property without a permit.

            Before the UCLA game, they loaded a box full of what Hartz calls their, “trying to make money shirt,” and pushed it along the path on a skateboard. The bright yellow shirt depicts a green Duck mascot helping a baseball cap- wearing fan execute a keg stand. Below the picture is written, “Get Ducked Up.” During the Stanford game, a Duck fan told Beckman that they had had the same idea ages ago.

            “Yeah,” Beckman replied, “well, you didn’t capitalize on it.” By the end of the same game, Hasbeen raked in 400 hundred dollars, and that was during the summer when the freshmen were yet to arrive. Today they expect greater profits.

            “Getcha t-shirts,” they yell at the passing crowd. “Ten dollars for a Ducked Up T-shirt.” On their shoulders, Beckman and Hartz hold a wooden dowel upon which their merchandise hangs. Nguyen gets attention by flapping a shirt. Business is slower than previously anticipated, but they stick out the game’s entirety as a team.

            “Hasbeen wouldn’t have been what it is without the crew that I have,” Nguyen says. Soon, fans stream across the path, happy for the UO win, drunk and eager to buy shirts. The “moneymaking shirt” rakes in 700 dollars.

Link to the original article in Oregon Voice: oregonvoice.com/pdfs/OV18_1.pdf