Podcast Interview: Legendary Liquid Blue Artist Brian Fox
Ask any vintage collector or reseller what their favorite clothing brands are and the same answers get thrown around: Hanes, Champion, Nike, Louis, Fruit of the Loom … the basics. Liquid Blue is in there too with hundreds of popular graphics from the company currently online able to be bought and sold, usually for higher than average ticket prices. It’s because of the brand’s unique artistic execution that they’re so collectible today. The problem? There isn’t really shit out there on the history of the company.
Kinda bizarre considering so many hunt so fervently for their tees.
Because the story of Liquid Blue hasn’t yet been told completely, we reached out to one of the artists that may have some answers. Brian Fox is currently a high-end sports and celebrity artist creating works for the likes of Tom Brady, David Ortiz and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. Before he got wrapped up into that world, however, he sat next to several other talented artists designing thousands of t-shirt designs over several years and sold them to the world.
Some of his most popular pieces (at least by today’s reseller values) are his ethereal Native American works, his Alice in Wonderland series, and any of the all-over-printed types featuring dragons, reapers or flaming whatevers — basically anything from the ‘90s and into the 2000s.
And it may not be his creation artistically, but the highly sought after “Puck Head” design is actually his face. He says because Google wasn’t really a thing back then, they’d use each other to model for their graphic ideas. Pretty wild.
In fact he had a lot to say about his time there, most especially how it gave him the proper tools to move on in his career later in life. “It was a great job,” says Fox. “It was a great atmosphere where you had these super creative people there, and they were fun to hang out with too.”
From the humble beginnings of founder and CEO Paul Roidoulis selling stickers and tees out of the back of his car before Grateful Dead shows, to growing into a multi-million dollar enterprise, Liquid Blue’s story is one that needed to be told.
