By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — In a little cozy shack beside their one-story house in the country, happily married punks Hope and Hunter fill out another order of shirts for another local band who heard about them via word of mouth. It’s a typical order for the couple; they’ve built quite a dedicated following in the local alt-music scene since their first printing job in April of 2019, later becoming the formally established Gnarly Prints LLC in 2022.
“Our first terrible, terrible, mess of a learning process DIY screen that we made was for F-Hero,” Hope laughed. “I had drawn it.”
“And we exposed the screen in the sun,” chimed Hunter after complimenting his wife’s work hand-drawing their first image.
“We were actually doing the sun for a while,” commented Hope. “It’s so hit or miss.”
“And it was annoying,” finished Hunter, the both of them allowing an exasperated laugh to slip out. “The sun’s different every day so you don’t know how much UV you’re getting, as opposed to having a 500-watt … bulb that always gets you the same, consistent rays to expose it.”
Hunter detailed how he learned the printing process while working at a print shop for about a year before their first Gnarly Prints order. He said while working at the shop he did everything he could to learn every little detail about how the printing process was done on a large scale. He said after learning how to do things big, transferring the skills to the smaller-scale home print shop was much easier.
After adopting the name of their dog, Gnarly, and firing up their printer for clients, the two assumed different roles within the small business. Hope would do much of the clean work by sizing the prints that Hunter would be pressing later on her computer and sending out quotes for potential customers. Hunter would get down and dirty, handling the color separation and printing process itself, often finishing a job with his hands stained.
Hunter said that in the early days of Gnarly Prints, they were often figuring out what to do through DIY solutions and mistakes, though their shortcomings would in time work to serve them. This is because now Hunter knows exactly what to look for when checking to see if a job is going to both print and age well.
“We learned probably everything the hard way and I’m kind of glad, I like that,” Hunter said. “Because I know exactly what to look for, what patterns to look for when something’s gonna [mess] up you know? Like okay, if you keep going with this method it looks fine now but down the road, it’s gonna [mess] up, and here’s why.”
Gnarly Prints works under commission and has become a well-respected go-to for local musicians and businesses as they built a reputation working on a sliding scale with small artists unable to spend too much on a product, as long as they can still make a profit. The pair work under a 15-item minimum, which they’ve built a reputation as being a bargain when considered alongside their cheap rates. They offer renowned design work as well for those coming to the studio with an idea but no art, as well as those without even an idea.
In between commissions Hunter and Hope can be found making random goofy patches of their own design, their most current project being a metal-inspired redesign of the 1984 movie Dune. Gnarly Prints can be reached for commission at gnarlyprintstn@gmail.com.
