There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
I know many of you are already humming. Quietly. Or less so. I admit - that was the goal, because while I'm writing these words, this very song recorded by the Smiths in 1985 is playing in the background. Why? Because I want to talk about light. Not because there is a feeling of autumn in the air and even the most stubborn summer lovers must admit that the days are getting shorter and the nights longer, but because Reet Aus has managed to capture the essence of light in her new T-shirts.
This new line of upcycled T-shirts is indeed about the light that never goes out. Does it sound a bit too poetic? Tacky, even? Well, to be honest, it is quite difficult to talk about light without becoming overly poetic or unbearably scientific. But even more difficult than talking about it is depicting light on something as robust as cotton fabric. We've all seen luminous models draped in silk and tulle walking down high fashion catwalks. But how do you capture light in something as mundane as a T-shirt?
Reet decided on a graphic approach. Images of light are sewn into the dark main fabric. The images themselves - just like light - are at once recognizable and abstract. Simplification and abstraction are inevitable because, as we know, light itself is invisible and yet has the power to make visible everything it touches. Reet's shirts refer to the cosmic primal sources of light, the ones that shine despite us and our (energy) crises.
So perhaps these T-shirts may serve as a simple reminder that even in the darkest of times, the sun rises.
Or as a Poet once wrote...
Listen!
If stars are lit
It means there is someone who needs it,
It means someone wants them to be,
That someone deems those specks of spit Magnificent!
