Creatives ones are behind the work of Craze-One

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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star

If you live in Lincoln, there’s a fair chance you’ve seen the Venom shirt: a black T with a white screenprint of sunglasses and knives and the word “VENOM” in big letters across the chest, and underneath, in smaller type, “Midwest Master of Disaster.”

The shirt is, of course, a shout-out to Lincoln skateboarder Steve Andel, aka Venom.

And even if you don’t live in Lincoln, it’s still possible you’ve seen the Venom shirt. Kari Byron wore one on the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters” last year. Davis Mallory of “The Real World: Denver” wore one on that show, too.

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Adam White has been designing artwork for T-shirts and launched a line of shirts, Craze-One, more than 10 years ago. He and a friend and co-artist are working to open a downtown Lincoln business, 18 Tigers, in the next month or two. (Courtesy photo)

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The man behind the Venom shirt is Adam White, a self-taught Lincoln artist who started his own T-shirt line, Craze-One, when he was perhaps 16.

Why Craze-One? White, now 29, can’t remember. He came up with the name a long time ago.

“I think it was an old graffiti term,” he said.

Regardless, he got started while working at the Ozone, a now-defunct used clothing store. He and a friend, another artist, designed a few shirts, which they printed and sold there and at Precision Skateboards.

A few years later, when White was 19, a Craze-One design was sold in the Alloy catalog, a trendy retailer targeting teens.

White had a party to celebrate.

He kept on designing shirts. He also did some freelance graphic design and worked at a screen-printing shop. His work paid off in 2003, when he took a job with Denver-based cycling apparel company Primal Wear. Among the most notable products he designed there was a pair of arm warmers that looked like tattoo sleeves. Those, for some reason, seemed to be really popular, he said.

When White moved to Denver, he didn’t really know anyone. He ended up renting an apartment he soon learned was far from anyplace fun, he said, so he spent a lot of time sketching and coming up with ideas for the business he had started when he was a teenager.

In 2006, his dad got sick, and White, a Lincoln High School graduate, moved home to Lincoln.

“I just felt so guilty being away,” he said.

He figured the move would be temporary, but in November, the year anniversary of his homecoming came and went.

And he’s putting down roots.

Sometime in early 2008, he and his friend, Nick Lovett, whom he’s known since seventh grade, will open a shop called 18 Tigers on the second floor of a building on the corner of 14th and O streets. (The first level houses Duffy’s Tavern, A Novel Idea Bookstore and several other shops.)

Eighteen Tigers will be a place for White to sell his designs, which are bright and cartoony. In one, a round, Casperlike ghost emerges from under a synthesizer. In another, a squid appears to be wrapped up in the tape from an audio cassette.

White hand-draws as much as he can. He’s inspired by vintage iron-ons, he said, but for the most part has tried to avoid drawing too heavily on other influences.

“I always avoided art books growing up,” he said. “I didn’t want any influence from anybody else.”

It also will be a place for Lovett, who is working to get his art education degree, to show his artwork, mostly sculpture.

White and Lovett also have discussed having art shows, maybe a fashion show.

“It’s always been a pipe dream of ours to go into business together,” Lovett said.

Now that it’s actually happening, the ideas are flowing.

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.