Sean Tejaratchi (born October 1970) is an American graphic designer, art director and writer. He is currently based in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

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. Tejaratchi is known for creating the

clip art Clip art (also clipart, clip-art) is a type of graphic art. Pieces are pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively and comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is creat ...

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...

''Crap Hound'', and was voted one of "The 25 Funniest People on

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" by ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' in 2012 He later became known for his

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blog LiarTownUSA.

Career

Early years

Two years out of

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

and living in

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...

, Tejaratchi designed his first posters in 1990 for a fictional rock band and posted them around Eugene. He was inspired by the many DIY posters for punk bands he saw posted around the cities of Eugene and

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

. His design got him hired to produce posters for the

W.O.W. Hall The W.O.W. Hall, also stylized as WOW Hall, (AKA Community Center for the Performing Arts) is a performing arts venue in Eugene, Oregon, United States. The hall was bought in 1906 by the Woodmen of the World (W.O.W.) lodge, and later in 1932 th ...

, a performing arts venue in Eugene. It was through his work for W.O.W. Hall that he was introduced to Mike King, a

screen printer Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

and

poster A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...

designer who, at the time, also produced ''Snipehunt'', a

devoted to the music and

comic a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...

art scenes of the Northwestern United States. Tejaratchi assisted with elements of the

page layout In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives. The high-level page layout involves deciding on the ov ...

, such as

paste up Paste is a term for any very thick viscous fluid. It may refer to: Science and technology * Adhesive or paste ** Wallpaper paste ** Wheatpaste, A liquid adhesive made from vegetable starch and water * Paste (rheology), a substance that behaves as ...

and

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...

, but did not contribute any content to the zine.

''Crap Hound''

Tejaratchi moved to Portland between the end of 1990 and the beginning of 1991. In 1994, Tejaratchi published his first edition of the graphic art

''Crap Hound''. The 8½ × 11 inch zine featured pages of monochrome, high contrast line art and clip art images grouped into themes such as circuses, skeletons, hearts, hands and eyes. Tejaratchi mostly uses images taken from sources printed from the 1920s to the 1960s, such as vintage catalogs, rare books, medical textbooks, pornography and advertisements. The inspiration for the zine came when Tejaratchi was working on a poster for a Portland-area rock band – he had a particular image of a devil in mind, but was unable to find the exact image. Tejaratchi created the zine as a way of organizing clip art of various topics to make them more easily accessible and he published these collections for the use of other graphic artists. The zine also includes satirical essays and observations on politics and culture written by Tejaratchi. The humor in his work has been described as sardonic and as having a "cheeky wit". From 1994 to 1998 Tejaratchi published five editions of ''Crap Hound''; he stopped printing due to a lack of funds. Tejaratchi left Portland in 2000 for St. Louis, Missouri, then

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

where he worked as art director for the ''

New York Press ''New York Press'' was a free alternative weekly in New York City, which was published from 1988 to 2011. The ''Press'' strove to create a rivalry with the ''Village Voice''. ''Press'' editors claimed to have tried to hire away writer Nat Hento ...

'', until he left for Los Angeles in 2001. Tejaratchi did not produce another edition of ''Crap Hound'' until 2005 when he was approached by

Chloe Eudaly Clover "Chloe" Delight Esther Eudaly (1969/1970) is an American politician from Oregon who served as Government of Portland, Oregon, Portland's City Commissioner from 2017 to 2021. Eudaly lost her November 2020 re-election bid to Mingus Mapps. ...

, the owner and operator of Reading Frenzy, an alternative bookstore and publishing house in Portland. Eudaly has raised money for each issue using the crowd funding website

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

. Tejaratchi's essay "Death, Phones, Scissors" – which was published in 1999 in the sixth issue of ''Crap Hound'' bearing the same title – was widely distributed via

and

as part of a four paragraph essay attributed to the artist Banksy. The viral quote came from Banksy's 2004 book ''Cut It Out'' and while the book did credit ''Crap Hound,'' the attribution was left off when the text was retyped and disseminated online. However Tejaratchi later wrote in a blog post published on Reading Frenzy's website on March 18, 2012, that he discovered Banksy had mailed a letter and a copy of ''Cut It Out'' to the address in ''Crap Hound'' in 2002. Tejaratchi stated he had been moving a lot around the same time and never received the items. He added that the attributions in the back of the book, as opposed to cited references for the excerpts, were responsible for the confusion. Tejaratchi also wrote that he did not oppose having his words published in the book and that his main concern was that his words were being wrongly attributed to Banksy via an internet

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

. The problem was complicated by the fact that the ''Crap Hound'' issue containing the essay was about to be reprinted, raising the possibility that Tejaratchi would be accused of plagiarism.

Other work

Tejaratchi's zine work was displayed as part of
The Copyist Conspiracy: An Exhibition of Zine Art
', an exhibition of zine art and zine artists held in San Francisco on November 19, 2005. BoingBoing editor Cory Doctorow said that the title of his first published work, the short story ''Craphound'', was inspired in part by Tejaratchi's zine. Doctorow also registered the domain craphound.com for his personal website. Tejaratchi worked as a graphic designer for the performance artist and filmmaker

Miranda July Miranda July (born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger; February 15, 1974) is an American film director, screenwriter, singer, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art. She w ...

on her films ''Me and You and Everyone We Know'' (2005) and "The Future" (2011). He is also a writer for the American variety radio show program '' Live From Here''. He also designs book covers for the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

-based book publisher

Feral House Feral House is an American book publisher founded in 1989 by Adam Parfrey and based in Port Townsend, Washington. Early history The company's first book was '' The Satanic Witch'' (1989; originally published in 1971 by Dodd, Mead & Company) by A ...

. Tejaratchi is active on Twitter under the handle @ShittingtonUK and was voted one of "The 25 Funniest People on

" by ''

'' in 2012. He also started a

blog LiarTownUSA in 2013 that features satirical renditions of magazine covers, wall calendars, billboards and print ads for fictional products. Tejaratchi published a collection of his Tumblr material in a 2017 book titled ''LiarTown: The First Four Years''. He has also created ''Social Justice Kittens'' calendars.

Bibliography

* ''Crap Hound No. 1: Death, Phones & Scissors'' (1994) * ''Crap Hound No. 2: Sex & Kitchen Gadgets Part I'' (1995) * ''Crap Hound No. 3: Sex & Kitchen Gadgets Part II'' (1995) * ''Crap Hound No. 4: Clowns, Devils & Bait'' (1996) * ''Crap Hound No. 5: Hands, Hearts & Eyes'' (1998) * ''Crap Hound No. 5: Hands, Hearts & Eyes'' (2013), a reprint and expansion * ''Crap Hound No. 6: Death, Phones & Scissors'', 2nd edition (1999), a reprint and expansion of issue No. 1 * ''Crap Hound No. 6: Death, Phones & Scissors'', 3rd edition (2006) * ''Crap Hound No. 6: Death, Phones & Scissors'', 4th edition (2012) * ''Crap Hound No. 7: Church & State'' (2008) * ''Crap Hound No. 8: Superstitions'' (2011) * ''LiarTown: The First Four Years'' (2017)

References

External links

*
LiarTownUSA
(Tumblr) {{DEFAULTSORT:Tejaratchi, Sean American graphic designers Artists from Portland, Oregon Writers from Portland, Oregon Writers from Eugene, Oregon Year of birth uncertain