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Laura Sullivan Cassidy's Circle Shirts

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Laura Sullivan Cassidy is our strong homie in Seattle who, ever since we can remember, has had the coolest clothes. She also has the coolest records. So it makes sense that clothes and records come together in her design venture Act Normal.

Each Act Normal item is vintage, with circle on the front the size of a 12" record. They're not for sale in a typical fashion – she explains below how she's using fashion for social justice – but there is a pop-up scheduled for 2/28 at Gift Shop in Seattle's Chinatown International District.

We asked her some Qs and she fired back some As.

Tell the people how you make these Act Normal shirts please. And when did you start doing this?

My husband Erin paints, and uses old tee-shirts to wipe his hands and/or the canvas. Years back—I don’t know, maybe 12 years? more?—we marveled one day at how rad the tee-shirt rags were, and he suggested I cut shapes out of them and sew the shapes onto other tee-shirts. I wanted to do a circle but I suck at free-forming anything so I rummaged around to find a shitty thrift store record and used that to trace around. It became something like a hobby but more like a compulsion—except I no longer use his paint rag tees. Too limited a resource, especially because oil paint takes too long to dry.

I switched to cutting record-shaped circles out of tees and sweatshirts and sewing those to other tees and sweatshirts, and at some point I also started ‘tracing’ the record circles with spray paint. Those became the basic formulas to riff on.

Recently my mom asked me if the spray-painted shirts were meant to symbolize climate change, which kinda blew my mind. Other people get a full moon or solar eclipse vibe—especially with the cut-and-sewn versions. We call this whole thing Act Normal because that’s what we say to each other when we get stoned and take our BMX bikes out and ride around the neighborhood.

Do you use the same record for all the shirts?

No, there are several different records floating around. I usually leave the spray-painting ones out in the yard; I had done that before it snowed a few weeks ago, but then I needed one to trace for some cut-out circles so I was kinda screwed. (We long ago cleared out all the shitty thrift store records.)

Erin remembered this Sun Ra record he bought that ended up being defective—full 180 gram vinyl and all. The seller had replaced it, but we still had the messed-up one. He gave me that to save me schlepping out into the snow but wow, it just felt sacrilegious to use it that way. Until it flipped and began feeling totally sacred and supremely right.

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Where are your favorite places to shop vintage, for shirts to paint on? Give away your secrets.

My only real secret is a joint called Frenzi which is down here on the South End of Seattle near our house. I love little mom and pop junk stores, and this one is so good. Oddly consistent, great prices, and they always let unhoused people come in and shop for free. They’re great people, and I want everyone to have the pleasure of going there even though it blows my cover a bit. Luckily, I don’t believe in scarcity.

What’s some music merch you’ve had for a loooong time? Either that you still wear, or just can’t part with.

I have three or four stencil-and-spray-painted tees from Erin’s old band, A-Frames. They made them before going on tour in like 2000. We also have some of E’s tee-shirts from the late 80s and 90s—Scratch Acid, Mudhoney, Shimmy Disc, Cows. Those are so dangerous to wear. They could fall apart in a strong wind, so I save them for special occasions. Funny that I say “we” have these tee-shirts. Partnership is cool.

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How can people buy Act Normal?

I mostly use Act Normal as a means of talking about the responsibility of white people to shift funds—meaning I end up staging them in some form of fundraising, either IRL or digital. I have a collection of 28 of them for sale on 2/28 (my b’day) at a pop up called Knumerology Club at Gift Shop, which is a new retail space I’m involved in. Fifty percent of those sales go to Black and Indigenous communities. Whatever isn’t sold on Sunday will stay at Gift Shop, and I’m also going to bring some to my friend’s record shop, Hex Enduction, up in North Seattle.

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