Artist In Focus: Introducing Dorothy

Would you introduce yourself for us?

I’m Jim from Dorothy, we’re a studio based in the Baltic Triangle area of Liverpool, we design art prints, products and art works.

Tell us about what influences Dorothy’s print work?

Most conversations in the studio are about things that we’re watching or have watched / or things that we’re listening to, then a lot of our work is about celebrating and examining those things. Sometimes it’s prints that map out relationships between musicians or bands, sometimes it’s graphic responses to albums etc. It’s all work that examines things that are important in our lives. I guess we’re making the things that we want!

We love your Alternative Love Blueprint print. There’s evidence of some pretty encyclopaedic knowledge there, who gets the final say with which artists get included?

Thank you, that’s really kind! Loads and loads of research goes into them as well, we start off with our own knowledge and personal opinions and we all feed in our thoughts, but then we research and build them up and refine them. And listen to loads and loads of music and pretend it’s for work.

Alternative Love Blue Print by Dorothy, click here to view.

You are a team of five, how does it work making art under one collective name?

We prefer it, Phil, Alison and I met working at a design agency so we’re much more comfortable working collectively and being seen as a collective. It’s great to be able to share work with each other and get opinions from each other.

    Can you tell us a little bit more about the Dorothy studio space itself?

We have our Dorothy studio in the Baltic Triangle in Liverpool, the Baltic is a bubbling, exciting area at the moment filled with lots of interesting things happening. Our favourite thing is the sense of community around here, there are a lot of similar-minded people doing exciting things.

Our studio in town is a wonderful space, we have a unit that looks out onto the main street of the area and we’ve made a little gallery space downstairs in which we put on little shows and installations, I really enjoy putting on the shows and we plan to do more of them over the next year. The shows are tend to be themed, so over Halloween we put on a horror-based show with works themed around horror & film. The upstairs is where we work, we’re all sat around a table together and we’re surrounded by all of our stuff & prints, I’m extremely untidy where-as Ali & Phil are not.

Quickfire questions:

The worst album ever made to your knowledge?

Man… there’s something to be said for most things! Not everything, but most things.

Favourite piece of art/artwork?

That’s very tricky! We love loads of artists work but favourites of mine (Jim) would be Storm Thorgerson / Hipgnosis and their Pink Floyd album sleeves, George Shaw, Joël Penkman (I’m very biased here). And I’m a huge comic nerd, so I love people like Mike Mignola and Dave McKean.

        Cats or dogs? 

This is a tricky one, depends who you’re asking, if it’s me then cats, but ask Ali and it’d be dogs, she’s got a whippet called Blue.

What's your go to sandwich filling?

In the summer it would be tomato on toast with a bit of basil scattered over. I grow tomatoes in my green house - so bringing them in still warm from outside and scattered with a bit of basil. Perfect.

Would you rather your shirts be always two sizes too big or one size too small?

Too big. Definitely.

Would you rather always be 10 minutes late or always be 20 minutes early?

I am always at least 10mins late, so I’d love to see what it’s like to be early. What happens?

What’s the strangest interview question you’ve ever been asked?

I’m going to say the shirt question above, that was pretty awesome.