From top to bottom: Husk Mit Navn, Pimp; Mike Andrews, Plateau, Ya Know; Royal Art Lodge, Grave; Conor McGrady, Servant. All designs 2008.

Photos: Courtesy of [Im]perfect Articles

Noah Singer is a painter with a day job at a law firm. Mike Andrews is a sculptor who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College. Together, the Humboldt Park couple has run [Im]Perfect Articles since 2004. Given a roster of rising stars that includes locals Cat Chow, Cody Hudson and Anders Nilsen, as well as artists from New York and Europe, you might expect [Im]Perfect Articles to be a snooty gallery. It’s actually a line of T-shirts.

Some are hilarious: Benjamin Marra’s features a drawing of Steff, the villain from Pretty in Pink, beating up Say Anything…’s hapless hero, Lloyd Dobler. Some are cheeky: Peter Gallo’s reproduces his watercolor of a man performing fellatio beneath the words “I wish I could draw like Joseph Beuys.” And most are as strange as they are cool, such as Davis/Langlois’s translation of the lyrics from the Misfits’ “Teenagers from Mars” into Arabic. In July, [Im]Perfect Articles released more than 20 new designs at imperfectarticles.com, where you can also find extra inventory from previous collections.

Singer, 45—a self-described “T-shirt fanatic”—was shopping for shirts with Andrews, 32, one day when they decided, “We know so many artists, and we’re artists; we should just do our own,” Singer says. They asked several friends to contribute designs for their first collection, which they sold at the Renegade Craft Fair. Singer hand-dyed the T-shirts and Andrews screen-printed them; to their amazement, they almost sold out of their wares. “We didn’t think about what we were doing at the time,” Singer recalls. “We never had a business plan, [but the project] just kept growing.”

Artists contacted them with ideas. Gallerist Kavi Gupta asked if he could sell their tees at the Volta art fair in Basel, Switzerland. NADA (the New Art Dealers Alliance) invited [Im]Perfect Articles to its fair in Miami. Meanwhile, Singer and Andrews persuaded high-profile artists such as David Shrigley and the Royal Art Lodge collective (which includes popular illustrator Marcel Dzama) to contribute designs. (Yet Singer says they still accept unsolicited e-mail submissions.) The company has produced 100–150 designs by more than 80 artists, Singer estimates.

He attributes the art world’s enthusiasm for [Im]Perfect Articles to the brand’s evolution into a serious “curatorial project.” He and Andrews approach each T-shirt as they would “a painting or a drawing,” Singer explains: “It’s a [numbered] edition of their work, [even if] it’s on fabric and it’s meant to be worn…I know people who actually keep them sealed and hold onto them.” According to Singer, 75 percent of [Im]Perfect Articles’ T-shirts feature designs they commission; the rest “are existing images that we translate.” Andrews no longer screenprints the tees himself, but they’re still done by hand. Singer continues to handle the dyeing and determines most of the shirts’ (gorgeous) color palettes with Andrews, using a set of Home Depot paint chips.

While Singer believes artists enjoy collaborating with [Im]Perfect Articles simply because “it’s fun,” he knows some who have sold work or received gallery shows because the right person saw their T-shirts. Singer and Andrews pay artists according to how many of their T-shirts are printed, not sold. (Prices range from $35–$75; most shirts cost about $45.) Editions usually range from 25 to 60, small numbers that make distribution difficult: No Chicago stores carry [Im]Perfect Articles at the moment. Art fairs account for much of the business, which requires “crazy hard work and a lot of planning,” according to Singer. “To be honest,” he says, “I’ve tried to kill this project so many times, but it just has a life of its own.”

For more information and to shop online, visit imperfectarticles.com.