Special Edition: 100 Hand Screen-Printed T-Shirts

Receive one shirt for each $100 gift. Sizes S-XXXL available; no size exchanges permitted.

This limited-edition run of 100 hand screen-printed shirts is based on the work of Layli Long Soldier. Each purchase directly supports both the artist and Tinworks Art, helping fund the commission and exhibit new work by regional and national artists.

Overview of Original Artwork

I don’t trust nobody but the land is a multi-dimensional exploration of Indigenous identity, cultural memory, and the interplay between language and landscape. Originally commissioned for the 2023 Tinworks Art Invisible Prairie exhibition, Long Soldier worked with Bozeman local artist and sign fabricator Ole Nelson to transform I don’t trust nobody but the land into a lightbox sculpture. Using material reclaimed from a former RV park and café on the Gallatin River, the work recontextualizes the poet’s experience during her annual solstice trip back to her Lakota homeland to speak more broadly for the diverse communities grappling with the rapid changes of the new American West. At a time when the fertile fields and rolling foothills of the Gallatin Valley around Bozeman are being lost to development and rapid urbanization, Long Soldier’s declaration I don’t trust nobody but the land could speak for many of us. I don’t trust nobody but the land is on view at Tinworks permanent home, 719 North Ida in Bozeman’s northeast neighborhood. Tinworks Art is a non-profit art space dedicated to connecting artists and community through inclusive art experiences in nontraditional spaces.

I don’t trust nobody but the land is a line from Long Soldier’s internationally acclaimed publication Whereas (2017), a text that confronts the language of S.J. Res 14, a formal American government apology to Native people that was written yet never read publicly by government officials.

"Long Soldier’s watershed publication WHEREAS (2017), which won the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, took as its central conceit the Obama-era joint resolution S.J. Res. 14, “To acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.” In the book, Long Soldier adopted and then upended the affected neutrality official statements like treaties, executive orders, and resolutions. The philosopher J. L. Austin would have called these government-issued utterances “performative,” his word for speech acts that alter real-world conditions by creating new truths. Long Soldier’s poems make clear that the language used in governmental apologies is just as performative as that of the nefarious declarations that attempted (unsuccessfully) to dismantle Plains social structures. Her writing also asserts that words, often expressed in the Lakota language, are just as capable of fostering vital human and nonhuman connections. To be effective, the speech acts that bind us together or break us apart require the assent of our whole society. Plains culture remains, as does the harm S.J. Res 14 attempted to repair." (Invisible Prairie curator Melissa Ragain, Artforum)

Pickup: Available at the Rialto Theatre, 10 W. Main St, Bozeman. Email info@tinworksart.org or call 406.551.2024 to arrange a time.

Shipping: USPS flat-rate shipping is available for $15 and covers up to 5 shirts. Select the shipping option at checkout and include all sizes and any separate addresses in the notes field. Separate shipments to different addresses require a separate shipping payment.

About the Artists

Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier is an artist, poet, and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation based in Santa Fe, NM. Her poetry blends the power of the written word with visual forms to create deeper meaning, often drawing from historical documents like treaties. Long Soldier is known for her keen attention to how a poem's visual language can contribute to its content, just as written language does. She holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, an MFA from Bard College, and is a mentor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her published works include Chromosomory (Q Ave Press, 2010) and Whereas (Graywolf, 2017),and her poems have appeared in  POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB and elsewhere. Long Soldier is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK.

“The brilliance of Long Soldier’s poetry isn’t solely in the sheer dazzle of its imagery and narrative, but in her deployment of surgical precision, careful linguistic thought, and a staccato rhythm that carries with it a sustained musical abruption.” —Michael Wasson, Harvard Review Online

“Long Soldier’s movement between collective and personal experience makes this book intimate and urgent.”  —Daisy Fried, National Book Critics Circle’s Leonard Prize Review for Whereas

“There is a quiet sarcasm, a patience and self awareness to Long Soldier’s poetry, one that echoes with the oral tradition of indigenous communities and the exhaustion of a people who have survived genocide only to have it wiped from history books. Long Soldier’s poetry is resigned to teaching people, and it wants to do more than educate. It wants to change.” —Annamae Sax, Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Blog

Jane Herzog, Screenprinter

Herzog is a printmaking, quilting, modular origami, and textile design artist and musician based in Bozeman, Montana. Her background includes a BFA in Printmaking from Montana State University. Herzog's work explores contemporary identities and our ties to traditional craft processes. Her screen prints on paper interrogate the distinctions between art and craft and the changing nature of traditional practices. Her quilts explore these topics further while questioning the methods by which we select our preferences and the habits that govern our tastes.

For this project, Herzog combined screen printing and relief printing techniques. In Herzog’s small-scale studio approach, she stamped additional layers with a rubber stamp, pressing the design onto each shirt one-by-one. This means that every shirt will be a custom print, echoing the artist’s touch and honoring the many artists who came together to make this project possible.

Clay Bolt, Graphic Designer

Clay Bolt is a Natural History and Conservation Photographer who is focused on increasing awareness, protection, and appreciation of native bees and other insects. Clay's words and images have appeared in publications such as National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, and National Wildlife and he is a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a past president of the North American Nature Photography Association. Bolt was a leading voice in the fight to protect the rusty-patched bumble bee under the Endangered Species Act. In his role as World Wildlife Fund-US' inaugural Manager of Pollinator Conservation, his work focuses on education, pollinator habitat restoration, and reducing neonicotinoid (neonics) pesticides.

This t-shirt was designed in collaboration with Livingston-based biologist and graphic artist Clay Bolt, who also worked with Long Soldier on her previous installations for Tinworks. 

For more information 

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