Student business ‘3 pm Club’ screen prints T-shirts
Art students Jennifer Cai and Emilia Davies sell upcycled clothing in 3pm Club.
Cai displays one of the 3 PM club’s T-shirt print designs, an airplane with legs.
March 31, 2023
Two girls sat across each other in their studios at the Bardwell Art building. Upon one of their desks was a piece of paper propped up on a stand, advertising a list of products: T-shirts, sweaters, tote bags and more products with unique print designs. The top of the paper read the words “3pm Club,” the name of the business that Jennifer Cai, sophomore illustration and painting art major, and Emilia Davies, sophomore illustration art major, recently launched.
SCREEN PRINTING AND UPCYCLING
3pm Club is a business that sells shirts, sweaters and tote bags with original art designs created through screen printing. The process involves pushing ink through a thin mesh screen onto a surface, such as a T-shirt, to print out a design of choice.
Davies enjoyed the printmaking process for its combination of digital and traditional art processes.
“It’s pretty cool [to] design something digitally, but then be able to physically print it onto clothes and tote bags and stuff,” Davies said. “I just love that it’s a really hands-on process — like, you still get to mix up the inks to do the colors you want, and [there’s] just a lot of precision, and lining everything up right, and pulling the ink and checking that it’s gone all the way through.”
Cai and Davies are also experimenting with methods other than screen printing. They have made products using cyanotype, a process that prints images via light exposure. Another method is using stamps, where they carve the design onto the stamp and print onto their products with inks.
3pm Club also upcycles clothing rather than buying new products as it is affordable and gives new life to second-hand and thrifted clothes.
“A lot of the time [people would rather] buy new clothes, even though thrifting culture is getting more popular right now. [But] people tend to buy more ‘vintage’ clothes. But what about those actual second-hand clothes?” Cai said. “So we’re just giving them another type of meaning.”
3PM CLUB BEGINNINGS
The idea for 3pm Club began as Cai and Davies took a printmaking class at Biola together. The class, taught by Professor Daniel Chang, explored various methods of printmaking. Shortly afterwards they heard about the Women’s History Month vendor event and decided to try their hand at selling products using the printmaking skills they have learned.
“I told [Jen] about the ad for the Women’s History Month vendor [event], and I was like, ‘hey, would you want to set up a stall, because, you know, we’re women artists?’” Davies said. “And then we kind of rolled with it and it turned into like, ‘oh, why don’t we just make this a business?’”
Cai and Davies were excited to work together to make 3pm Club possible.
“It’s nice to have someone to communicate with and then share ideas and come up with the design together,” Cai said. Davies also shared, “We can kind of keep pushing each other and, you know, helping each other out.”
One experience Davies loved was 3pm Club’s first sales event at Hopechella.
“One of the dorms had a little event with some music and some stands. So we were like, ‘oh, [let’s] give it a go,’ and had a little booth up,” said Davies. “We ended up selling out, and people seemed to really like it, and yeah, it was just really cool. Before that, we’ve had friends who have been interested … but just seeing random people think our designs are cool, it’s like, oh, that’s really cool.”
THE ART AND LA CULTURE
Cai created 3 pm Club’s designs. Currently, their most iconic products feature a car with legs and a plane with legs. Cai came up with the design idea when considering the L. A. culture and was focused on conceptualizing it in a fun way.
“I value [fun] very, VERY seriously,” Cai said. “Some designs [are more] serious, but we are more focused [on fun], even in just our personalities. We want to show our personality [in our] artwork, just the fun-ness of things, you know … It’s the fun-ness of how people don’t really use their legs anymore because they drive around L. A. all the time, so it’s almost like the cars are our legs now.”
Cai and Davies plan to have more designs as time goes on. “But we’ll definitely keep the fun,” Cai said.
DREAM BIG
Cai and Davies aspire for 3pm Club to continue to grow, hoping to be an inspiration and encouragement to other artists.
“I know a lot of people who struggle with showing their art on social media, so maybe [we can help them with our business, and] bring them up a little,” Cai said.
To other artists aspiring to achieve similar dreams, Cai said, “Write everything down. Research everything. We live in a world that’s just [full of] information that you can just get from your fingertips.”
Cai emphasized the importance of researching to launch a business. “It’s just such an easy way to create a business, [but] also at the same time, it’s very easy to have a business fail. So just do all of the research as [much as] you can,” Cai explained.
Davies added, “Go for it! You never know until you try. And, you know, maybe you will try it and it won’t be for you. But then you’ll know or maybe you will try it and you realize, ‘oh, this is like, so cool, and it’s what I love.’”
