We’re talking with the inimitable Martha Rich today. You can follow Martha on Instagram, shop her Cotton Bureau store, or browse her full art collection on her personal site.

Don’t forget, all Martha’s shirts, hats, and more are 20% off now through Friday, April 4 using code featurefriday20 at checkout.

Hey, Martha! We last interviewed you way back in 2015, which was a lifetime ago. I’m curious where your head is at now. Between politics and pandemics, it feels like art for art’s sake has been displaced. Have you been able to keep working and growing, or are we all stuck in this limbo forever?

Hello there!

I actually think art for art's sake is more important and prominent than ever. I am making more stuff for fun to keep me connected to humanity and being human. I see people doing crafts and experimenting, making things with their hands all over the place. Never forgetting our humanness is the reason why I can keep working and changing. Since 2015, I've done more work in wood, doing installations, using cut paper and now I am exploring working in metal. Art for art's sake is keeping me sane and hopeful!

I love the metal work! Can you share a little about the tools and techniques that go into creating those pieces?

I feel a bit like I am cheating but basically I draw the shapes and I have a place that cuts them out of weathering steel using water and ground garnets. It's pretty cool. I also have a friend who owns a foundry and he gave me a piece of wax that I am going to carve into something. Then we're going to make a mold and create a metal sculpture. I am slightly intimidated by it so I am basically just staring at the wax for the time being. It will happen when it is ready to happen.

Oh, sculpture, that does sound intimidating. We recently visited Florence, seeing the statues completely exceeded my expectations. I can’t even imagine turning a chunk of marble into something like Michelangelo’s David.

Okay, change of subject… it seems like we really can’t avoid politics these days even if it would be healthier for us all if we could. You chose to release two new shirts, Stand with Ukraine and Stand Up for Each Other, that seem to have struck a chord with people. What made you decide to get involved in this way?

Well I have been involved in my local community for a while now. I'm an elected Democratic Committee person for the 2nd ward in Philly. I make the posters and collateral for our GOTV efforts.  So this was just putting my skills online instead. It is crucial for more people to get active and there are so many different ways to do it. The more of us who speak out the better.

Absolutely. We’re coming up quickly on the 250 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The one thing we have always been able to rely on is our ability to speak openly without fear of government retaliation and the ultimate accountability of those who hold office to the people through regular, free elections. The only way to uphold that tradition is to continue voting and speaking out against violations of or threats to those rights.

Can you tell me more about your time working for the GOTV Committee? I would love to hear how you got involved and what your experience has been.

Ha don't get me started!

After the 2016 election I wanted to get involved, I found out you could run for office in Philadelphia, either as judge of elections or as a Democratic committee person. I chose the latter. Philly is broken up into wards and in the wards there are divisions. Each division has two committee people. You have to go out and get signatures and you get on the ballot. I did and I won. In old school Philly all the wards were closed and pretty much you do what the established Democrat leaders wanted. This changed a bit after the 2016 election, the 2nd Ward went open along with a few other wards. This means we do everything democratically and vote on everything and are transparent about everything, like spending funds, endorsing candidates etc. (in the closed wards you do what the ward leader says and that is it). The main thing we do is vet candidates, fundraise for them and get Democrats out to vote and get information out about elections and stuff happening in Philly. We also help people at the polls. It is a pretty cool thing to do.

My main contribution is the collateral we do to help with GOTV. I make posters, and door hangers that are a little more interesting than the usual political crap. Here is our website. One of the biggest problems in our country is people not paying attention to who is running for the municipal and local offices like district attorneys and judges and school boards. I am sounding like a politics nerd but if more people got involved we would end up with less crappy people running things. Here are examples.

No worries, I’m a big politics nerd! (My degree is actually in Political Science and Economics not Running a T-Shirt Website, believe it or not.) The big elections get all the attention, but it’s really the small elections that have the most overall impact.

But back to a less exhausting topic. I was looking through your portfolio and noticed that much of your work is oriented around the natural world, like the book you illustrated for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and your frequent use of plants and animals. Is that intentional for you, or do you find that you gravitate towards those themes subconsciously?

Plants and animals are much more fun to draw lately. What I do is based mostly on what I feel like drawing at the moment. I am never trying to convey something. If a message is conveyed it is purely accidental or maybe my subconscious brain wanted that message out there. 

Let’s wrap this conversation up with my favorite question: how do you think generative AI will impact your art in the future? For a lot of working designers, AI seems like a major threat. It steals and reproduces without regard for individual ownership, and it does it instantly. We have a more or less zero-AI policy for Cotton Bureau, but at the end of the day it’s only something we can ask people to respect rather than truly enforce. How do you see it? Will you take advantage of these new tools, or do you expect to keep your distance?

Pardon my french. I will keep my fucking distance. I hate it. It really is stealing. And in a just world the frickin AI tech bros would be forced to pay artists and writers a lot of money for the use of their work. Transfer that AI wealth to the folks who without their hard work, AI would be worth nothing. I don't know how it will affect me because I make most of my stuff by hand. And I have no choice but to keep making things. Artificial intelligence is artificial. I guess it appeals to the folks who like astroturf in their yards. I don't know. Human creativity will always be better. 

I couldn’t agree more. I always come back to Kevin Kelly’s Better Than Free essay. While it is almost 20 years old now, the very first line is perhaps more true now than ever before: “The internet is a copy machine.”

At the time, he was talking about how zero costs for duplication affect how you can charge for your work, but the advice is still 100% accurate: “When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”

Just because someone can reproduce your work with AI doesn’t mean that’s what people actually want. Supporting the artist (e.g. 1,000 True Fans), should still drive meaningful income because only can you provide a genuine experience. I believe people are incredibly sensitive to authenticity and will continue to reward people who create original art.

Thank you so much (again) for your time! Now that you’ve been doing this for 20+ years, do you have any advice for people just getting started to match your longevity?

My advice is make work that you want and not work you think people want. Sometimes it'll work out and sometimes it doesn't and that never really changes. Just keep making stuff. Also surround yourself with cool people.

Well said. Let’s do this again in 2035!

We’re talking with Jack Perkins today, basketball junkie and illustrator extraordinaire. You can follow Jack on Twitter and Instagram, or shop Jack’s Cotton Bureau collection and get 20% off all products now through Friday, March 21 using code featurefriday20 at checkout.

Yo, Jack! Glad we are finally making the time to do this. Looking back at your account on Cotton Bureau, I’m seeing the first shirt we did together was when Lebron announced he would be joining the Lakers in 2018. Now here we are in 2025 and the pre-season NBA MVP favorite Luka Dončić is somehow wearing purple and gold. How did we all let this happen?

How did we get here?! I mean, I really try to never take being a Laker fan for granted. Every time it appears the team is headed for some down years something like this changes the course of the next decade (although I think it’s fair to say the Luka trade was by far the most surprising in our lifetime). I know Mavs fans are reeling and I do have a lot of sympathy for them. At the same time, AD and Max Christie were beloved in LA and I hope they’re appreciated in Dallas.

But yeah, the guy we got in 2018 was a pretty big deal too! I really enjoyed creating that LeBron Showtime piece and it’s pretty cool that was the start of us working together. The quality of the printing on those shirts were so good by the way. I still have one!

So, forgive me for asking the most obvious question first, but what is it about basketball that appeals to you so much? Your IG handle is “purehoop”. Your bio starts with “basketball painter”. Did you play growing up, or are you just a fan?

Oh yeah, I've always been a big basketball fan. I grew up in New England but gravitated towards the Showtime Lakers when I was around 7 or 8 and have been a fan since. It's always been the most enjoyable sport to play for me as well. I'd shoot for hours in the driveway, was on my high school team, and have continued to play for fun as often as I can. I'm definitely happiest in an empty gym with a ball.

As a kid I drew everything from dinosaurs to cars to athletes, but around 2011 I felt frustrated by the sports merch that was available. I decided to start printing shirts that I'd want to wear which led to the purehoop IG handle and the basketball umbrella in general.

Nice. It seems like focusing on basketball has worked out pretty well. You’ve also been fairly prolific over the last 10 years. With so many pieces, I’m sure some get less attention than they deserve. I’m curious, which ones are your personal favorites? Or, which do you like that you were surprised didn’t see as much love from the community?

I’m lucky that the basketball community is super supportive. They’re also very fair with what gets attention and response so I don’t have much to argue with about pieces that may not have gotten much traction. One thing I have noticed over the years is that sometimes the pieces I spend the most time on get too bogged down with detail and lack the energy that some of the looser, quicker pieces are more likely to capture.

Some of my personal favorites over the years are ones that I can trace back to the emotion I was feeling at the time: “Hermanos”, an imagined moment of Pau and Kobe chatting it up in the rafters after Pau’s jersey retirement celebration and also “Forever”, where Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett toast to Kobe with Kobe’s jersey between them as they are all inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

That’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about the direct feedback from the community, but that really is the essence of social media. You put something out there, and, if you’re lucky, people are going to have an opinion. Just browsing Reddit, it seems like people are constantly sharing your work, even if it’s just to use as a poster image for an open thread about a game.

I’m curious, have you seen professional opportunities come out of these more personal projects?

Definitely! I’ve been fortunate to work on some fun projects that came from response to some of my personal projects. It doesn’t get much better than collaborating with teams like the Lakers and the Knicks. Another project I look forward to yearly is working with Nick Wright from First Things First on his “Club Superstar” feature, and I’ve created some original pieces for a few players including Tim Duncan and Donovan Mitchell.

That’s sick. Tim Duncan is notoriously private, so I have to imagine there is an interesting story for how that project came to be. Living in Pittsburgh, we’ve never had an NBA team, so growing up I became a big Spurs fan because of David Robinson. I got to watch Duncan in his prime, and now we have Wembanyama. It’s really been an unbelievable run.

If you don’t mind me asking, what else do you have going on these days? A lot of people have pulled back from sharing as much on social media, but, as far as I can tell, your accounts have always been almost exclusively basketball-related.

Yeah there’s a bit of a story behind the Tim Duncan one but I do want to respect his privacy in terms of how that project came to be. I can totally understand becoming a Spurs fan in Pittsburgh because of David Robinson! The Admiral was a favorite player of mine growing up too and yeah, what a run of big men you’ve had going from him to Duncan to Wemby! Hoping Wembanyama stays healthy because he’s already one of the most fun players to watch we’ve ever seen.

I completely understand people pulling back on social media these days. I’ve considered doing that as well but I’m happy these recap pieces from the Laker games are bringing some joy and it means a lot that people are now looking forward to them.

In terms of what else I have going on, I tend to keep pretty private on social media outside of sharing my art, but I’m never not busy. I’m an animation director as my primary gig and have been working in adult TV animation for 24 years now. I just wrapped working as Supervising Director on the first 2 seasons of Grimsburg, an animated show that’s part of the Animation Domination lineup. It’s a really fun show to work on and we have a fantastic, talented crew. It keeps me very busy and I love that it’s a different type of creativity than the personal work I do with purehoop.

I also work with my wife Alicia on original designs for her company Vegan Power Co. She makes amazing 80s and 90s retro-inspired merchandise with a focus on animal and human liberation. @veganpowerco on Instagram. She comes up with the ideas and rough sketches and we work together to bring them to completion.

Love those VeganPower designs, those colors just pop, and your wife’s table looks amazing. As someone who has had to set up and tear down merch tables, I know it’s a lot more work than people might think.

So, I have to ask you the question that never leaves my mind, how do you think generative AI is going to affect your industry? I have my theories, but I have to imagine you’ve had conversations with your team about how you can or should use these tools to produce the show. If that’s something you’re comfortable sharing, I would love to get your thoughts on the future of illustration, animation, and AI.

You’re so right. Booth setup and display is such an important part of Alicia’s brand… and so much work! I’ve helped her out in the booth countless times and it’s always cool to see the reaction people have to stepping into the booth and how that 80s/90s nostalgia hits them.

So the AI question. The blunt answer is I’m not a fan and truthfully it’s not even been something I’ve been ready to explore. I’ve had a long career in animation and was lucky to start out way back when we were still flipping animation paper on light tables. Since then there have been so many advancements in how animation is produced and a lot of these changes have definitely made our work as creators smoother and more streamlined. Now generative AI is here and while I’d like to keep an open mind about it being a resource, it’s also worrisome and is definitely something that requires clear parameters and protections set for artists.

Alright, Jack. Let’s get you out of here on an easy one. If you could take a month off work this year to go anywhere in the world that you haven’t had a chance to visit, where would you go? Bonus points if it’s somewhere I’ve never heard of.

Oh man, that’s not an easy one Nate! We were very lucky to visit Scotland and Iceland the past 2 summers but I’d want it to be somewhere completely different culturally and geographically. Can’t recommend Scotland and Iceland enough though if you haven’t been! I’m not going to get any bonus points for this one but if you’re saying a whole month it’s gotta be Japan. It’s been on the wish list for my whole family and it’s a place I want to visit with enough time to venture out from the cities and explore the whole country. Plus you can visit capybaras!

It’s a great question to end on though and after going through a stretch of not traveling during the pandemic, I didn’t even realize how much travel was missing from my life and how big a role it plays into tapping into new creative energy. Since I sadly don’t think I’ll be getting a whole month off we are planning on a Pacific Northwest trip this summer which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve only been up there once before and can’t wait to go back to the Hoh Rainforest and more of Olympic National Park. Hope you have some fun travel in your near future too Nate!

Well, Scotland, Iceland, and Japan are all places I’ve heard of, but they’re also places on my “to visit” list, so I’ll let it slide. For what it’s worth, I’m also hoping to get to Olympic in May when we go to Seattle for Creative Works WEST. I’ve technically been in the park, but both previous attempts got short-circuited by time and weather. Here’s hoping we both get to experience the Pacific Northwest in all its glory.

Thanks again for taking the time to chat, and best of luck to you and all the Lakers fans this year. This will be your last chance without Wemby blocking the way!

That’s awesome! Enjoy Seattle and whatever else you get to see. And yeah, I’m not looking forward to Wemby running the league for the next decade plus.