Aloe to ZIA

Photos courtesy ZiaSF

I first posted about ZIA SF in January, including them in a post (click here) about Etsy shops with succulent-related products. I loved their aeonium t-shirt — with its drippy rosette and low-key hues — and promptly bought one. So, I was excited to know they’d produced a new succulent design, this time an aloe (top photo), and ordered one immediately.  It just arrived, and like its predecessor, is an artful way to show my love for juicy-leaf plants.

Photo: David Gartner

ZIA SF are artists Esmeralda Padilla and Javier Martinez and was created by them after moving from Maui to San Francisco, in 2011. Both Padilla and Martinez (website here) are graduates of Cal Arts and have exhibited their fine art internationally. Their work reflects their Mexican-American identities, drawing in diverse elements from  pre-Columbian art, Chicano culture and Victorian botanicals, as well as the many places they’ve called home. Their shirt designs, which they consider to be wearable art, is made to be cherished daily. It’s Padilla’s interest in the natural world, especially plants and insects, that informs the look of their succulent t-shirt imagery and I really respond to their renderings of my favorite plants.  Along with their new aloe design for men, they offer their “dripping with sunshine” aeonium design for both sexes (lower right), as well as a flowering succulent for women only. Eschewing the plastic-based inks common to the t-shirt industry, they employ a color removal/re-dying technique that produces a graphic that’s integrated into the cotton fabric of the shirt itself and is never stiff and rough. To see all their designs, go to the handsome couple’s online store at ziasf.com, or click here. You’ll love their shirts; I loved my aeonium to death, so I ordered a new one along with the aloe!