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Carroll Gardens resident turns her love of dogs into art
Marie Carter | August 15, 2007
Carroll Gardens resident, Lisa Futterman, got the idea for her unusual silk-screened dog apparel when she lived near Portobello, London. “There was a store that sold silk-screen pillows and T-shirts on brightly colored fabric in black ink. I’m dog-obsessed and when I moved back to New York was enchanted by the cute dog culture here so I decided to do something similar with dog images, ” she explains.
The name of her business, Alfie & Rex, is based on the name of her first dog, a Yorkshire Terrier named Alfie and her sister’s dog, Rex, a Jack Russell Terrier.
Futterman studied photography and silk-screening at college and also took a class at the Lower East Side Print Shop on how to put images onto fabric. “Photo silk-screening is very involved. You have to use special photo chemicals. I bought a book that recommended using a thermal fax printer so I bought one on eBay which broke. I had to take it to the only man on the East Coast who knows how to fix it and he lives in Coney Island!”
Once the printer was working again she began designing the dog faces based on old dog books from the 60s and 70s. “The older books are better because they do portraits of dogs.” Her bestselling images are of a Boston Terrier, Bulldog, French Bulldog, Pug, Chihuahua and Dachshund. Futterman has close to fifty different breeds in her collection of T-shirts, pillowcases, tote bags, shoulder bags and watercolors.
To view or buy Futterman’s products, visit her shop on etsy.
Comments
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You MUST check out this adorable site - I bought one of Lisa’s purses a year ago and I get comments about it every time I wear it. The new watercolor images are great, and I love her printed photography images, too! She seems to have a natural knack for capturing dog cuteness.