We recently connected with Abraham Gutierrez and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Abraham , thanks for joining us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

One reason I love putting together orders is because I get to put other things besides the product they paid for in the package, mostly other art or little canvas pieces. When I was eighteen I lived on the top floor of a new set of apartments in my town. I would paint all these flat boards in my kitchen and once I was done I’d frisbee them out into state street and see which one I tossed the furthest. I might sound like a waste of material or even a good painting but it’s purpose had been served as merely just practice. When someone buys one of my tees I can’t help but throw in something extra like a painting or piece of writing; it’s like tossing art into the street except someone’s going to get it this time. I love opening a package. So I really want to put the time and effort it takes to make it a good experience. I’ve sent out full sized original work too and I have a good time with it. I don’t sell prints of my work but I give it away often!
I’ve played around with making playlists for the drop and soon I want to come up with more creative things to do; an idea I wanna fulfill is painting a good sized acrylic painting and cutting it up into bookmarkers. It’s not a whole lot but it’s fun.
My art is super personal to me and anyone willing to pay money for a piece of it gets a piece of me too and I appreciate them for that.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Abe and I got into screen printing when I was fourteen! I really did end up liking the practice so I just stuck around. I’m happy I was able to start with the basics to eventually (and hopefully) become a well rounded screen printer. It’s because I was working with clothes and other fabrics so much that I decided I wanted to print my own designs and I had just been painting for almost five years when I printed my first tee. It was for real terrible. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But I didn’t have a style I liked to dress into and that lead to some super underwhelming pieces and ideas. I was putting paintings I had made onto shirts when in reality they looked better on the wall and that’s it. But slowly after having the confidence in myself and my body to develop my wardrobe I’ve been able to know what I like and what I don’t. I have shirts of mine I can’t wear anything with and right there is the problem. Mostly I’m going with what I like, with what I would want to look like and what makes me happy, and it’s a relief.
The week before I send all packages out are some of the most stressful no doubt but within the process I find happiness and a sense of friendship with these people. I don’t know or have ever met most of them but building their package feels intimate and I’m sharing myself with them.
If anything could set me apart I hope it’s the feeling of pride I put into those packages. The hard work and the care I put in them. Since I ship everything out on a set date and work with small batches I really have time to get them right. It sounds corny but I hope my art can be felt when someone receives their package.
There’s a notebook I have, it’s black and it’s hard-covered. While the back is blank the front has some words I can’t remember pressed into it. I haven’t even begun to guess how many poems I have in there but I know it’s the only notebook I wrote in from years 2015 to 2019.
It’s simply just too painful to read again so I haven’t opened it since I used up the last page. When I hold it in my hand it feels special, It feels personal and I hope that’s what I can do with these packages for anyone who supports my work.
I’m proud of me. It’s only with the belief I grew in myself that I had the courage to continue with a business, I’ve failed and started over so many times and this is another one of those restarts. It’s really hard doing things on your own but just as rewarding. Although I may not know what I’m doing 100% of the time when it comes to shipping out packages and getting people what they paid for I’m the one to get it done the right way, because I care about my work too much to let it be anything less than great.
What my work looks like can say a lot about me but how I work on it says more.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

There isn’t one moment in which I decided what was the best way and what wasn’t so I’ve had to redo and start my process from scratch several times. There’s a ton to be done when you choose to release and sell and ship your product. For example; when we’re having a photo shoot for a tee, I used to have everyone involved meet up at my house and then we’d go out to the spot we wanted to shoot at. I would have the tees with me and the models would change into the tees there or prior. But eventually I thought it would be better if I just give them the tees early and give them a good week to see what outfit they want to put together for the day of the shoot. This way they feel their best and everything works better. It pushes back the release date a week but for the sake of the project I believe it’s the best move out of the two. I hope to always recognize if there’s a need for change in my process. Right now I’m in the middle of changing the way I treat my samples! I want to stay with it for a few days and try them out myself. See what I like to do with it and then come up with the photo shoot script. I used to do everything pretty backwards from how I do it now but I’m happy with it.
I’ve just recently taken that type of pragmatic thinking over to my personal life too; I don’t want to keep the things that don’t work for me around me anymore.
I’ll share the story of one of the greatest pivots I’ve made in my life (so far); I had gotten to meet someone throughout my daily routine. The routine consists of an eight hour work day, followed by about three hours of exercise at my local gym and if I’m lucky I get to go home and relax for two hours before I smoke weed and go to sleep at hopefully ten pm but always end up calling it quits around eleven.
That’s Monday through Friday and that’s the timeline of this story, Many many Monday’s through Friday’s.
I had already been on route to change my life, eating right working out all of that but I still had a drug and alcohol problem. Admittedly that was the reason I never grew my brand or kept up with being consistent in my releases or even my art.
To workout and eat right while smoking crack or fentanyl on the same day was a reality! I had the hardest time shaking off my demons and for ten years I’ve struggled with sobriety. It was all naturally slowing down as my life got better but what really slammed the nail in the coffin was my friend that I had made at my gym. I really look up to her, and then it dawned on me that I never had any roll models in my life. I’ve always had my dad but never anyone outside on my family that made me want to be better.
No celebrities or people I grew up around ever made me feel the need to change into what they had going on. Not being a hater I just never really looking into people all that much. But she was always kind to me and always helped me with any questions I had regarding fitness or diet, it may sound like simple acts which they were but the difference they made still carry on today! I always looked forward to seeing them and exchanging a small greeting.
I take public transit everywhere I go and one of those nights I had missed the bus coming out of the gym. There’s a mall next to the station so I decided to go in and use the restroom while the next bus came. Speed walking and dodging past people had me making good time, I had my earbuds in listening to “Outside with the cuties” by, Frankie cosmos when I looked up and there was my friend from the gym. Surprised to see them anywhere else besides the gym I gleefully walked up to her and got to talk for a little before parting ways. When it was time to walk back to the bus stop we hugged goodbye and it was there where I made the pivot, in the middle of holding on and letting go. I caught the bus by the way, I remember running up to it happier and feeling lighter than I’d felt in so long.
The next day I decided to quit drinking and drugs off the strength of my admiration for my friend from the gym. I settled on the notion that if I wanted to reach my full potential, be there for myself and radiate passion with love like she does I had to leave the things that soothed the bumps. There’s supposed to be rough patches on the road it about how we get through them that count!
When I got home after making this decision I remember feeling a physical release, the grip addiction had on my soul was beginning to weaken and lose its strength. I cried tears of joy till I had no more left and I paced around my house till my legs hurt. It’s given my brand and career a new breath of life! Because the only way I’ve been able to keep going with the overwhelming failures of business is finding the success I’ve seen in myself. I have pride in myself and I believe in myself and in turn I believe in my dreams.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think you need to be resilient to go after your dreams at all, at least for me. I’ve always been pretty shy and I’m slowly breaking out of it but I think there’s a lot of people who don’t do what they love to do because they don’t want to fail in front of their peers. I’ve seen a lot of people come into screen printing or come into the business side of art and it really can be a lot. With questions like “how do I price my art?” to working up the way to say no to a collab or album cover; there’s so many things to learn and mistakes to be made some people just let it go. Not gonna lie there’s been several times I thought about quitting dead house or selling any of my art at all; but I came to conclusion that I owe it to myself to make a life with my art. I love my art so much, not in a vain way but how it makes me feel. Sharing that place with others means a lot to me and it’s very special to me and what I get to do with dead house combines all of that. I feel like I’ve lost my mind many times over and sometimes even I can’t believe half the bullshit I was on but art stayed with me through it all. It’s been my only companion and for that I want as many people to see it. I don’t care if people know I made it what matters to me is that my art feels seen.
I think it’s so corny to stand next to your work the whole time it’s on display, I want to give my pieces all the attention.
Next year makes ten years of me trying to figure my business out, it’s because my resilience wasn’t where it needed to be that I didn’t have the courage to grow my business.
It takes a lot out of you when people tell you that you don’t shine the way you used to. Someone actually told me that, and not to be funny but I really did need it. Although it came from a good friend it really shook me. No one had ever told me that before but damn did I think about it over and over he was just the first to say it out loud! I was embarrassed but he was right. I had let go of my dreams and my passions for fast thrills and cheap escapes. If you can’t take criticism you’re doomed from the start.
One of the hurdles I also had to get over was accepting praise for my work, I love the process and what comes out of it is just that. The marks of a sacred place.
The tools we use combined with experience we harness to bring these works to life will always amaze me but I always made art alone in a vacuum so exposing it to people outside of my social media page was surprisingly scary but ultimately I decided that if I don’t back up my own work no one will. Making small changes like bigger prints or heavier material to print on makes a world of difference.
I think the most important part of believing in your work is knowing you put love into it. You had fun and even if it wasn’t fun the whole time it’s still something you’re thankful you get to share with others. I know I can put my name behind my work because I know how much it means to me. I treat my craft with respect and the people who let me share it with them with that same respect. Failing is a chance to do it over and better, never be ashamed to chase your dreams or what you love most in this world because just that act alone will infect others with courage!     

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• Instagram: deadhouselive

Image Credits
Sergio Caro Nate Ferguson Oli Boyce