Lord, Help Us All
“Lord, help us all get back to Pageland!”
This phrase is something of an inside joke in my family. It originated with my great-grandmother, Grandma Fannie, who once exclaimed this in protest when my mom took her to have an MRI. It made my mom laugh, and the memory has stuck with her. It has since become one of her many catchphrases, applicable in any number of situations, but used especially to express exasperation or discomfort (and always exclaimed with an air of humor). I decided to design a t-shirt using the expression to gift to her for Mother’s Day.
Pageland, our hometown, is a small rural town in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. We’re the self-proclaimed “Watermelon Capital of the World” (one of at least seven such capitals in the U.S.). There’s a Watermelon Festival every July, winners of the local pageant are dubbed Watermelon Queens, and the water tower in town has watermelon painted on the side. That said, it was a no-brainer to include watermelon in the shirt’s imagery.
I wanted to draw on my mom’s nostalgia in a joyful way, and so it seemed logical to include a laughing little girl eating the melon. My mom’s early childhood spanned the ‘70s, so everything from the fonts to the little girl’s hair and clothes are 1970s-inspired.
The artwork is all original vector illustration. Mock-ups courtesy of the Custom Ink website, which I ordered the t-shirt from.
