Online Ceramics was founded in LA last year by Elijah Funk, 27, and Alix Ross, 28, who hail from Ohio and met at art school there. Their T-shirts draw on recognizable Grateful Dead bootleg motifs: skulls, Dead lyrics, dancing bears, and epic tie-die abound. But their graphics are enormous and intricate, and include their own characters—goblins, jesters—along with druggie iconography and phrases that channel a sort of cosmic mindfulness. Upon closer inspection, some of their T-shirts aren’t Grateful Dead-related at all, but actually have more in common with DIY punk T-shirts. As word started getting out about the next-level T-shirt brand and its delightfully shitty website, Online Ceramics picked up their first fashion account at Union Los Angeles. And last weekend Funk and Ross caused a minor situation at ComplexCon when they parked in a nearby lot with tees and hoodies and put their location on Instagram. They were there to sell their biggest drop yet: a collaboration with John Mayer, with whom they designed a hoodie for the fall Dead & Co. tour, which comes to Madison Square Garden for two nights starting Sunday. The hoodie won’t be at the merch stand, though—you’ll have to meet up with Funk and Ross somewhere in the city on Monday. (So pay attention to @onlineceramics.) Before they hit the road, I called them up to get the full Online Ceramics story.

GQ Style: So when did you start making T-shirts? I assume it started as a side-hobby.

Eljah Funk: It just started for fun a few years ago.

Alix Ross: Before we started Online Ceramics, Elijah and I were both really interested in sculptures, and interested in contemporary and fine art. We both had aspirations to be artists, to be represented by galleries potentially. Elijah had an opportunity to design a T-shirt for our friend who has a brand, and it kind of evolved from there. And we did T-shirts because T-shirts sold, and it was like, wow, our weird ceramic sculptures don’t really sell [laughs]. But we could take $90 of T-shirt blanks and turn that into $300, which at the time was a lot of money to us.

EF: And I’ve been making shirts since I was like 12, and I tried to deny it—I was like no, no, no, I’m an artist, I don’t want to make T-shirts. And then it just kind of fucking happened. And it was like OK, I guess this is what we do. We don’t have to be modern sculptors.