Leopard T-Shirt

Telecel, the cellular telephone company gave projects to Kizito and me, which helped keep us solvent. This T-shirt was the only artwork that we ever did that was printed outside of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), as can be seen by the high quality of the image.

Telecel had the shirts made up in the United States and shipped to Kinshasa. They were handed out to politicians, customers, and VIP visitors. There was some symbolism here, because the leopard was the totem animal of the then-president Mobutu.

The text read, "Telecel likes African Animals." We worked on it together, looking at dozens of photographs to get the leopard's spots right. Kizito had a difficult time with the branch, so we set up hunks of bark to sketch up close for the texture.