Student entrepreneur balances school and art

Ama Addo
Contributing Writer

Twenty-one-year-old Tarik Welch ’16 is not your ordinary business economics major. Some may call Welch a musician or an entrepreneur. He is all of those things — mixed with eclectic mannerisms and a mysteriously pensive aura. Upon my arrival for our interview, for example, he opened the door with an electric bass guitar slung around his waist. When I asked him, “What is JUICE?” he said, “It’s an art project.”

To the naked eye, JUICE, a Boston-based brand created in the summer of 2011, can easily be mistaken as a fashion label. However, Welch describes it as an outlet for him and his brother, 23-year-old Omari Welch, to create art through a clothing brand, a vehicle that is accessible to others and allows them to keep learning new things. The inspiration for the name came to him as he reflected on his younger cousins coming to his house and always asking for JUICE. Welch also found the name to be ubiquitous in the sense that it has varying meanings in different communities.

In describing the brand, Welch recalled his brother saying to him during a conversation, “I wouldn’t even consider our stuff streetwear. It’s an experimental clothing project.”

They handmake their apparel in their kitchen in Boston, cutting every stencil and hand printing every shirt for guaranteed authenticity.

Through JUICE, they want to showcase artistic versatility and learn as much as they can about art through clothing. Tarik said, “When we print, a lot of it is focused on the texture of the paint rather than the brand itself. The brand is important but I want people to appreciate the uniqueness of the print itself. We’re not looking for perfection every time we print.”

Currently, the Welch brothers are learning innovative ways to style their apparel, rejecting tactics used in mainstream clothing companies today. Describing his and his brother’s desire to challenge themselves using nontraditional methods of creating reflective finished sweatshirts, he said, “I knew I wanted to do something reflective but I didn’t want to use reflective paint so I just started doing research and came up with the idea to use striping paint.”

Stripping paint is the paint used to mark airplane runways and road markings, which have glass beads inserted under the paint that create the reflective aesthetic.

Some other things Welch wants to use to further his art through JUICE include “cut and sew, screen printing, image transferring, photography and clothing design.”

He is also interested in taking, reconstituting and reworking vintage material to recreate a new look using the foundation of the past.

A challenging aspect of running this business for him is having so many different roles to play.

“It’s hard juggling school and having people expect it to be a brand when it’s more of a project right now. People expect me to have JUICE stuff on me all the time and it’s actually a strenuous project,” Welch said.

In addition, he cites his role as a student and the rigor of academics here at Wooster as an unfortunate barrier to pursuing his artistic endeavors like JUICE through losing business by not doing art or having time to collaborate with people (here and in Boston) because he spends a majority of his time doing his school work.

However, in his business econ courses, he says his academics are useful in helping him to “envision how I would conduct business. In my mind I’m using JUICE as a context for the business I’m studying.”

He cites Peter Abramo, director of entrepreneurship, as a pillar of support on campus. For the future, he wants to continue to mesh art and entrepreneurship through JUICE while maintaining its unique artistic expression.

“JUICE is not a traditional brand in the sense that it’s not about mass production. I intend on it just being me and my brother for a while.”

Explore the art project on his website at Juiceproject.net.