In a graffitied warehouse in East Austin, Chris Martin is blurring the lines between fashion and street art. The 33-year-old Martin is the owner of Mad Gods, a T-shirt company he started in San Francisco fourteen years ago.

Since, Mad Gods has moved to Austin, where Martin grew up, and has gained international acclaim for shirts that bring local art to the fashion world at large.

Mad Gods, Martin explains, is run sort of like a record label. Martin takes the art that local artists such as Smut and Failure are making and translates it into t-shirts.

“I look for people who are already doing screen printing,” he says. “A lot of what on the shirts existed as a poster before.”

For Martin, first getting in a batch of new art is his favorite part of the process. “I’m having to get better at editing – it’s hard not to just take everything.”

For the most part, Mad Gods shirts favor shirts that make a statement. “A lot of it is social commentary, but not preachy,” Martin said. It’s the sort of tongue-in-cheek humor that people don’t necessarily ever understand, Martin said, but it doesn’t matter because it makes a great shirt.

“We started out in the roots of many scenes – the whole DJ culture thing and hip-hop and punk. We have shirts for any kind of culture. I could see two people walking down the street, both wearing something Mad Gods put out, and they might sneer at what the other one is wearing, but in the end, they’re both really doing the same thing – sporting a dope t-shirt.”

Martin believes that to make a great shirt all you need to do is start with a great design. “I don’t really mess with what I get from the artist,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who it is, if they’ve got talent, we want to work with them.”

Mad Gods is also looking to get more into the gallery scene, and Martin is working on shows in Brazil and Berlin. Martin pointed out an area of the warehouse that was currently occupied by large shipping containers; “I want to make some space in here for a sort of compound – a space where some of the artists that work with us can work.”

And that’s not the extent of Martin’s ambition. “I want to start making more than just shirts,” he says. “It’s a bummer having to wear other people’s stuff when you make clothing for a living.” Eventually, he envisions being able to wear Mad Gods from shoes to hat.

But despite the broad range of interests, talent, and possibility that is Mad Gods, Martin realizes the limits of the industry. “In the end, we’re selling a lifestyle. It sounds terrible when you say it like that, but that’s part of it.”

Perhaps this is why Martin works so hard to keep things true to the culture that Mad Gods is so much a part of – why so many of his shirts try and say something more besides "just look good.”

“If I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably be doing something to better humanity in some way,” he says. “I grew up in the Reagan era; I’m used to mistrust, greed, conformity.”

This suspicion of conformity seems to be at the core of everything that Mad Gods does.

“If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it bold,” said Martin. “I’m not going to compromise and I’m going to make it how I want – the things that have been successful have always been what’s really different.”

You can see the shirts for yourself at the Mad Gods online store at Madgods.com or at retail stores Complete Clothing or Nick Kicks on The Drag.