![\"Students](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2023_Community_Engagement_Fair-54-420x280-2.jpg\")
Skateboard decks. Screen printing ink. Racks and racks of T-shirts featuring an upside-down “A.” These items have one thing in common: The artist Kariuki.<\/p>\n
Inside a shop at the Midtown Mall, Curtis Kariuki is designing apparel that strengthens the bond between Clark and the Worcester community. Kariuki is the second city artist highlighted through CLARKx<\/sub>COLLAB, a passion project launched by Joseph Corazzini, vice president for government and community affairs. Each year, a city artist creates a limited series streetwear line specifically for Clark. The effort helps bridge Clark and the young people driving the Worcester arts scene. Kariuki’s downtown Worcester shop is the first brick-and-mortar location for his brand, Denied Approval.<\/p>\n “Students often ask how to build community and feel connected to Worcester,” says Corazzini. “I started thinking about having local artists bring urban flair to Clark gear, but in a way that’s about more than the clothes. It’s really about facilitation and invitation to the culture.”<\/p>\n Corazzini hopes each collaboration creates something that will be an enduring piece of the Clark University legacy.<\/p>\n “I want somebody to have the 2025 hoodie 20 years from now,” he says. “That’s the piece that they keep and that means something to them.”<\/p>\n Corazzini also aims to help Worcester artists gain a bigger audience and sell their work. “This is for the artists to have more commerce,” he says, “and when they sell their gear here, one hundred percent of the profits will go to them.”<\/p>\n Corazzini and Kariuki are both Worcester natives.<\/p>\n “I would say this collaboration between Clark and Denied Approval really represents Worcester,” Kariuki says. “I grew up skateboarding around Clark.”<\/p>\n Kariuki prepared sample CLARKx<\/sub>COLLAB designs and showed them at a booth during the Community Engagement and Volunteering Fair in September. Students voted for their favorite design. The finished apparel will be for sale during Family and Friends Weekend<\/a> Oct. 13-15, an event Kariuki believes will bring people together to support local art and culture.<\/p>\n “I feel like this project is going to get a lot of support from the city,” says Kariuki. Most of Kariuki’s designs feature Worcester and Clark-based imagery: a skateboarder backed by the city skyline, flags of all of the global communities in Worcester and at Clark, and the University logo with the artist’s trademark upside-down “A.”<\/p>\n