About

I grew up in Berkeley, California, a big A's, Warriors and 49ers fan.  Without a television until age 10, I first became hooked on the Warriors listening to Greg Papa call the '91-'92 Warriors season on the radio, while shooting nerf baskets in my room emulating the play by play.  During summers, Bill King was the voice that narrated the formative memories of my A’s fandom. For a good 5 years, my idols were Mark McGwire, Steve Young, Jerry Rice and Chris Mullin. I even had my dad give me the signature Mullin flattop fade haircut in 4th grade, getting a good rise out of my friends when I showed up for class the next morning.

I drew a lot as a young child, filling portfolios of pages from the ages of 3 to 11, then sporadically throughout throughout middle and high school, with drawing subjects inspired by my environment- From palm trees, my dad surfing, TinTin comics, to the Berkeley public playground basketball courts my mom took to me to to hoist up shots as a 4 year old. My artistic subject matter evolved to sports around age 7 or 8, as I became hooked on the 49ers, Warriors, A’s, Cal Football, and my growing card collection.

These evolved into graphite drawing compositions of the early 2000’s A’s teams in high school and college.  I always had the interest in making what I was putting on the paper look as real as possible, capturing the larger than life-like quality I experienced at games, TV and print media. Thus was the challenge, my eye always saw more than my hand could do. I became an art student at UC Santa Cruz, developing my graphite-centric work into oil paintings and pastels, my senior studio art show being a body of work of Oakland A's players, graduating with a BA in 2005.

After quitting my 7 year corporate job and extensively traveling Europe in 2014, with my savings gone, the intuitive, sudden, creative spark for the ‘wearable art tee’ came in early May, 2015 during the Warriors playoff run. While developing a pastel drawing of Steph Curry, I had a strong vision of the drawing as a shirt.  After several months of diligently researching dye sublimation printing, and trial and error with different companies, in September 2015, the "Curry In Your Kitchen" tee prototype was made, and the apparel brand born.  In 2017-18, a series of improbable things happened.

I gave Klay Thompson an Uber ride, I was invited to Warriors practice by Raymond Ridder to meet Steph, Draymond and KD to show and give them samples of the prototypes, to their delight. A month later in May of 2017, I was featured on local ABC7 news. After improving the manufacturing quality to a cut and sew method in early 2018 for the 2nd Steph artwork, Sonya Curry wore the ‘wearable print’ on the 2018 championship parade float, a huge thrill.

Still exercising faith, without any professional breakthrough, in August of 2018, I received a big break where I was introduced to the Warriors retail team. This led to an agreement for a trial run with the Warriors and my pro selling debut in the Executive Suite kiosks at Oracle Arena for Warriors 2018-2019 home games. The shirts were joined by limited edition Archival Fine Art prints, selling off the rotation of 6 original framed Warriors drawings. They sold out and proved a huge success. The full limited edition ‘wearable prints’ including a new historic 16 player/coach artwork were released after the reopening of the Chase Center Post-Covid as Warriors Chase Center Flagship Team store items.

YaniMade is my original fine art. It’s also an innovative, player themed apparel brand, drawing inspiration from the evolving sports landscape, merging fine art, design and fashion sensibilities, with top quality sublimation printing and premium fabric- a series of limited edition wearable prints of graphite, color pencil, pastel, and oil paintings.  It documents and celebrates iconic pro athletes that have moved the needle in their respective fan-bases, both in sport and popular culture. 

In 2024, My drawing of Willie Mays was selected by a jury to be featured in the SF MOMA, part of a show that ran for 6 months.

-Yani Teichner