Olly Gibbs, designer and co-owner of Curlworks, is surrounded by his many popular fish bags. He donates 5% of proceeds from the bags to Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

In designer Olly Gibbs’ second-floor studio at the Q.arma Building in northeast Minneapolis, he’s surrounded by piles of fabric, boxes of buttons, strips of Velcro and many, many colorful fish bags.

“I’ve always kind of liked fish as a motif, because they’re easy to draw, but you can stylize them in an interesting way,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs is the co-founder of Minneapolis-based playful product design shop Curlworks, known for its quirky apparel, accessories and stickers ― and its commitment to supporting the queer and trans community.

The fish idea popped up at the start of the pandemic after a trip got canceled. He stayed home from work that week and made a fish garland. A few years later, a fried shrimp bag commission inspired him to make a small fish bag.

These are the first fishies that Curlworks co-owner Olly Gibbs made around the start of the pandemic. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

“I wanted to try making a big [fish] one to wear, like the ones we have now, so I made that and posted it to Twitter and it exploded,” he said. “It got 150,000 likes. … I think that was November 2023.”

From there, the fish kept swimming. A little over a year ago, he launched a Kickstarter to fund the bigger fish bags. They met their $5,600 goal within four minutes and raised more than $250,000.

He has 11 different colors, with two new designs in the works for the Twin Cities Pride Festival on June 28-29.

And the rest, as they say, is fishtery.

There are many colorful fish bags for sale at Curlworks, a queer- and trans-owned playful product shop in northeast Minneapolis. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Giving back to trans community

Gibbs, 30, a transgender man, runs the shop with his husband, Keaton Van’t Hull. Some of their many Pride offerings this year include “Stronger Together” orca whale rainbow hats, “no more fear” purple T-shirts with geese marching together and many stickers with trans and gay pride flags.

Nature and funny animals are two of his biggest inspirations. He often spots them while on walks with his husband.

“We have a big birding camera now, and we like to go to the river and take pictures of ducks,” he said. “If you sit long enough, they’ll do something funny usually.

“Animals do things that people wouldn’t.”

Gibbs’ other major inspiration is activism. He wanted to do something like Michigan-based, LGBTQ-owned screen printing collective Transfigure Print Company’s, which donates 10% of monthly sales from their popular design “Protect Trans Kids” and “Protect Trans Folks” merchandise to organizations that center on trans and queer lives.

In April, he started contributing 5% of all his gross revenue to Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid (TCTMA), a community-centered grassroots organization that gives directly to trans folks. TCTMA is only two years old and mostly relies on funds from benefit shows, but the shows aren’t consistent. The organization gets most of its funding from other trans people, and hopes those not in the community also will start contributing.

“Before we reached the size we are at now, there were plenty of times when we had to stop distributing because we didn’t have a benefit show,” said Katie Rasheyo, co-founder of Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid. “But lately that’s not been the case. We’ve had a regular flow of money in and out, and Olly has been a critical part of that.”

His donation last month totaled $2,700 thanks to sales from Art-A-Whirl and wholesalers stocking up for Pride. His regular donations usually range from $500-$1,000.

A bright yellow fish bag is for sale at northeast Minneapolis playful product studio Curlworks. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

For Gibbs, giving to Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid is about way more than money.

“I feel like most of the reason I’m able to do this job is that the community has supported me and come out and been so generous,” he said.

He also helps out in other ways, like lending TCTMA a button-maker or other supplies. He also volunteers with other mutual aid groups like The People’s Laundry Minneapolis.

He found TCTMA last November, around the same time as the election.

“I feel like I used to get very, very overwhelmed by the news and all the stuff happening all over the world, and I’ve been focusing on very hyperlocal stuff,” he said. “That’s helped a lot in terms of not getting overwhelmed by feeling the need to fix everything.”

Brooklyn-based artist Kevin Sudeith, who worked with Gibbs 10 years ago, immediately noticed that entrepreneurial spirit coupled with a draw to activism.

“When he did his Kickstarter and it totally blew up, I just thought that was the most awesome thing,” Sudeith said.

Curlworks will have a table at the Pride Festival in Loring Park. Many fish bags will available, but given his track record they could sell out quickly.

“[Olly’s work is] playful, it’s inventive, it takes a known thing and it recontextualizes it into a different thing, like the logs and the fish turning into these beautiful plush bags,” Sudeith said. “It’s like a realistic painter or all different styles of realism ― it’s about how one paints the log or paints the fish that makes it a successful artwork or not.”