Prince of Darkness Moodmat
A grinning cartoon caricature with spiral filled glasses and a bat biting his ear, printed on eight inches of recycled rubber that lights up hard under a lamp. Artist series by Hola Loco, run of 40.
The Print
A Grin, a Bat and a Field of Violet Stripes
The print runs nearly to the edge of the square and stops at a narrow lip of bare black rubber with rounded corners. Behind everything is a full field psychedelic pattern of undulating violet lines over a darker purple, closer to tiger stripes than to anything geometric, and it never resolves into a straight line anywhere on the mat. It is doing the job a flat background would do and doing it while moving.
Centred on that is a cartoon head and shoulders of a long haired man with a pale peach face and straight dark centre parted hair falling past the jaw. His glasses are round wire frames and the lenses are filled with lime green and purple hypnotic spirals instead of eyes. He is grinning wide on square white teeth with a long fang at each side of the grin and a thin red trickle of blood running from one corner of his mouth. Perched on top of his head, with its teeth in his ear, is a purple and green cartoon bat: membranous wings spread right across the top of the composition, a spiral patterned eye, pointed ears, an open fanged mouth and a body scaled in small purple and green triangles. Purple and green drips run down off the bat and the wings onto his forehead, and four clusters of small round green mushroom caps are scattered around the head.
Everything is outlined in a bright lime green keyline laid over black linework, which is what keeps a picture this busy legible at eight inches. Part of the ink is UV reactive and we have the piece photographed under a lamp. The violet stripes glow electric, the lime keyline and the mushroom caps fluoresce hard green, the bat wings and the drips go magenta purple, the spirals in the glasses go green white and the fangs go pale white. Both states are on this page and it is one mat in both of them, not two products.
Designed By
Hola Loco
Printed on the back of the mat in two lines of hand drawn all caps brush lettering with a big exclamation point after it, then an x, then the moodmats wordmark, then a number box inked by hand over a printed 40. That back carries no social handle, no Made in USA line and no live sale line, so the name and the number are the whole record the piece keeps and they are the whole record we are going to state. No biography, no back catalogue, nothing claimed about anybody else involved. The hand inked box is what makes the run of 40 a fact rather than a figure off a spreadsheet.
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Made in New Jersey Since 2009
Rubber That Already Had a First Life
Moodmats started with scraps from old wetsuits and discarded scuba and surf neoprene, material that was headed straight for a landfill. That became Lava Rubber, and Lava Rubber is what every Moodmat is cut from. The feedstock now comes from wetsuits, gaskets, weatherstripping, seat molds, and other clean scrap that gets collected or donated. More than two tons of it moves through the New Jersey shop every month, gets pressed into sheet stock, then die-cut and screen printed. Keeping that material out of the ground has been the point from day one.
Closed-Cell Neoprene
Closed-cell rubber does not drink up what you spill on it. Water, reclaim, and terp splash sit on the surface instead of soaking in, so a wipe with soapy water puts it back to new.
It Stays Put
The rubber grips whatever it is sitting on and grips whatever you set on top. A rig that would skate across a glass table or a finished desk stops moving the second it lands on a Moodmat.
Tough and Self-Extinguishing
Heat resistant, self-extinguishing, and built out of material that already survived a first life. This is not a printed coaster that curls after a month on the table.
Where People Actually Put These
It Does Not Have to Hold a Rig
A Moodmat protects a surface and grips what sits on it. Whether that thing is a banger, a camera, or nothing at all is up to you. They are called Moodmats for a reason. Pick the one that matches how you feel and put it wherever it belongs.
Rig and Glass Pad
The job it was built for. Keeps glass off hard surfaces and keeps hard surfaces off your glass.
Display Surface
Figures, models, controllers, dice, cameras, watches. Anything worth setting on something intentional.
Wall Art
Plenty of these never touch a table. Hang it, frame it, or pin it behind the setup and let the print do the work.
Desk and Everyday
Trivet for hot pans, landing spot for keys, pad under a pet bowl, cushion on a camp table.
Why It Matters
Runs End. Prints Do Not Come Back.
Moodmats print in runs, and runs end. Once a design is out, it is out. Artist collabs and drop exclusives regularly land in quantities of ten to twenty five pieces, which is why the people who collect these track drops, trade them, and frame the ones they will never put a rig on. If this specific print matters to you, the time to grab it is while it is still on the shelf.
Forty, and the Denominator Is Printed on the Mat
Forty is the whole production for this design, and the printed 40 on the back is the evidence for it, with a hand inked figure above it put there by a person with a pen rather than by a counter on a press. We are not going to tell you which one you are getting. There are two of these on our shelf and the number is different on each, so quoting a position in a run we cannot promise is how a listing turns into a complaint. The run size, the fact that it is numbered by hand, and the fact that we have two of them is the honest version and it is the whole version.
No Reprints
Moodmats does not go back and run a sold-out design again. When this one is gone from our shelf and theirs, the only way to get it is from somebody who already has one.
Worth Hanging
A print this limited does not have to earn its keep under a rig. Plenty of these end up on a wall, in a frame, or stacked with the rest of a collection.
The Details
Specs and Care
| Size | 8 inches square, approximate |
| Shape | Square with rounded corners. Art printed nearly edge to edge inside a narrow bare rubber lip |
| Material | 100% upcycled closed-cell rubber, Lava Rubber stock |
| Screen printed, full color, standard ink with UV reactive application | |
| UV coverage | Strong and photographed. Violet stripes electric, lime keyline and mushroom caps hard green, bat wings and drips magenta purple, glasses spirals green white, fangs pale white |
| Artist | Hola Loco, printed on the back in hand drawn brush capitals |
| Edition | Run of 40, hand numbered on the back. The figure varies piece to piece and we do not quote one |
| Origin | Made in New Jersey, USA |
Wipe it down with warm water and a little dish soap, then let it air dry flat. That is the whole routine. Do not run it through a washing machine or a dryer, do not scrub the print with an abrasive pad, and do not rest a lit torch or a glowing-hot banger directly on the surface. Use a stand or a puck for anything still at temperature.
Straight Talk
Know Before You Buy
Upcycled Means Variation
The rubber is reclaimed scrap, so base color, speckle, and surface texture shift slightly from sheet to sheet. Two mats of the same design will not be photocopies of each other. That is how you know it is the real material and not virgin stock.
Heat Resistant, Not Heatproof
The rubber is self-extinguishing and handles warm gear without complaint. It is not a torch pad. Park anything still glowing on a proper stand or a quartz puck, not on the print.
UV Needs a Blacklight
The reactive ink does nothing under a lamp, a window or a phone flash. It needs actual ultraviolet, the sort of tube or bar people run behind a rig, and then it does what the second photo on this page shows. In ordinary light this is a bright psychedelic print on purple and nothing more, which is a perfectly good thing to be, so buy it for the daylight look and treat the glow as the second picture you get for free.
The Number on the Back Varies
Two of these are on the shelf and each one is inked by hand with a different figure out of forty. We do not publish the number, and any figure visible in a photo on this page is not a promise about the one that ships to you. What we can tell you is the run size, which is printed on the back of the mat rather than taken off a spreadsheet, and that the numbering is done by hand.
A Rig Lands on His Face
The head sits dead centre and the print runs nearly corner to corner, so whatever you set on this mat covers the middle of the picture. Worth knowing before you order. If it is going under a rig, the striped background in the lower corners is the emptiest ground on the piece and the least painful place to park a base. A fair number of these end up on a wall instead.
Set the Mood
Recycled rubber, made in the USA, printed with art worth looking at. Free shipping on orders over $75, and every order ships from a veteran-owned small business.
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