Reject Me, I'm Yours!(1993/2008/2007)

These things, going back a few years, um, like to 1993, were the result or, perhaps, by-product of a batch of designs I did for the Hungarian rock band, Andersen.








After having visited Budapest in, I think, April of that year and after having met the band there and after having heard them and seen them play and after recording with most of them (on this demos project I was working on there at Line Studios located then in the Petofi Csarnok) and after performing with them once, too, they asked me to contribute some designs for the new record that they were just on the verge of putting out. So, when I got back home, I went straight to work. I made several series for them to choose from. Some were in the style of my previous collection of abstract collage paintings, some were more in the vein of the Standard and Prime Assemblage work, and others were more a traditional collage with some photostatic elements, like these ones. All of this was pre-Adobe, mind you, all hand work, so I had all these 12"x12" illustration boards, some with quite a lot of relief on them (one design, I remember, even had a dead lizard glued to it). So, all stacked up and packed up in a big box. I sent them on, at some expense, to Budapest and awaited approval.

Sadly, that's pretty much the end of the story. I waited. I sent for an answer, but never heard a thing. Then one day, months later, I got a message that an international parcel had arrived for me at the airport from Hungary. I rushed down, of course, with great expectation, to fetch the thing, thinking it must be copies of the new CD, decked out in my stuff. Cool!

No, turns out it was just the original work I'd sent them, minus a few pieces, returned to me at my expense without so much as a "thank you but no thank you" note.

And that's the way it sometimes goes. Sometimes you get people to see things your way and sometimes you don't. And sometimes, when you can't get your vision or your pitch through, you never even hear about it. You hear one day that the guitar player from the group is into computer animation and that they decided to use some of his cartoons as the album art instead.

So it goes.

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Here's another pitch I made to a group here in St. Louis just this past year.










I was inspired (loosely) to these designs based only on the band's name, Models Need Sleep, which I thought was a pretty interesting, enigmatic moniker. I'd never heard the music (I still haven't) but I knew Jon and Matt from Colony were in there so it had to be pretty cool. I spent a few evenings fooling around in Illustrator, found some images I liked and worked them in (the center one, my own favorite, is a picture my old friends, Fred and Floy, sent to me of their daughter, Katie, who is just too, damn cute!) and then I took a disc to one of their shows and wordlessly passed it to Jon, who slipped it in his back pocket. The result? You guessed it: nuthin. In this instance, though, it's a little more understandable since their guitar player, Grant, is such a very talented visual artist, too (fucking guitar players, man!). I got a look at their CD cover and it's this cool thing of upside-down water or something. It's neat and nothing even close to what I was going for, so...

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The list, of course, goes on.

Here's a rough comp for an animated logo for the Hoffman/LaChance gallery here in town. The story is the same. Not a peep.






So the win-some-lose-some story isn't a new one. Clients who lack the courage for confrontation, or the courtesy to communicate and constructively critique (alliteration alert!) aren't news either. And if you know what it is to be a compulsive creative, then you know the scenario is destined to play out again, cause you know you can never quit. They gotcha.

On the flip side, of course, are the acceptances, the approbation and occasional accolades but I won't lie, the joy of acceptance is not proportional to the disappointment of rejection. I wish I could say that they balance each other out, that the elations make up for the depressions, but they don't. It would even be nice if I could say that at least the fight is a good one, that the cause is noble, but when you're simply feeding a compulsion, that's a pretty hard argument to win. Ultimately I guess we are all just creatures possessed of the need to continue, chess players in perpetual stalemate, gamblers fueled by hope and impulse but also knowing that the house always wins.

Goddamn! Am I some kinda fuckin' downer, or what? Jesus!

Next post, please!