commercial
art and.
having beers in a small seattle bar is my most vivid memory of
shawn. Not
for the beer, but the conversation. it was our first in-person meeting.
i remember
thinking he looked his part, but not overly so. just kinda seattle post
grunge... he voiced
genuine concern and interest in hearing me tell of my nephew's recent
accident that had left
him a paraplegic at 22 years old. shawn always asked about him in our
subsequent phone
conversations. it meant a lot to me.
shawn's a sincere, down to earth kind of guy in a strange ohio kind of
way.
and he has a very nice wife who he's really good friends with.
in 1994 when i rescued shawn, he was busy seducing the masses into buying
things they didn't
need at a small seattle advertising agency. my first intern at ray gun,
actually my first
employee, amy lam, suggested i see his work. he had sent me stuff earlier
but it hadn't
registered. trusting amy, i began feeding shawn a few pages per issue.
usually articles i
didn't want to mess with, like organizing all those record reviews...or
an
article i had no
interest in. or when we couldn't fill an ad space. shawn turned them all
into mini-
masterpieces.
i never knew what i would get from him, and i was never disappointed.
and
always surprised.
there's an intelligent absurdity too his work. i think that's why i was
so
drawn to it. and
it never looked like what anyone else was doing. especially me. shawn's
work was totally
out of step with what all us 'cool' designers were doing at the time.
which
of course, was
part of its brilliance. and i felt like a proud father when one of the
design magazine's
recognized his work with a 10 page article- some 5 years after his first
ray
gun spread.....
no question some of the best pages in ray gun were shawn's. i should have
given him more........
p.s . don't pass this book on to any friends. get them to buy their own.
-david carson
nov. 1999 nyc
