JUL 14 2013
I am in the process of cleaning up around the house and, as in all clean-ups, am finding things I haven't seen in a while. Today I found a CD and press release with promo photos.
Years ago when I was the manager of a custom frame shop here in Austin, one of my employees came in one day saying that he'd seen a CD in a local music store with cover art that looked a lot like mine. Over the years, I had heard this kind of remark before regarding art folks had seen somewhere, so I thought very little of it.
A little while later, I was at a local music store and I found what I figured my employee had. And it WAS one of my pieces after all. One done in the mid-80's. This was happening in the mid-90's, so around a decade had passed since I'd last shown any of my work around town.
I called up the # on the back of the CD and told them that that was my painting on their CD cover. Anyway, it seems the leader of the band had purchased the piece at a yard sale near the University of Texas and no one could make out my signature. At that time, I signed my pieces in permanent marker using my whole name (including JR) and did so in cursive.
I never got a penny out of the deal, but I was invited down to the studio for a day so I could watch them work. I also received a press release and a free CD. I could tell it was a low-budget studio and I was probably more potential liability than anything else, but I had a good time that day and showed them several other pieces from the same time period to prove my authorship.
Today, on a whim I put Argument Clinic Music in a search engine and found that the same CD, with my cover art, is still on sale at Amazon. Ha. Hard to believe. :)
