As far as local weekly's go, The Coast is generally not half bad. I mean, sure their "lefty" editorials are sometimes a little weak in the "critical left" department, (although maybe that's my bias, and not their problem) and sure, they do tend to misquote people. (Which is "totally whacked") But I mean, they do keep me pretty up to date on what's going on locally (in Halifax) in just about every respect, art, film, theatre, sports, politics, etc.. And they hire local artists for illustrations, which is admirable, and which is where our story begins.

I got a call from the Coast's art director, [art director] asking if I would like to do an illustration for a story in this past week's issue about the 10 year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I'm 23 years old, which means that I was 13 when Kurt died, which means that I was fucking devastated the day that I found out. Now, putting aside my cynical questions of why a local newspaper can't find enough local material to use as their cover story considering all other options, (ie: the 10th anniversary of a local artist run centre's annual fundraising gala) I do have a bit of a soft spot for this story. Come on, in 1993 you felt pretty god damned serious about it too, admit it.

So, despite being immeasurably busy, I accepted the illustration job, and [art director] and I discussed some of our ideas for themes. We decided that notebooks, journals, and highschool margin doodling should really be an important part of it. After finishing one idea, (a 9x5 illustration) the specs changed, and they now wanted a full page notebook, to place text into. No problem. I sent in all the components, sized properly to be assembled, and with the understanding that some minor shifting, and resizing may have to occur to accomodate text. There was still three days before the paper came out.

Thursday morning, I walked down the street to pick up my copy.
I flipped through to page 13, and what the hell?

This is what I sent to The Coast for publishing. (knowing some changes would happen)

This is what was published.

Look, I'm not trying to pull brat-styles here. And I don't mind being told if my work is no good. But if they weren't happy with the illustration, or if it wasn't going to work with the format, or the article, why not just tell me so, and assign someone else? Why in the world would someone hack up an illustration like that? That's not even my drawing.. In fact the only part on there that was my drawing is almost totally obscured, so why bother using anything at all. I have a hard time believing that spiral-bound notebooks are low in supply. I mean Christ. My name is on that, and I didn't make it. I had almost no part in it at this point.

And you would think that a fellow artist, art-school-grad, etc, would understand. If I were to fuck up [art director's] work like that, I think it's safe to say that [art director] would be less than pleased.