With appologies to Ed Sullivan,
IT'S THE BIG SHOOOOO!
It's been ages since we've done any updates on our web page. The reason for this: we've been working our butts off in preparation for our joint show with Tsatsa, a successful Mongolian artist. Her style is Modernist painting in oils. We were introduced to Tsatsa by our friend Ariun, and we immediately began a very nice friendship. Tsatsa's husband is Batlai, a sculptor. We think they're the quite a bit like us: she's an artist and painter, and he's a tool-using builder of things. We really enjoy their company.
It turns out that Tsatsa has had a long-standing interest in medicine and surgery in particular. She has even observed open-heart surgery inside the operating theater. Her other favorite subject is plants and flowers, which, of course, is also a favorite of Zina's. So, long story short, Tsatsa and Zina came up with the idea of the joint show. We named it "3 Perspectives on Botany and Medicine" and includes my work.
Here is the invitation we just had printed:
[click on the image to view the big version]
Like everything here, or at least almost everything, getting things done has been very difficult. Right now, I'm not feeling too terribly bitter about it, mostly because we recovered, but the biggest, highest-quality printing company in Ulaan Baatar, who's identiy shall remain concealed to avoid embarrassment, but the initials are INTERPRESS, basically screwed us pretty hard.
They're a subsidiary of MCS, an import/export giant -- they are the sole distributor for Coca Cola and all Johnson & Johnson products here in Mongolia. A little over 2 months ago, we met with the General Manager and the President of InterPress. We discussed 3 pieces of business: they wanted me to work with them on an annual report for UB Bank, output of my artwork on their large-format inkjet Encad digital printer (6-foot wide prints!) and the sponsorship deal. After the meeting, which went quite well, the Marketing Director of MCS sent us a letter offering sponsorship of some of the printed materials, but not for the digital printing. We were pretty happy about it, but I did recognize that they weren't offering to sponsor their highest-markup product, the digital prints. Later, after yet another killer letter by Zina, the US Embassy gave us a small grant to fill in the gaps for products that weren't sponsored by InterPress.
Anyway, a week-and-a-half ago, almost 2 months after the meeting and subsequent offer of sponsorship, and only a little more than 2 weeks before the show, I deliver the invitations to be printed and start to work with InterPress on getting the artworks printed on the Encad large format printer. At this point, we hit a big snag: they're on PC and use CorelDraw, v11. I burned 4 cds with different versions of Mac Adobe Illustrator files, made about 6 trips across town to the print shop, and wasted countless hours trying to figure out how to get Postscript blends to exchange with CorelDraw. I simply couldn't figure it out. I finally de-evolved the drawings into blended objects, which, of course, isn't ideal. Then, they bitched because the drawings were too complex! They said "The drawing will take too long to print" .... meanwhile, in my half-dozen visits to their shop, I never ever saw ANY of their machines running!!!
So, back to the invitations: the General Manager, who is a generally nice guy whom I like quite well, starts hemming and hawing about needing a contract for the sponsorship: I wave the letter under his nose, and he keeps saying that he needs approval from MCS. So, we arrange a meeting with the author of the original letter, the Marketing Director at MCS: she doesn't show up. We arrange another meeting: she shows up, but says that the President of InterPress needs to be there. We arrange YET ANOTHER MEETING and the President shows up, but not the Marketing Director.
We discuss with the President why there is a problem: it turns out that they have it in their heads that I was supposed to work on the UB Bank project, and DONATE my time IN EXCHANGE for sponsorship of the printed materials. In other words, they were suggesting a barter, not a sponsorship. NOBODY SAID THIS ANYWHERE -- not in any meetings, not in any letters, not anywhere!!! The reason that this was a problem was that the bank project was supposed to get underway 3 weeks before we left for Thailand, but the bank kept delaying the delivery of the copy, and about 4 days before we left, I called the General Manager (for the zillionth time) and said that we were leaving, but I'd telecommute. They rejected the telecommuting offer, and did the report on their own, and it apparently sucked, drawing heat from the bank.
They offered me another opportunity to BARTER my work in the coming weeks, but we have the show and friends arriving from the States, so I explained that we were short of time and I couldn't promise to work very much on their new project., especially since they'd FUCKED US on the time: they absolutely and incontrovertibly -- from a western business ethic/perspective -- should have told us when we left for Thailand that we were messing up the deal instead of waiting until the last possible moment. At the end of the meeting, the President says he has to confer with the Marketing Director, and they'll get back to us. About 3 hours later, he called and said that they were "sorry but MCS cannot offer sponsorship".
So, we had to scramble around, and asked the advice of some friends who work for a USAID project that produces a magazine. They gave us the name of a small printing company, RekMon (Reklaam is the Russian/Mongolian word for Advertising). Anyway, long story short, RekMon has PCs, but they're running Adobe Illustrator, so the file transfer is smooth, and they're printing all of our stuff. They're charging us retail price, without any sponsorship, and it's costing exactly half of what InterPress was attempting to charge us. We've noticed a trend that when Mongolians want to get more money from westerners, they charge exactly double. Because I was tired of dealing with the file transfer issues and not to say very irritated with InterPress, we also gave RekMon the job for the digital printing, which look great, by the way. They did it in only 2 days... no contract, no feet-dragging, no hassles, no problem.
I'm just pissed off that the biggest company -- the one that isn't starving for our little bit of money, the one that should theoretically be most trustworthy -- was totally ripping us off and yankingn us around, while the small up-and-coming business is being a straight-shooter and dealing with us fairly.
Drama and last-minute scrambling aside, the project is going well now: the biggest parts are finished and paid for: the invitations and my artworks. I have the catalog all laid out and ready to go, we're just waiting for Tsatsa to proofread her sections. It looks like everything will be done in time. I'll post pix from the actual show in about 2 weeks.
NOTICE: all contents copyright Alan Lapp 2002, 2003