sign of the times

i've had some emails about signing at the gallery, i had previously assumed i'd be signing prints friday evening at the opening, but that was an erroneous assumption. however, the reasons are pretty understandable, at least to me. i haven't seen the gallery space in person, but say its something like this:

all those happy people, filled with laughter, love, excitement. now, ideally, for the best user experience (users being gallery attendees), the goal is to get people in, let you take a look around, purchase any prints you desire, and exit, thus allowing more people to enter. repeat.

in a signing situation, the lines for the signings would begin to overwhelm the lines of people just wanting to look at all ken's work, and the one guy wanting to look at my drive poster. so it would begin to look like this:

as you can see, those people in line, especially towards the end of the line, they are getting pretty angry. and eventually they explode and die, this is very common. another idea we talked about was having a line outside, but again, it would end up like this:

even more chaotic. people aren't even getting into the gallery, the lines are crazy confusing, its just a madhouse.

all this to say, mondo's one goal is to make the most people happy in this situation. my whole reason for flying out is to sign prints. i'm not there to stand around, my physical appearance is not pleasing to the eyes, i'm no rob jones. the signing was moved to the next day, a one day event has turned into a two day event. which is fine, we'll motor through them, i plan on signing all of em (at once, i use a super strong permanent marker that soaks through many sheets of paper). but its all done with one goal, to make people happy.

so there ya go. i just wanted to give my side of things, why the decision was made. it was made with the best intentions possible. and the plus side is i don't even have to go to the gallery friday night. sweet.

maybe in a few months, we'll have a 2 week 'mail your prints to tyler and he'll sign em', once things slow down. the problem with mailing has always been...prints get damaged in the mail, and i can't replace them. its not because i'm a jerk (i am a jerk), its because it worries me that peoples prints get damaged, which to me outweighs having a print signed. maybe i'll do a signing in portland, in the park, we'll sing songs, laugh, some people will bring some drugs, we'll do those, laugh some more. slowly it'll turn violent, cars will be overturned and burned up. it will literally be perfect.