Spring 1994 - An Inside Look At An Outside Artist by Jeremy Reed

What started out as a foreseeable dream for George Mead, W.E.T. Studios (Westcoast Entertainment Technographics) has now become both an artistically and financially successful venture. Housed in an 8,000 square-foot studio in the warehouse district of San Francisco, George Mead's creation looks, at first glance, like any other steel building on the outskirts of downtown, in an area where mechanics and artists are in abundance. But like most everything Mead has been involved with, his unique style and detail covers the buildings' front. A mural, dedicated to the memory of his brother, spans the exterior facing Second Street. The rustic painting, designed and painted by Mead, represents the ancient philosophy that the way to immortality is through the embracing of death. And as words and the ear are less clear than the eye, the image is much more vivid in person. "My dream," Mead says, "was to have a studio where I would be able to have the time and the money to do some of my own design work." And now in its fourteenth year, W.E.T. has built a reputation around outstanding design and execution that meet, often difficult, time constraints.

For George Mead, as with many other creative minds, the vision wasn't always clear. Raised on a farm in Dayton, Ohio, 360 acres of beautiful land occupied by cattle and horses with a stream flowing through the middle of the property, Mead left every scholastic term for the last seven years of schooling to attend a boarding institution in Boston. During that time he realized, through art competitions, that his skills exceeded others and that there was a world outside of Boston and boarding schools. As Mead puts it, "they (boarding schools) brainwash you into being just another cog in the machine." After attempting one year at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston upon finishing high school at the top of his class, a steep climb from his self professed low academic standings of earlier years, Mead was ready to take some time away from structured learning and head to Boulder, Colorado. Working odd jobs, one of which was raking leaves for 3.50 an hour, George found himself in a trailer park in Tuscon, at which point, he felt it was time for as change. "I thought I should get a little more focused about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I decided to go back to school."

Mead entered Antioch College in Ohio. He liked the idea that it was a "Marxist college, very socialist." As Mead tells it, during our interview at W.E.T. Studios, "Being from such a self-congratulatory place, I was starving to become part of the society." He left Antioch and the Midwest, after strikes left his paintings locked up for six months at a time, for California to pursue a MFA, of which he received in 1976, at the California College of Arts and Crafts. When Mead went before his Masters' committee, they asked, "Do you compromise your work," to which he answered, "No, compromise isn't in my dictionary, but integrity-integrate is." It is his idea that one has to have the integrity to integrate their work into the environment. Through a good work study program offered through the university, Mead was able to become socially involved through his painting. For three years, he was commissioned through grants from CAC and the San Francisco Arts Commission to work closely with communities in the beautification of their neighborhood through public art. One such project was Valencia Gardens, a place he speaks of with pride. " In 1974, we had 52 kids project their image and then we traced the shadows of each of the kids. . .till this day there is still no graffiti." A rarity in any metropolitan area. Two years later, George Mead won a National Endowment for the Arts grant to design and oversee the painting of a large-scale mural on a building in downtown Oakland. The competition was open to everyone, professionals and amateurs alike. At the time, George Mead was just finishing up his Masters. Due to cutbacks in the funding for public art, a problem Mead attributes to the Republicans coming into power, George was forced to find a more profitable career choice.

At the age of twenty-eight, he began painting sets for rock tours. A time, he describes as a lot of fun, but long hours. From there he left San Francisco for Los Angeles. After hooking up with the Scenic Art Union, prepared with an impressive portfolio of work under his sleeve, it was only a days time before he began what turned out to be a three month stint at Paramount. From there he went to Warner Bros. for the next nine months to work as one of their top rank scenic artists. But once again, as he had found before by working on concert sets, the overtime was great, and he favored San Francisco over the hills of Hollywood.

In 1980, he started W.E.T. Studios, with the Tower Records account. An account that was one-tenth of what it is now, but at the time it was definitely instrumental in getting the studio up and running. The day I visited the studio they were working on two 6 x 6 ft album cover, The Brand New Heavies and The Addams Family Movie Soundtrack, both of which featured at least ten faces each, and both were done in a days time. The basic sketches are still drawn onto canvas from an overhead projected image, but with the aid of computer simulated graphics, images and ideas are being played out on the screen instead of in the minds of Mead and his crew. The detailing that the artists at W.E.T. put into their productions is incredible, to use a lackluster expression.

Right now the Studio's accounts range from murals in hotels and restaurants to record labels such as Warner Bros. to upcoming concert sets. Mead says he is at the point, "where things are falling into place, knock on wood." The W.E.T. staff is now at a level and size Mead is very pleased with. Jeff Sadowski, who has been with W.E.T. Studios for the last ten of its fourteen years, acts as production coordinator and lead airbrush artists in the studio. Mead describes Jeff as a kid from Wisconsin who came to him ten years ago with a great amount of raw talent and now acts as his right hand man. Upcoming projects for the Studio include the N.A.R.M. Convention, concert tours for the Grateful Dead, Elton John and Billy Joel, and continued work with past clients such as Apple Computer, Wherehouse Records and L.A. Gear. One of the many things interesting about Mead was the idea of his art lasting for only a short period of time, such as the painting over of murals or the tearing down and destroying of sets at the end of a concert tour. As George explains it, "It is part of the integrity of the piece. It is that it goes up and then it disappears. It's a timely piece. It wouldn't work for tours to use the same set year after year. People would get tired of the artwork and I would be out of a job.