This pitch that I worked on with Mike Lukowski aka Stay Vers was the manifestation of all of the work we had done over the years. Even though the tour was ultimately canceled this project would set the foundation for a lot of our subsequent work over the years. I always felt like Mike’s work was amazing from the moment we first started working together, but until that point, I had never really considered myself to be that creative. During the course of working with Mike, I learned I did not have to create art or music like many of the talented people I have had the pleasure of working with to be creative. I learned I could act as almost a creative project manager, creative director, or creative strategist. So many of the skills I learned as an engineer and project manager working in Corporate America allowed me to manage and develop all different types of projects including the more creative ones. At the same time, I was working with this amazing graphic designer, who was not quite getting the recognition he deserved because of the nature of the work that he has does. This was a theme with a lot of the projects and people I worked with. It was always about how can I help these people that were being overlooked. In addition, to finding a cool way to promote and market the tour I was also trying to find a really creative way to market and promote Mike’s work. Then, over time I thought why not apply some of the same principles and techniques that are used to promote artists, athletes, and movie stars to people like Mike and people that are overlooked in all different industries. Eventually, I realized I was really just doing DE&I work. As a result, this project and the time I spent working with Mike are always special to me. It helped me develop a whole other skill set in an industry I never imagined working in that has opened up countless opportunities for me while also helping me become a better engineer. Even though Mike and I never got to use some of the wonderful concepts from this project he did eventually work on the artwork for the Wu-Tang Clan Documentary Wu-Tang: Of Mics and Men as well as the artwork for the live version of Nas’ classic album Illmatic: Live from the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra. So I think things worked out for Mike as well. Who knows some of these concepts and some of the other unfinished concepts we worked on over the years might show up somewhere one of these days. I will always remember the wonderful piece we worked on below before we started working on this project and many of the other wonderful projects we have worked on over the years that can be found here. Click here to learn more about this project. You can also see some pictures by Reji Berrouet from the Wu-Tang: Of Mics and Men pop-up that Mike curated at Dolby Soho here as well.
