Courtesy of Robbie Guertin ’02
After graduating from Conn in 2002, Robbie Guertin started playing in an indie rock band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (CYHSY). The band released its first album in 2005. Guertin left the band in 2012 after releasing three more albums and going on several tours. 20 years later, Guertin is still working as an artist, graphic designer, and musician. Guertin designed album art, promotional items, and merchandise for CYHSY as well as for his two side projects, Radical Dads and Uninhabitable Mansions, and is now working as a freelance designer and illustrator. He has worked on several accounts for big companies like Spotify and Healthline.
SH: You acted as designer and occasional artist for CYHSY as well as for your two side projects. Is that something you knew you wanted to do beforehand, or did it kind of fall in your lap and you took on artistic responsibility?
RG: I always liked doing the art side of being in a band just as much as the music. It’s a great excuse to make stuff – you always need posters, album art, t-shirts, whatever else you can think of. Since I was an Art major at Conn, I had access to all the facilities at Cummings, so I would make all the posters and art and what not for my bands there, whether it was a print or a drawing or designing something digitally. When I started with CYHSY I just automatically fell into that role, and since we were always a pretty DIY operation and because I enjoyed it, I kept on doing it. It was the same with my other bands Uninhabitable Mansions and Radical Dads.
SH: You majored in Art at Conn; did you develop a passion for art in college or before? Did you explore other disciplines while at college?
RG: I wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do, but I was always leaning towards Art. My first year I took an art class each semester. My second year I took two… by the end it was pretty much all art. The one thing I stumbled into was Computer Science. When I started, I was just doing it to fill a requirement and it was looking like I might have to drop the class because I wasn’t understanding anything, and then I somehow turned a corner and figured it out and got through the first course, then ended up almost doing a minor in it. I didn’t quite make it to the minor, but it did lead me to the C@T program, which I did complete, and it has definitely been useful to have a good foundational understanding of computers as they’ve gradually taken over so many parts of our lives these days.
SH: What made you pick Conn?
RG: I was deciding between Conn and Skidmore, and they both seemed like good fits for me. I spent a night at both before coming, and I just got better vibes from CC, so I went for it.
SH: When did you meet your CYHSY bandmates?
RG: I met everyone at Conn, though they were all one or two years ahead of me, so I didn’t hang out with them too much there since we only overlapped a bit. Mostly I knew them all through bands they were in and MOBROC. Everyone was constantly forming and joining and leaving and breaking up bands. Lee ‘02 and Tyler Sargent ‘02 were in a band called Clown Down, among many others, and I was their biggest fan. I remember one of Alec’s bands doing a great cover of “Psycho Killer” at a show at The Barn one night. Sean was an amazing guitar player and singer and was in a bunch of bands, including the Guns and Roses tribute band Mr. Brownstone, but he wanted to try the drums, so he also played drums for the first time in a band with me called Robots in Disguise. I also joined a band called Made in Canada that Tyler was in too after he had graduated. After school we all eventually ended up in New York City, where I did a few random projects with Tyler and Sean, and eventually CYHSY came together.
SH: Can you remember your favorite classes or spots on campus?
RG: I spent most of my time either in Cummings, in the MOBROC barn, hanging out at WCNI, or playing club soccer.
SH: 20 years after your graduation, do you feel connected to the college and its community?
RG: Most of my best friends I met at CC, so that has been my main connection to the school.
SH: How did your art courses at Conn prepare you/teach you about pursuing art professionally?
RG: Working sort of in between the illustration and design worlds, I see a lot of artists who aren’t very comfortable on the design side of things, and a lot of designers who don’t have very solid drawing fundamentals. CC helped me build a solid foundation in both of those directions and has helped me feel confident in whatever new project I’m taking on. I also feel confident working in both physical and digital directions, which was again all thanks to all the different directions I was able to explore in the Conn Art department. I got a solid foundation in drawing from Professors McCabe and Hendricks, I was able to explore lots of different techniques and mediums in the printmaking studio with Professor McDowell, and I always remember Professor Wollensak’s focus on teaching design, not just how to use the different programs, which are of course always changing and evolving.
SH: Did you learn to play instruments at Conn or before? If before, at what age?
RG: I sang in my church choir, had some piano lessons, and played trumpet through middle school, and mostly just learned guitar on my own in high school. The MOBROC barn was such a great asset for meeting people and practicing and forming bands and all that. Since there were usually a bunch of drum sets set up in there, I ended up going in there on my own a lot during my senior year and started to figure out how to play drums. I got better as I went along, but it was definitely crucial to have that initial time/space to get the ball rolling.
SH: Out of all the accounts and projects you’ve worked on, which are you most proud of?
RG: I’m generally more partial to my personal projects and bands, which are more labors of love. I’ve made some music videos for my band Radical Dads, and for the video for Institution I did all the drawings all by hand on paper with colored pencils and I was pretty proud of how that turned out. With my professional projects, I’m usually most excited about whatever the most recent stuff is. My more recent projects with OutSchool and Cookies have been more on the illustration and animation side of the spectrum, so that has been fun.
