A proud son, a prouder mom and that iconic Jazz cup design

Aurora resident Gina Ekiss was surprised when her son decided to major in interactive design in college.

After all, she figured, Michael's primary passion during his high school years had seemed to be baseball. He was even heading to Maryville University in St. Louis on scholarship for the sport.

"I just assumed he would probably go into sports training or something like that ... I was really shocked when he told me that was what he wanted to pursue," Ekiss said at her home Thursday.

But Michael Burgess (his last name is different because Gina has remarried) had grown up with a mother who valued her creative side — and encouraged his.

"She just always liked doing art," Burgess said. "So I just naturally took an interest to it."

He decided to pursue the field even though he didn't think his mother had been given the recognition she deserved for her most well-known work — "Jazz," the teal and purple brushstroke design that graces disposable cups and plates made by Sweetheart Cup Company and Solo Cup Company.

"Over the years I've told her how incredible of an achievement it is to have your design plastered all across the nation, knowing that it's something you created," Burgess said. "She never really was much of a boaster, so her story stayed in the shadows."

Earlier this month, members of the Web forum Reddit tried to determine who had created the Jazz pattern, and they unearthed old emails from Solo saying the designer was a woman named Gina who had worked at the then-Sweetheart plant in Springfield, Missouri, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I was fascinated by the the online love for the design and took up the search. On June 16, I drove 45 minutes to Ekiss' house in Aurora and, rather luckily, caught her on her day off.

The resulting story, once published, quickly made it to the front page of Reddit, leading to mentions or stories in a variety of other media outlets — BuzzFeed, Gizmodo and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few. A reporter with ABC's "Good Morning America" called Gina at work for an interview. The resulting story was headlined "The Internet is Freaking Out Over Finding the Designer of '90s 'Jazz' Cup."

"Most of the people's comments were very positive, and it's still very surreal to me that it's still got a shelf life," Ekiss said Thursday.

(For the record, Dart Container Corporation, which acquired Solo Cup Company in 2012, had said it was looking into who was behind the design. On Wednesday, Kasey Skala — who handles social media and online engagement for the company — told me the following: "We searched high and low, but unfortunately we came up empty. With Dart's acquisitions of Sweetheart and Solo Cup, most of the historical information has been lost as those involved in the project are no longer with the company. As of now, our best assumption is that Gina was the original creator; however, we aren't able to confirm.")

Burgess reached out to me after my story was published. He sees some injustice in his mother's story — the woman behind one of the more-recognized patterns in existence hasn't really financially benefited from it (Ekiss was paid a set salary when she created it for the company). Hoping some fans of his mother's design might be interested in showing it with their wallets, he set up a online page where they can donate — GoFundMe.com/JazzCupRecognition — although it has received little attention.

"It has always irked me that she never made it a goal to get more out of her design, because she deserved more praise than to be laid off and left with a challenge of feeding my sister and I when we were children," Burgess said.

Ekiss started working for Sweetheart in 1987 and parted ways with the company in the early 2000s, when Sweetheart decided to move its art department to Baltimore. Ekiss' daughter Hannah was 3 years old at the time, and Ekiss decided to stay home and do some freelance work painting murals until Hannah entered kindergarten. Once she did, Ekiss said, it was "pretty much impossible" to get back into the fast-changing design industry, at least locally.

"People would have me in and say, 'You're qualified, but you're not up to speed on the latest software,'" Ekiss said.

Ekiss isn't the only former Springfield Sweetheart artist that no longer works in the field.

Springfield resident Dennis Marsh started working for Lily Tulip in 1983 and was a manager by the time Ekiss started. Marsh told me Wednesday he was a driving force behind the company's decision to hold an internal contest to choose its next stock design — the contest that Ekiss won with Jazz. Outside design agencies just didn't understand the specifics of Sweetheart's printing process, Marsh said, and had been submitting designs that were too complicated to produce mass-scale.

"I was always touting the ability of our department, the talent of our department," Marsh said.

Today, Marsh sells janitorial supplies.

"It was really difficult to come up with the same kind of design career in Springfield, Missouri, compared to someplace like Chicago," he said. "So that's kind of what led everyone to different careers."

Marsh, who left Sweetheart in 1998, said staff in Springfield were responsible for other designs that have stuck around. A man named Rick Henry, he said, is responsible for the appearance of the company's popcorn bucket, which — in its bid for generic mass-market appeal — features the word "Popcorn" in red and white 3-D looking letters, along with images of popcorn.

With her daughter in school and a design-related job out of reach, Ekiss ended up working with a friend who did landscaping, and ultimately purchased a landscape supply company in 2004 with her then-husband. All About Nature was located about halfway between Springfield and Republic, she said.

"It was fun, but it was very, very hard work," Ekiss said.

An altercation with a customer — Ekiss said she was assaulted — left her uncomfortable working alone at the store in 2008, and the couple tried unsuccessfully to sell the company. The recession had begun. In the coming months, Ekiss said, the couple would lose two vehicles and their house. They filed for bankruptcy and eventually divorced.

"It was a rough few years there for the kids," Ekiss said.

Ekiss said nobody could have foreseen the longevity the Jazz design would have.

"I totally understand having to sign my rights away," she said. "Nobody knew what it was going to become. That's the whole point. Yeah, I'd be thrilled if I'd gotten some royalties or something, but that wasn't why I did the design."

Ekiss has since remarried. She enjoys the fact that her current framing job at Hobby Lobby allows her to help people and be in contact with local artists. And she hasn't let go of her creative side, although her current work is unlikely to be dubbed "the look of the '90s." She makes jewelry, and also uses wood burning tools to sear Native American imagery on gourds.

"I have Native American heritage in my family, and I just wanted to preserve that a little bit, on something from nature," she said.

Burgess, meanwhile, was one of about a dozen Maryville students selected this year to create a portrait of a St. Louis Cardinals player (he was given catcher Yadier Molina). The pieces, which have been signed by the players, will be auctioned off in August to raise money for three nonprofit organizations.

And that makes Ekiss proud.

"I said, 'That's something that nobody can every take away from you ... that feeling, knowing you created that."