Viva Lebowski & The Lights Out

I was asked to do the promotional poster for the Viva Lebowski event at Bayside Bowl here in Portland, ME this year.  The event is great.  It is essentially Lebowskifest, however that name has been copyrighted by its originators and new Lebowski events are forced to think of new names.  Viva Lebowski is great though.  All proceeds are donated to a different non profit or individual in need every year, and it was with great pleasure that I could provide my illustration skills to help out that end.

Here is my paper doll poster contribution.  Hope you like it.

I also found that a college friends' band is playing in Portland early in November and approached him to see if he would like me to do his flyer.  He, thankfully, was all about it.  I had done one poster for The Lights Out while I was living in Minnesota but this project is cooler because I actually live in the town where the posters will be hung.  As for bands, who could ask for a better band name than The Lights Out to create a poster for?  Nobody, that's who.

It was awesome to be able to work on both of these projects!  I hope you folks like looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Peace
-Mike

More Partition Works

I am busting out small works in this partition series, like it were my job.  Wait a second.  This is my job, isn't it?  Awesome.  I've been really pleased with the way that these pieces have been working out, so I decided to share a few more.

The first and third images are available on my Etsy page.  The second and fourth are more displays of mail art.  I am really loving being able to give away some of my work to artists that I respect and people that I love.  Sometimes you need to do something like that in order to remember why you do art to begin with, which actually has nothing to do with it being a job, but has way more to do with creating a rich tapestry for your soul.  Sorry about the new agey bit there.  I can't help it.  I've been feeling good.

Posting a couple more things today, but they don't go particularly well with this post, so don't touch that dial.

Peace
-Mike

Mail Art

While making the paintings that to fulfill the Billboard Project, I started to really geek out on these little drawings and thought to myself that I should just do a bunch more of them.  I've been mailing them to my friends because I've been feeling really lonesome for the past couple weeks.  I'm not sure that it really helps but at least I don't feel like I am making work for no reason whatsoever. 

I think that they will make for a good series when all is said and done.  Of course if I continue to mail them all over the country then I won't have any left to sell or anything like that, but I've been thinking that they would be cooler in a coffee table book or something anyway.  Possibly with a note of where they were sent or something.  I'm not much of a mail artist.  This is really just a way to stay connected with all of the people that I love across this nation.

Hope you dig.

If nothing else this project is really helping me work on the ink and color drawing style.  Crank 60 more of these out and it will be old hat.  Anyway, hope you are all well.  Let me know if you need one.

Peace
Mike

Wooden Robots Rule

I have homework done this evening and I am sitting in front of my computer trying as hard as all get out to think of questions that drive my studio practice, which will then be written at the top of a worksheet that is to be used to build my classmates and my theses.  I have written two questions and they seem very pretentious, so I thought that it might help to come over to this sphere of the art world and post a couple different projects that I have been working on.  I can't help but think that this is after all my real artistic voice.

A couple weeks ago I took down two installations, threw the loose wood into my studio and jumped in my truck to go work for a weekend.  Meaning that last week when I got home there was an incredible mess lying out on the floor for me.  Most folks would decide to clean, but I decided to start building a seven foot tall robot out of wood. 

It is a very exciting process to sculpt with found wood materials.  I feel like I am painting and assembling at the same time, and never do I feel less of a gap between the two processes.  I do not concern myself with craftsmanship and try to downplay stability within the pieces.  I think, in the end, that this is where the translation between drawings and physical space really occurs for me.

Check out my robot.

The sketch is the type of cartoon robots that this guy is based on.  Do you think that it is possible to create a found sculpture that reads like a cute cartoon?  How does one blur the lines between cartoon and jagged surfaces?  I think I found my second question rooted in those two lines.

 

I will post again later tonight.  I have several small paintings to share as well.  IT doesn't seem quite right to show them in the same post as this guy though.  They seem rather unrelated even though I know that they inherently are.

Peace

Mike

Television Planter

I drive a lot between New Hampshire and Maine and while on my drives often think of different art projects.  During the last week I was obsessed with the idea of televisions as planters, much like the old paintings I had done with the plants taking over a more technological setting.  I think that perhaps in the end this will be very similar to what happens in an apocalyptic world. 

The creatures that inhabited this planet from the get go will take over again.  At least I hope so.  With this in mind I created today's piece:

 This piece is definitely a delineation from my more illustrative work but I think that incorporating this with more illustrative work will be very successful.  I am looking forward to the idea of matching this up with more painterly elements.

It does make me wonder what in the end counts as a painting, however.  This is certainly much more painting than it is reality.  Is any environment that is constructed more painting than reality.  Questions to be answered in the future but currently I have not the faculty to answer that.

Peace
Mike

The Billboard Project New Orleans - Complete

Today I submitted my entries into the New Orleans Billboard Project.  A good deal of intricate cross hatching resulted in some work that I am very pleased with.  I think that this is a pretty fair example of how the two trains of thought that have been fueling my work intersect.

Lately I have been obsessed with interchangeable items as well as bringing the art of cartooning back into my work.  I know that here on this blog I have not shared a lot of work that was without its cartoons, but for the sake of school I have been sticking primarily to pipe drawings and found wood sculpture.  These two types of work are amazing and I love them, but neither is a path that I am willing to go down without cartoon and painting.  Cartoons and painting serve as my nubby, as my chef would put it.

So here are my last two images for the Billboard Project.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

 

 I thought this piece was great because it was a series of three dimensional pieces that I used to create a two dimensional plane.  The blocks could be changed out to make a different piece of billboard art which is an idea that I am very enamored with.

This one I am very pleased with as well, though for different reasons.  This piece I think suggests a bit of a narrative for folks to pick out and I like that a lot.  It also is a bit simpler than the first two drawn pieces.   I am wondering if that makes it more or less powerful as an image?  Any ideas to this effect would be welcome.

As it stands to me though, another successful project.
Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

October TNT

It's been a super long couple weeks, but the drama on the home front is coming to an end and some of the big projects that I have been working on are near complete or already complete.  This week I finished up the October poster for Bard Coffee's Thursday Night Throwdown and lined up another project for Portland's Viva Lebowski, which is going to be an absolute blast.  I have three more days to pull together my imagery for the Billboard Project in New Orleans, and the semester is just starting to ramp up into something good.

For today I will just be sharing the October poster and the newest robot block that I have completed, though this particular robot block is a lot more than it seems.  It is much larger than the other blocks and carries more physical and mental weight to it.  So without further adieu.

I'm pretty pleased with this month's poster.  It took a little doing to get it to save properly this month, because I've been so stressed out that I missed a step.  Whoops. 

Now, here's the robot.

That's it for now, but I will be back soon.  October is looking pretty big and some emotional crap has been going down too, so what better way to celebrate than with some artmaking.

Peace
Mike

To be Awesome or not to be Awesome, that is a question.

I am left wondering if today was awesome or just plain awful.  I think that I am going to roll with awesome, because frankly today I did awesome stuff in the morning and awesome stuff at night and the mid-afternoon was awful.  To heck with it.  Crap sandwich, but for real, I made these today, and you can purchase them for five bucks from my friend Melissa, and that is awesome, because you can support me and my friend Melissa who is the awesomest.

I am stoked.  This has been something that I have wanted to put together for months.  So, awesome.  They are available currently at The Studio in Laconia, NH.  Get them while you.

In other news, I am falling seriously behind.  It's called work and I have way too much of it to do right now.  I was feeling bummed about this a little while ago, but you know what?  I need that to keep me going.  I realized I was feeling crappy about other stuff and taking it out on my artwork and you know what that equals, crap sandwich.  Solved.  Moving on and making some stuff that I am in love with.  I will share with all of y'all soon.

Get Up.
Peace
Mike