Patterns and Totems

Working in the studio is now a much bigger treat than it ever has been before.  I suppose I was not quite aware how much time and effort would be involved with raising a child.  I bring Austin to studio quite regularly and sometimes he even lets me get some painting done.  Sometimes he ends up making me read to him and feed him, but hey he's a baby and that's cool.

I have been in the midst of a pretty big project.  I am preparing for Picnic Arts and Music festival in Portland, ME.  The event is actually in a park that I can see from my living room.  I participated last year and met several great connections, sold a lot of work, and had a lot of fun.  The show in Bangor was a direct result of Picnic.  I am creating 100 different totems to sell of varying sizes.  As I've been working through the pieces, I've slowly been getting more and more into the patterns and edgings.  You can get a good idea of the progress on these pieces from my instagram account.  

Studio is often some pretty lonesome time.  Today I got a video of the piece that my old shop mate out in Seattle was working on, so I took a quick video to send back his way.  It's a series of close ups of the pieces that I've been working on today and then a pan of the group of finished totems.  They are starting to look like a real force when you look at them all together.  I love it.

I'm really pleased with this work and I can't wait to get it all out there at Picnic.  I'm hoping that the public will appreciate it like I do.

Peace
-Mike

The Mad Push For Picnic Begins

It occurred to me the other day that we are well into July.  This last weekend was a holiday weekend and the weeks preceding this past weekend accounted for the first weeks of my boy, the mini lark.  It has been super busy and I have been having trouble keeping track of much of anything.  That said, I realized that Picnic, which I will be showing in again this summer, is in a mere 6 weeks.  I need to get my work together.

I have re-thought the way that I wish to finish my totems, what they mean to me, what their cosmology entails, etc, but now I really just need to make a slew of them.  I would like to have at least a hundred miniature totems created for the Picnic festival.  Last year I did quite well with them.  I also wish to have a number of different jewelry options.  I feel like people will enjoy having the totems as pendants as well.

Tonight I found myself in studio able to putz around a bit and I started working through these three totems.  I am treating them all like pieces that work in the round.  I think that it likens the work to a more complete stage.  Here are the three that I was working on tonight.

I still find myself struggling as I know that I need to create a piece with a shark in it.  For some reason I having trouble translating a shark character into this vernacular.  My best attempt thus far is at the left.  I don't think it is very good as a shark, but it does appear to suit itself well as a swimming dinosaur.  Art problems.

Peace
-Mike

Grids, Miniature, and the Longing for Multiple Dimensions

My work has been possessed by two separate impulses since I hung my last body of work.  Last week I gave an artist talk on the show which is up in Bangor, Me at the Rock and Art Shop, which really helped to focus my thoughts on what that work was about.  The talk allowed me to understand better what transformations the work had taken and how to explain those changes.  Since I put together that work I have have been working on a very large series of grid pieces on plywood that have since started to become the White Lodge project, which I discussed in my last post.  The second avenue that my work has taken is more akin to the route that my work was on when I created my thesis work back in 2013. 

I am becoming interested, again, in the idea of very small pieces adding up into an overwhelming mass of changing color and form.  Currently I plan to stagger a series of one inch square rods in the corner of a gallery wall.  I haven't figured out how to construct the foundation of this project but have been busy at work developing the surface level.  Here's an image of the drawn and staggered rods.

As I've been adding color this piece has been really taking a form that I am pleased with, however.  I can't wait to get these pieces accumulated in larger numbers so that I can understand better what this layout will do to the eye.

More to come later. 
Peace
-Mike