Death, Extinction, and Painting like your Mentors

I've spent some time trying to figure out what it is about extinct birds that has me so intrigued. For a little while I suspected that it had something to do with an environmental consciousness; sort of an extrapolation of the climate crisis that we aw experiencing. But to be honest, while I am very concerned with our climate, the effects we as a species have had on it, and most prevalent in my personal world, Maine's complete lack of winter thus far, I have to admit that this series is not because of sense of responsibility to the environment. It's the same sort of trope I would find myself falling into while I. Graduate school as for the reason that I prefer found materials. 

I realize now, coming off from a baseball season where the Mets made it to the World Series, and in my continual interest in the idea of race conflicts, and my perpetual views of land ownership, that I always cheer for the underdog. It is something deeper than that though. It is more this sense that I need to pay close attention to that which my fellow human beings may miss. I want to notice the insignificant, the under appreciated and remember the things that it seems we as a populace feel it may be better to forget. 

While it is true that many people when approached with the concept of species who are no longer with us will most definitely act the part of caring. I suspect that there is the idea of what a conscious, responsible, empathetic human must be; a sort of simulacrum of the ideal human being that so many of us aim to be. We put on that face as a populace. We are brutally affected by celebrity's deaths, terribly concerned about the welfare of the manatees, quick to throw up a #blacklivesmatter, but how many of us live the actuality of this "ideal human?"  I know I don't. I am anxious about my family, my job and my current lack of wheels. It would not surprise me if most people fell into this frame of mind. What I'm getting at here is that people don't pay attention on a daily basis. The extinct birds are as much a reminder of the fact that our planet has been through a world of change overseen by humankind as it is a reminder to hold dear to you the concept of life and a soul. It is fragile and likely to disappear. 

Today was a very good studio day. I'm starting to hit this stride with my focus. Like many people say, having a family and expectations at home will often make you more focused she you are at your work. I wasn't prone to believe this before, but now I am finding it to be true. 

I can't wait to get going on these panels. I have been doing simple portraits of Hawaiian birds that we have lost in a transparent acrylic style which I learned from an instructor at Syracuse, Trey Gallagher. I feel like these pieces pay a nice compliment to the work that feature bird and pattern. Also there are so many species that we have lost in Hawaii alone that it makes perfect sense to a mini series on the extinct Hawaiian birds. 

These were my jams today. Carted for life. Hope your day was amazing. 

Peace

-Mike

Slowing Down

My wife a and I have been slowing down. After two years of chasing our tails we are starting to settle into what I can only assume will be our life going forward. To maintain the illusion that everything will calm down and we will catch up, feel less stressed, or find our pot of gold seems less an less plausible. However, the joys within that rushed an stressed schedule are becoming more intense. People talk about the ability to focus when you have that time to yourself, whatever the time may be. 

I've always found that I am more likely to find my peace through organization and through my work. I am not very good at organization, but it is a battle I like to fight. My work is always there, but what I've been realizing lately is that I haven't been using it as a tool for my own self medication quite enough. When producing at the right time I feel that I am able to steady myself. One of the big steps in steadying myself is to ignore the outside voices; the voices telling you about marketing, success, the way to make it. I feel more steadfastly than ever before, even with my marginal bit of success, that no one ever makes it purely by following other peoples paths. Even if you do follow someone else's path, success is only reached if you own that path and make it yours. I am not the people from Red Lemon Club, CreativeBoom  or Illustration Friday.  I am something else. I am me. You're you too. 

I have lived my life creating work for galleries. There has always been that voice telling me I need to create illustrations, because I went to school for it and I am fairly good at it when given a project. The white elephant that I have chosen to ignore for so long is this; I spend so much time working, creating art, drawing and painting, but I do not spend this time creating illustrations. It is not a matter of discipline and I don't want to feel guilty about it anymore. I simply want to follow a different path. I am a painter. That is the life I want to live and teach.  There is nothing to feel guilty about in that. 

I have been working more with my studio mates under the moniker, Freehand Armada. We have a small show of remixed still lives coming up. It has felt so good to focus on still lives. It has allowed me to enjoy my use of color and arrangement of shapes. It has helped me create that order out of the mathematical chaos that roger Allard talk about in The Blue Rider Journal. Here are a couple of my recent pieces. 

It's nice to find the things that are slow. Life will always be hectic if you let. Drama begets drama. I can't do it any more.  I have to she'd the things that don't work an embrace what does. 

Peace

Mike

PS Courtney, it's all for you. 

A Clean Studio, Reading Japanese Fairy Tales, & Enjoying Your Successes

You always want to write yourself as a good character.  We always want to be the good guy, someone people empathize with.  I've been reading a book of Japanese fairy tales to my son the past couple days and it has me questioning the idea of good people.  We assume that if we are good people that people will treat us the way we should be treated, we will be addressed equivocally, our deeds will be remembered with satisfaction, but, as in these Japanese fairy tales, however, what if this just isn't true?  What if it's a misconception that people who are by and large good people are actually not doing enough, or what if without the awareness of their acts both good and bad they are not completely whole?

I struggle with this idea and many other smaller thoughts that may be my undoing, causing a lack in motivation, or may be conversely, my strength, providing my work, love, and character with that necessary depth to be whole.  Still, I struggle with empathy.  I get lost in the trappings of my work, the idea that I must keep working, solving my own life's mysteries, creating because creating is what brings me energy and peace. I made a promise to myself that I would work hard enough to get to that elusive somewhere with my art.  I set the sights at where certain artists, like Jeff Soto and Barry McGee were showing and creating, determining that I needed to get there in order to be successful.  For about a dozen years I've labored at this.  I've created a formidable body of work, but no piece of which has brought me the stardom or notoriety that either of these heroes have attained.

Along the way I've married and had a beautiful son.  I've stopped cooking in restaurants and am now an adjunct faculty member, teaching art to people in their late teens and early twenties.  I have a comfortable studio and a comfortable home.  I can create comfortably every day of the week.

It doesn't always make me happy though.  I long for so many things I can't have.  I long for places where I've felt that I was more creative.  I long for better galleries, better artist friends, more stimulating conversation and a deeper and more whole understanding of what it is that I do.  If I could just have a deeper understanding of what it is that I am doing, maybe I could focus, feel good about the course that I am on, be validated, both in the creative work that I do and the qualities that I have to offer at my workplace.  But the truth of the matter is that beyond receiving a raise, or a newer
shinier teaching position with a tenure track and benefits, there is little validation that I can receive that will affect my life and the life of my family.

Recently, I've felt like maybe I've been the bad guy in my own story.  I've felt short with my family and with my work.  I went through a month long period where I was searching for new opportunities, new jobs, gallery shows, creative outlets of any kind.  I wanted to live life filled to the gills with my art again, but it never occurred to me until I was reading fairy tales to my child that maybe my cup was full and that's why I'm having trouble pouring more into it.

I've created so much in the past two months and I am truly overwhelmed by the experience.  My work has grown, but I'm now at that stage where I need to let the soul grow into that space that the work has created.  Yesterday, I cleaned my studio again.  I consider it the rebirth, just in time for the winter, a season of rumination and creation.  Winter always provides me with that opportunity to go slow and reflect.  I hope it's long and cold, because I will be inside filled with the warmth of my family's love, the joy of my studies, and the satisfaction of my work.

The Fear that your Passion is Greater than Your Instructors Ability

Today was the first day of class for one of my sections of 2d design. Generally my 2d design class is filled with a number of non-art people. This is the nature of a community college, and I will say that most of the time, it is the complete privilege of teaching at a community college. I hae met some incredible people who are multifariously gifted and individual. 

On the first day of class I like to ask my students what their greatest fear about the class is. Often these answers focus around anxiety in drawing ability, shyness, inability to share, or the feeling that you might suck. Today, however, a student looked up and said, " I am only scared that my teacher (that would be me) will not be as passionate about art as I am. This is a bold statement to make. I am not sure how most artists would take that attack. Do you laugh it off?  Do you question its truth?  These students have so much more youth and energy. Clearly they might have a bit more gusto, a bit more juice in the tank?  How arrogant a statement. Was it anything but passion for art that put me in the position of faculty to begin with?  I am not offended, but I am completely intrigued with what this student brings in and it calls to light something I haven't thought about in ages. In order to be successful in the arts, I believe that you have to think that you are right. There is no one who can tell you otherwise. If they do your work fails. Pretty simple. It doesn't really attest if you are actually right, but I think you need to be so confident in yourself that you think critics are ignoramuses rather than that your work is ill founded or poorly executed.

Here are a few suprematist coffee pots that I have been working on. I'm interested in the order of shapes necessary to communicate the object. I'll keep you posted. 

In the meantime, thank you young lady for the reminder to remain passionate. We'll see how this plays out. Maybe you are more passionate than I am, but for the next three months I will say, that you have to deal with me believing that I am right. 

Peace

-Mike

Letting Go: Allowing the Creative Mind to Wander

When I am busy with my daily life, I often have trouble maintaining my creative focus.  When I am allotted time to work in studio or at home I will often feel bitter that I must work right then, that I don't get a day to just be off from work, free to do what I want.  I begin to constrain my creative ideas by overanalyzing daily situations, absorbing outside pressures, and ultimately trying too hard to make as much of my time as possible.  When entrenched in one of these ruts it is difficult to remember that I am most successful when I allow my mind to wander.

The other night I was sitting in my easy chair looking out the window.  I began to draw a street light in a sketchbook and three days later have done over ten drawings of these street lights.  Mind you, were I not working full time over the summer, I would probably have more of these drawings done, but that's okay.  The idea is down.  I will be more prolific in the fall when I start teaching again.  For now the idea is down, I have something to noodle with, and I am not gritting my teeth trying to work too much out of myself.

More to come when it comes.

Peace

-Mike

Where Did I Leave Off

UThis summer has been so very trying on my creativity. I took a job in an art gallery and seemingly lost my creative mojo. There were so many works around me, very few of which I wanted to feel any influence by, and on the whole my little brain has felt completely an utterly overwhelmed. Compounded with the amount of time that the job takes up I feel like I have been in for it. 

This morning I woke up with a piece in my head though. I haven't in a while, but I know that when I do there is some soup about to get made. I'm off to the soup. I figured that if I couldn't figure out where I was going it was probably because I never got to where I was headed with the last body of work. Sometimes I forget that a new series of work doesn't have to concern an entirely new approach or concept. Sometimes it can just be a matter of the growth of your ideas. And so I have returned to the succulents with the tessellations, albeit a bit smaller this time, and my heart feels light. I know I'm doing something right tonight. 

I'm excited to see what the studio brings tomorrow. Peace. 

-Mike

CSArt, Working for the Man & Goya

I've been plugging through Robert Hugh's "Goya" again. It's a good book, but long and heavy. It's just not something you sit down and read cover to cover in a few days. 

I've been working for a used car salesman turned art gallery owner and it is proving to be a difficult venture for me. I am expected to dress better there than when I teach. It seems silly to me. As I was thumbing through Goya I came to a passage on a portrait of Carlos IV in which his dog is sniffing obsequiously at his crotch. The collar of the dog is labeled G-O-Y... which implies Goya's name on the color, suggesting that he was the king's loyal servant. It's apropos that as I slog through a summer job working for a man I have a hard time respecting I read of Goya working for a King who primarily hunted and left politics to his staff. 

And so I humbly return to my work and accept my position for what it is. I am happy with these pieces of compartmentalization that I am working on. The drawings are born from spontaneity, defining a game and rules as I go. The color is becoming a play which is indicative of a study in Albers. Colors are changing for me based on what I place around them. There is no recognizable subject so I am allowed to convey my message and my empathy solely with color. It's working well thus far. Here are te five.completed pieces. 

I must remind myself to focus, keep my head up, and remember how good I have it. I have goals in mind which I must achieve. Getting to wrqpped up in work drama will not help get me to them. 

Peace

-Mike

Some Inspiration - Found Wood - The Exploration

Summer is in full swing.  My show in Bangor has come and gone and now I am left with the itch.  I have a show of watercolors coming up in Laconia in October, but it is the end of June.  I am not done making paintings like those that I put in "The Dinosaurs of Industry," but in order to make more work, I need more materials.  I need some found wood.

When I get in this mood, I generally begin by taking some early morning walks.  The morning is the easiest time for me to think.  I have a clear head.  There is nothing to process from the day.  I can respond to objects that I encounter for their sheer aesthetic value and nothing else. There are several good spots to walk in Portland, ME to find found materials.  The Bayside community has two things going for it.  There is a high volume of low income traffic that roams through the neighborhood and sometimes you will find interesting tidbits of the night before, post-its, receipts, paper bags, etc.  There is also the architectural salvage store and a few warehouses and a drop off for a good will.  Sometimes people will drop off items, like plywood or busted furniture, which are not going to be useful to anyone in the future as actual furniture.  To me, these items are gold.  Often you will find small pieces of wood around warehouses that were used as packing or for trucks to drive over icy patches, etc.  I try to take nothing that looks like it is being used.  Lastly, the architectural salvage has a bin outside which houses pieces that they do not want to resell.  This usually results in a bunch of less than ideal looking surfaces, but sometimes there are some real gems.

I then tend to walk around the neighborhoods.  The West End is usually devoid of good building materials.  If you catch someone remodeling on the right day you could very well find something, but people in the West End clean up rather quickly.  It is the nice end of town after all.  If nothing else a walk through the West End is pleasant.  I then head down the hill and Close to the water.  Sometimes you will find some wood towards where the ships come in.  I do not generally walk up and down the docks as I don't want to irritate the folks working on the ships coming in.  It is generally early after all, and the folks on the docks usually have been up far longer than me.

I then swing  down Grant and Sherman streets.  Apartments are cheaper there, so there is a high turnover rate and you can quite often find interesting things that people have left behind when they are moving out.  Tomorrow I intend to try walking around on Munjoy Hill.  I haven't spent much time walking up there because until a year and a half ago it was way on the other side of town from me.  Now I live at the base.  There looks to be some good construction projects going on so I will probably be able to find something in the way of materials if I'm patient.

When I see something that I want to use, it isn't a casual thing.  It hits me in the face with the wave of creation.  I want to use it immediately.  I want to hold it.  I want to carry it, however heavy it may be. There is no question in my mind as to the materials I should pick up and the ones that I should leave behind.  The right piece of wood can fuel entire studio days.  My energies have settled a bit after some intense work.  It's time to find some creative fodder.

Peace
-Mike

Two Cabins, Hermeticism, Jack London and a Romantic Ideal of Adventure

In my last blog post I mentioned feeling like an artist working hermetically in my space.  The idea of the artist working in a space in solitary is very romantic.  If conversations with people at art shows and sales and even when I am out and about town are proof enough, the average person seems to think of an artist sitting alone in a zen like experience, joyously skipping between painting surfaces, elated to be doing something fun for a living; but tortured at the same time, suffering to find something to eat, irreversibly poor.

As I was reading an article on "Walden, Revisited" at the DeCordova, I started to feel more conflicted by the idea of hermeticism.  When I think of hermeticism, I think of an old man who lived down the road from my Uncle Roger.  I seem to remember that occasionally my cousin Chris and I would venture down and talk to the man, who had crudely constructed his little ramshackle shack out of mismatching woods.  He was grizzled and I have no idea what he talked about.  He is just a vague image in my mind.  Conversely, I think of Strickland in Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence."  He is so taken by his painting that he is unaware of love, social niceties, or even the state of his own body; he was dying of leprosy but still painted on.

The show features "Two Cabins," by James Benning; comparison between Thoreau's cabin on Walden and the unabomber, Ted Kacynski's shack in Montana.  The strange correlation between utopia and dystopia becomes evident.  They are both other worlds which we are in one case yearning for an in another case heading toward.  Perhaps neither is entirely attainable or perhaps both are ultimately truisms dependent on the other.  Maybe it is the job of the hermetic artist, one who is detached from society if only in perception, to reveal the utopia within our more dystopian reality.  Utopia only exists in that we know what does not work.  We have forever been trying to produce machinery and goods which will make life easier.  It is a utopian ideal that life should be easier, but as we grow to find our lives easier, we realize that error of our leisure.  Our leisure begets idleness which as a byproduct results in a dystopian society.

As I sit in studio visiting and revisiting mathematical patterns and optical illusions coupled with drawings of nature and the failures of our industrial society, I begin to see the paradoxical relationship of Utopia and Dystopia.  The work begins to make more sense.  It is more simply put an accumulation of the things we want and the things we wanted and their propensity to change in relation to what we have.

My desires are mercurial at best.  I have started reading "The Sea Wolf," by Jack London.  Humphrey Van Weyden is a learned man from San Francisco who is lost at sea after his Ferry boat is struck and sinks.  He is picked up by a sealing schooner set for the Japanese coast.  At the helm of this ship is Wolf Larsen.  The two characters talk of their varying ideals of life; Larsen is a scourge and an autodidact, Van Weyden a studious scholar.  Larsen yearns for adventure and the knowledge within that adventure, but only insofar as it will benefit him economically.  Van Weyden is wound up in his philosophical ideals of life.  He is very detached from what life actually is.  He grows to value his own breath, as he could surely have been left for dead at any moment thus far in the book.  And so I find the conundrum that always stings my being and my creativity.  Adventure is dangerous by necessity.  Without any threat to our well being there is no adventure.  We must overcome threats in order to feel that rush indicative of an adventure.  That rush coupled with the bucolic or the mathematical precision of a city's architecture yield a sense of accomplishment and Benjamin's aura. I yearn for both settings.  I yearn for the danger and I yearn for my work.  I am at once Van Weyden and Wolf Larsen.  I am Nick Carraway on his ledge in New York city, experiencing life both within myself and witnessing myself.

Peace
-Mike

Sacred Geometry & Agnes Martin

Last week I substitute taught a class on minimalism for a friend of mine at Maine College of Art and I couldn't be more grateful, as without her, I never would have stumbled across Agnes Martin's Grid Paintings.  In a Charles Darwent article in the July, August issue of Modern Painters, Darwent says, "the artisanal slowness of Martin's paintings - each canvas stretched and gessoed by the artist herself, its gridded lines worked out mathematically in her head and then drawn freehand onto the surface with a short ruler - calls for us to see them slowly."

It was on a crazy morning that I reviewed this material for Angela's class.  My wife was in need of a greasy breakfast and my son was not having it.  As Austin lost his kit and kaboodle, my dreams of understanding the nuances of a class on minimalism slipped away into an endless void, seemingly never to be found again.  But as Austin drifted off to sleep in the car and little wife ran into a bagel shop for a second go round at breakfast, I settled in to an article about a woman who worked during the fury that was the American Abstract Expressionist movement; a movement characterized by the testicular forces of Pollock and Rothko, a movement which could overshadow someone with something quiet to say.  I thought it sort of like trying to think with an infant screaming into your ear. While reading about her grid paintings I began to see the similarities between the origin of her quiet lines drawn with a small ruler, and my bic pen lines drawn with my square.  The measure is incredibly important, but really not important at all.  The patterns require a geometry, but where they fall apart oft becomes the most interesting part of the piece.  

A good friend visited me today in studio and showed me a video on sacred geometry and the number 9.  It is incredible how ordered the entire world is on a physical and theoretical level.  Still, when we consider our social interactions, cultural differences and general racial and caste warfare the order falls apart.  The micro view begets The Lord of the Flies while the macro view looks more like Huxley's Brave New World.  We are wired for disorder but built on geometry.  Therein lies some of the meaning that I've been seeking for my sudden compulsion to paint patterns in the last year and a half.  That's not all that I realized today, however.  As I was chatting with Melissa, it dawned on me, that when I was creating animal characters I was responding to people that I would see out and about town, combining features and personality traits, finding patterns within our human experience.  When I stopped working as much with the characters, I commenced creating patterns.  I began my own hermetic process, a holy endeavor, like a monk, holed away in my studio seeking a holy equation, but accepting that life is more about flaws and variances than exactitude.  That is my truth for today and will stand until a newer, shinier truth takes its place.

Time to head to bed with a sketchbook, my journal, and a book of Von Humboldt essays.

Peace

-Mike

Coal Trane: Gotta Git it in Your Soul

It is my fourth morning in the Midwest. A wet snow has started to cover the ground. Word from home is that there is a larger snowy blanket awaiting my arrival. But yesterday was a cold rainy day, which found me in Feed Cultural Center's window, sporting headphones and finally installing Coal Trane: Gotta Git it in Your Soul. 

I had measured out the work but hadn't accounted for how significantly the balance of the work would be thrown off by the colored block transitions. After I had pieced together the top row and Coltrane had gotten into full swing with one of his more elaborate solos in A Love Supreme, I realized that I was going to have to modify my plans. Fortunately Feed has chop and scrap wood out back and I was able to make a dozen more sets of French cleats, saving my installation. The walls in Feed were not catered to taking nails or screws so that was a bit frustrating. Additionally, the extra cleats required more drywall screws than I had packed, but once again Feed had a few extras kicking around. These drywall screws were far more difficult to work with, however.  One set wouldn't work at all due to the stud behind the work. I eventually caved and used two pin nails to hold the last cleat in place and save the wall another hole. There is talk of improving the walls for hanging at the center and I think that that might be wise, but the folks that work there and the mission of the space are absolutely amazing. It's lovely to see such a center I a small Midwestern city. 

Overall, I am pleased with the way the installation worked out. Tonight I am doing a small totem workshop and there is an opening for Transmissions a show which includes six people who went to grad school with in Maine. 

It's a food start to 2015. 

Peace

-Mike 

The Trane Keeps Rolling

I have two projects weighing on me as I come into this holiday week. I've scheduled an illustration to be finished before Christmas and I have an installation to finish by the first. 

I am putting together all of the artwork for the new Seasonal Disorders 7 inch EP that is coming out next year.  I've designed the front and back cover, the a and b side artwork, and possibly artwork for their t-shirt. I'm excited about the project and the drawings are coming along pretty well, but I've had the installation leaning on me heavy for the past coue of weeks. I feel like I can never get enough done for that. I would rather be assembling that the lady couple days than still painting and drawing. 

The installation is called Soul Trane. It is an assemblage of stereos, cassettes and trains. I've tried to listen to nothing but blues, hip hop an jazz while making the piece as an effort to channel some of the energy that I have garnered in my work from primarily black performers. I've been reading "Clawing at the Limits of Cool," which tells the story of John Coltrane and miles Davis. There is a lot of blues to reading the histories of famous black men, a certain reckoning and an overwhelming guilt. I'm a contributor to White Mans Burden ethos simply by not offering any alternatives, by not protesting, by not being politically active. I am not this outgoing extrovert, however. I am a painter, an introvert. My best friends are questlov, q-tip, Trane, Elmore James, lightnin' Hopkins and James brown. They give me a groove and a freedom to create. I am on the soul Trane and I will not get off, but I will not protest for anything. I will, however, hold the cause deep down in my heart and do my best to take that cause and push it along, push it along, push it along.....

Peace

-Mike

The Artist's Talk - A Rough Draft

I've determined that I will share with you the rough draft of my notes for my artist talk on Friday.  I have been under the assumption that nothing has changed in me since before graduate school for the longest time, but I now realize that this is a fallacy.  My work has changed, as too, my voice has changed.  Let me know what you think of the notes.
 

to·tem

ˈtōtəm/

noun

noun: totem; plural noun: totems

1. a natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem.
   

This body is really a culmination of several years worth of work. Tonight I intend to share with you the source of my interest in totems and native artwork, my love affair with found surfaces, the intersection between illustration and painting, and how we arrived at this point.

I have lived in Seattle twice. The Seattle Art Museum, SAM, has an extensive collective of Pacific Northwest Artifacts. I'd like to stand in front of you and say that my interest in totems was derived from my exposure to this work. It's not. That exposure did not hinder my interest by any means, but I can definitively say that it was not the source of my interest in totems.

Seattle, I think it's safe to say, is known for its coffee shops. I frequented many of them. One of these was Top Pot Donuts, which made a might fine donut and some mighty good coffee. One morning after a domestic dispute, I found myself seated upon patio furniture out front of Top Pot eating a maple glazed donut and drinking a large coffee. As the crumbs started to fall through the perforations in the wonky table, I realized that I had a visitor. A small bird was hopping from one side of my foot to the other, on top of my foot, around in circles and every which way, ecstatic over the falling crumbs of my donut. While in my vacant domestic doldrums, it occurred to me that there was something about this bird, something not quite like escapism and not quite like omniscience, but firmly placed in a realm of entropy. He, or she, I am not really aware of the distinction in colors of this particular city dwelling species of bird, was completely free to hop around and eat crumbs, or, to more importantly, fly away.

Let's fast forward approximately three years. I was working with a gallery called The Hive in Los Angelos. The curator of the Hive requested that the artist regulars in his group shows all create an avatar. It hadn't occurred to me at the time, although it now has in recent years, but what I was searching for in an artistic avatar, was anonymity, escape, dream seeking and freedom. I wanted a world full of choose your own art adventures, because I felt that my own world presented myself and my peers with such a limited offering of adventure. I immediately thought back to my tiny bird friend. He had the capability of all of the adventure he could possibly dream of. I titled him the Mighty Lark, and he was all of the things that I was not.

I followed the Mighty Lark with a multitude of characters, all of which I thought were just cute little creatures, but all of which actually seem to carry little bits of my persona. I carried them to graduate school, where they were dismissed and ridiculed and I tried to hide them, but they kept coming out. They kept coming back. I couldn't hide my little illustrative troupe. They were my in crowd that I could never attend to in my real world. I carried as well my desire for found and weathered surfaces, another key element to my work that I could never begin to explain.

As I kept day dreaming about and developing these characters and these surfaces, I kept trying to come up with what I thought of as “big boy” art ideas. I wanted to create work that would appear in major galleries across the world, that would make people go oooh and aaaah in the way that Jeff Koons' huge shiny things make all art snobs and A.D.D. kids go oooooh and aaaah. But what has occurred to me in the past year is that I didn't want to say anything that big. I didn't want to make the things that kept appearing in my art text books which were categorized as successful fine art.

And so this past year, I realized that I need to provide a frame into my day dream, some way to separate the viewer from my characters and illustrations. To this end I discovered the grid. It was mathematical, but avoided the rules, just as I did in high school so many years ago. It was about color and order. It was about framing. I determined that I would provide my viewer with the right side of the mushroom, so that they could shrink into my headspace. More importantly, however, I realized that my band of merry and mellow characters needed their own cosmology. I needed to separate them from this earthly realm and don them with the moniker of myth. I needed to make them a spiritual other. As I was attempting to create this more spiritual idea of my characters, it was then only logical that the images of Pacific Northwest Totems began to mean something to me.

The characters in the original totem poles and native art told myths which related the origins of that which was important to each tribe. As I began to breathe the vital air into the pictorial lungs of my illustrations I started to realize that these characters and machines were actually very vague representations and allusions to the ideas and beliefs of my own tribe. Like the artifacts of actual tribes, however, I have always wanted my work to feel old, to feel like it has its own history, and so, suddenly it occurred to me that, “hey, this found wood thing carries some history.” It carries age. It is the perfect medium for constructing totems out of. This is obvious. What were totem poles made of? I had my answers, for now at least. I have come as far as I have come.

And with that I will open the floor for questions.

Drawing More

I am starting an experiment.  In efforts to draw more and fit artwork into my day in the in between spots I am carrying notebooks that are specifically for a certain subject.  I have started a bird, robot and monster book.  The books are just memo books and, as such, are not incredibly precious.  I feel like the nature of these books will make it easier to deal with mistakes and to work quickly.  This morning while I was experiencing my beginning of the day studio time I tried to work through a few different characters in my monster and robot memo books and it seemed to get me by the working kinks that start every studio day.

I have always kept sketchbooks so this practice doesn't seem completely new, but this is the first time that I have ever challenged myself to fill a particular book with variations on just one subject.  I think this will prove interesting.  Often subjects become boring when you draw them too much because they become all very much the same.  As I am attempting to create a different creature for each page I think that this will make me think a bit more out of the box.

 At any rate, it was at least a pleasant way to end my night last night and begin my day today.  I wonder what other subjects I will try to fit into memo books.  They are cheap.  I'm looking forward to the drawings.  I hope you dig them too.

Peace
-Mike