Author: mightylark

The last several weeks have been a flurry of work (the out of studio kind), emotions, and sleep deprivation.  It is nice that everything is finally quieting down.  I really need it to in order to function with any regularity.  Picnic is fast approaching and I have very little which is completed to take with me.  I have a start and I know what I intend to make, so I am not as worried as maybe I should be, but I’ve been in this position before.  I don’t think that worrying about it is going to make any difference.  I know what I need to do and I know when I will do it.  Now is about the time that I start to really work on things and today was a good studio day.

It is interesting to think about the two ways in which I reach the high for studio work.  Of late I have been seeing a pretty little lady and in the past I have often had a lot of time to work.  Both seem to affect my work in positive ways.  I feel more confident in my actions both if I feel confident about myself socially or if I have been practicing day in and day out.  I wonder if I don’t need this balance though?  Is it not necessary for me to be socially okay in order to make good work?  I think it is.  And so, over the course of about four hours this afternoon I put together five small pieces.  It felt good and I am confident in the results. 

I love these little library card pieces.  I have about five or six more that I will be making.  After that it is on to some more small pieces on chip board.  I don’t think that I am going to take anything to Picnic that costs more than $25.  Hopefully folks will clean me out.

Life is going well.  Expect more posts soon.  I can feel the creative impulse trying to burst out again.  It’s good to have the batteries feeling re-charged.

Peace
-Mike

In Pete Jordan’s “Dishwasher” he explains that the two best days of work are the first day of work and the last day of work.  Today I am giving my two week notice at the deli.  It is a bittersweet moment, but I realize that I cannot work two kitchen jobs at once, along with teaching and making paintings for three upcoming shows.  I keep shrugging off the shows, saying that they are not a very big deal because they are not in ideal spaces.  This is of course faulty logic, as the shows are whatever I make of them and they will still be in spots that people go to to specifically look at art.  Hence, they matter, and I have a lot of work to do for them.

Socially I have been living in a cascade of ups and downs.  I don’t understand the world outside the studio as well as I probably should.  The Facebook, Twitter and texting spheres do not make it any easier traverse.  As a result I have been trying to read more and forget about human interaction, as it happens without any effort.  Extra thought on the subject of being social merely enhances my anxiety powers.  Staying in studio and ignoring the social elements and their 21st century deluge is healthy for me.  I am productive in my own constructed zone, uneasy in others.

I have been working heavily on the 248 piece marathon that I have planned for Zero Station.  I need to spend some time working out the details of the animation that corresponds to the pieces, but at least the pieces are coming along.  I have produced probably 12 in the last week, which is pretty good considering the show is a ways off and I haven’t hit the groove for it yet.

Here are a couple shots of different assemblages that I have been working with today.

I am really letting myself edit past work more than I’ve ever done before in this series.  It is good for me to have to make work that corresponds with old themes rather than just obliterating the old work to cover it up.  The growth as I mentioned in the last post is quite evident.

I will see if I can’t get some more work up tomorrow.  I am meeting a fellow about a DJ and visual art collaboration.  It should be really cool.  I’ll let you know more about it when I know more about it.

Peace
-Mike

I haven’t had any desire to leave studio lately.  Whether working or napping or reading, it has felt like I belong there more than anywhere else, and it’s true.  Over the past year I’ve questioned my decision to go back to school so many times, I owe a small house in loans, but it has finally hit me.  I’ve reached that point where I can be a little bit poor and still be completely satisfied with life.  This IS the life that I have tried so hard to obtain and I no longer have to do anything that I don’t like.  Cooking is a part of me as much as painting and music is the blood that keeps everything flowing.  And so it’s just one step on to the next step on to the next step on to the next.

I have also been re-reading Dishwasher by Pete Jordan.  It is the story of a young slacker who is more engaged by adventuring across the country than with any particular job.  He takes to dishwashing with the goal of working in all 50 states.  It is a sort of zen like experience that Jordan talks about.  He stresses anonymity, a quality which I have often admired and sought.  This zen within non-holy moments really intrigues me.  I feel as though my own work escapades are becoming less and less separate from my “work.”  Art is more than just paint and panel, ink and paper, it is me.  It is everything that I do because I make art and I don’t shut off that persona when I am washing dishes or making people lunch.  It is easier to tell that I am making art if you see me drawing something, but there is something that happens with daily contact which is unique to me or to you.  I am analyzing those situations and responding with my tongue and body language as brush.  It never shuts off. 

A long time ago my exes dad was telling me about one of the many self-help books that he was reading.  It talked about finding flow and realizing other people had stories.  Essentially everybody lives in the same moment but experiences and sees that moment differently because of their own prior experiences.  We studied this in art as well.  We called it perception and logged it under Roland Barthes “Writerly Reader.”  I’ve been thinking about flow again; how I navigate in and out of my story and other people’s stories.  These three pieces have started to serve as the intermediaries between the other panels that I am working on with disparate mechanical bits.  They are the flow that will help me move from one story to the next, an intermission of sorts.

I intend to be as malleable as possible within the self that I have found.  Stick to your guns but roll with the punches.  Bob and weave.  Keep up.

Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

I am gaining momentum on my show for November.  The work is starting to get to a level that I felt I had last December before I sold a bunch of the six by six panels.  Looking back on it, I wish I had the 700 bucks I made on those panels back so that I could use that same work in the series that I am working on now.  The pieces make so little sense as small salable items.  I would like them back.  And so I am on to a new era in my art making.  I am looking to accumulate a body of work that I am proud of, that I wish to put in a show.  I think that the days of making work purely to fulfill the needs of the rules that I have set up for a given show are beyond me.  I want to show the fruits of my efforts in a more cohesive manner.  I think my idea will more easily come across if it is allowed to grow and change with the ideas of the new work influencing edits in the older work.  As I gain knowledge of what I am doing on newer panels, I still have the old panels to work with.  The cross referencing within these two lines of thinking ultimately lead to a better understanding of what I am doing. 

A friend told me on Friday evening about Double Dee and Steinski’s Lessons 1 to 3 for hip-hop.  They are the ultimate in illegal usage of material, referencing endless pop culture and pop music.  I think, upon listening to these lessons, that my work is a visual version of this.  As I let my ideas work back and forth, my emotions tearing me between, cartoon and abstract expressionist-like work, I am able to discuss an entire new genre rather than working in two different means.  This, I think, is what I have been aiming for for years, but by not letting the work accumulate, I have been selling this growth factor short.

Here are a few of the pieces that I have been working on towards the November show.  They are not in their final order, as some of the color tangents are absolutely terrible, but I wanted to quickly show how all of the pieces are evolving together.  I am quite pleased with the work that I have produced over the last week or so.  I hope you like it too.

Now off to bowling.  Hope to have some stuff up for you soon.

Peace
-Mike

When I last lived in Seattle I would finish every studio night super charged up listening to Social Distortion’s Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell album.  I would ride my bike or the bus home to my apartment and blog in the wee hours of the morning.  I was as into my art in 2006 and 2007 as I have ever been.  The last three years, however, have been strange.  Beth and I split up in 2010.  We had been engaged for 3 years.  My work has suffered in one way or another ever since.

There is no blame for this.  I didn’t know how to deal with any of it.  I didn’t know what I thought or what I wanted, if I was to blame, whether I should be punished or what I could do that mattered any more.  Tonight my roommate pried it all out of me.  It was really by accident, but I can’t tell you how much different I feel right now.  I got home at 11 pm and immediately started painting.  The desire was there.  It was that old charge.  I don’t know if I will feel the same tomorrow.  I think it is a definite possibility.  It is a strange thing to admit to someone that something hurt you more than any physical pain, ever.  It sucked and I don’t want anyone to think otherwise.  I didn’t deal with it well and it got in the way, but just saying those things and feeling the enormity of those emotions weighing on me again, crying like I haven’t cried since my first grandfather died.  It all needed to happen and now I feel lighter.

I’m listening to King of Fools and my heart feels the flutter that it used to feel in 2007.  I feel ready for tomorrow.  I feel excited to be a teacher.  My life is good.  It is time to stop punishing myself and time to get going.  As Andy said in The Shawshank Redemption, “You gotta get busy living, or get busy dying.”  I for one want to live and this is how I do it.

 

You will notice that it is the 20th of June.  I haven’t posted here since last month.  Perhaps this makes you think that I have gotten nothing done during this month, but that is not really the case.  I have been slowly working on the four paneled mural and the condominium commission.  I have been intermittently been working in my sketchbook.  I have been thinking.  A lot.

Yesterday I left for work, my day job, not my studio life, and I thought to myself as I looked at a piece, “that is not that different than what I am trying to do right now.  In fact that is the same damn thing.”  It was big.  It all started this week when I made a piece a young lady whose company I really enjoy.  Do stop.  I am not positive of anything but enjoying her company just yet, but the piece was extremely important in turning me around creatively.  It was fun and I had been attempting to very seriously finish my big projects.  I was taking my art seriously.  It is good to take your art seriously, but sometimes it isn’t at all.  Sometimes you should really sit back and allow yourself to just enjoy the process.  Sometimes I forget this when I am trying to finish something.  Fortunately I wanted to make a fun piece this week and that fixed just about everything.  Here’s the piece.  My friend enjoys lions.  I can get behind that.

When I finished this piece, I immediately wanted to work on other things, but my gigantic mural project is in the way.  I have wanted so badly to want to work on something and the mural project has been in the way, but the interesting thing is that as soon as I started approaching the mural project as something that I just wanted to finish, I started to really get into it.  I started to try to make areas that were “done” much much better.  It is working now.  I had to make some quick adjustments to it today.  It felt good, like I was really painting.  Here is a quick, cruddy image of it.

I will post a better image tomorrow after I’ve worked on the piece a bit.  I hope you like it.  I really can’t tell how good or bad it is anymore.  I’ve been too close to it for 11 months.  It seems like it should be less work than 11 months.  Maybe it was just in learning the method.  I don’t really know.  Someday I will.

Peace
-Mike

I have been stressing out since January.  I have had the opportunity to teach four classes thus far and they have been amazing experiences even if at times I have really fallern short of doing a good job with them.  I sometimes do not know what a good job entails.  Simple things are easily made into mistakes, but it has been a new experience and one that I am very grateful for.  I have at the same time been holding on desperately to my past; my death grip clutched firmly around my four shifts at a deli, serving food to the public usually with a smile but sometimes with a sardonic air should I feel that someone views me with condescension.  I can honestly say that I don’t belong in that sphere any more.  This was the conversation that my mother and I had over the phone yesterday.  The day prior my father and I were talking about productivity and problem solving.  My large commission lay in pieces, begging to be assembled in an intelligent and eloquent manner.  My father talked me through that.  In short, my parents came to my rescue this Memorial Day weekend.  My parents gave me that objective ear and resolute patience that I needed and with that I have come out of the weekend feeling slightly lighter and ready to get some work done.

Here is the results of my Mortisse and Tenon construction Saturday and Sunday.

The pieces are coming together great and simultaneously the pieces of my psyche are settling back in place.  The torrid love affair that is art making has subsided into the calm of production once again and I feel at once full and victorious.

Peace
-Mike

Studio life has been busy lately.  In fact, today I was looking about my apartment and realized that I have a live/work space, not an apartment at all.  There is no living functionality to the space for anyone but me.  For all that I try to convince people that my space is cozy, it is only cozy like a studio with an awesome couch in it.  That’s pretty perfect for a single guy like me. 

This week my friend Shirah and I went to see The Great Gatsby.  I don’t often go to movies and quite honestly I probably wouldn’t have gone to this one if I hadn’t had told Shirah I would go with her.  I am glad that I did though.  The movie wasn’t great.  The female characters were poorly cast and I can’t say that I am a fan of Fitzgerald’s text being emblazoned on a movie screen, but the sets were amazing.  It was an incredible critique of Art Nouveou, racing economies, and hedonistic charm.  I returned from the movie and did what any self respecting person would do, I started reading the book again.  I am always taken by Fitzgerald’s language.  To be sure the makers of the film were as well.  They made sure to use the exact line “at once within and without” in the parable that Callaway tells of the street cleaners.  This line is amazing.  I feel as though there is something in that line that much like a philosopher attempting to figure out the meaning of life, I am setting out to understand.  It is like fitting into society but having a ton of anxiety and never really letting on that you don’t fit in at all.  It is holding your nose in your sketchbook seemingly disinterested in your surroundings but actually responding to every bit of it.  It is watching yourself from across the street in your schizophrenic coffee deranged early mornings.  It is something and probably absolutely nothing, which is kind of like art which is something but notably nothing.

I have been working out a commission for a very kind fellow who frequents Bard with me.  I had a certain idea of what the piece would look like in late November when I accepted his deposit, but that image has slowly drifted off into abandon.  I don’t like it at all anymore.  And so yesterday when he was to meet me at my studio I began to make some connections, pieces began to fall in the right spots.  I was linking things wrong, but everything was starting to move.  I was feeling creative again and not pinned at all.  He postponed his visit, which didn’t upset me.  I think I can finish the piece by his delayed date.  It seems much more natural now.  I was too far within the piece.  I needed to step out.  Here are a couple images of how it is beginning to come together.

 I do not know why, but this is my favorite piece that I have done in a long long time.  Perhaps I really like circles and I have never stopped to think about this immense obsession.

As I began to lay this piece out on the floor, it felt as though the conversation had finally shifted.  I am now speaking in a language that I comprehend rather than trying to translate from something foreign.  I can now say that it’s going to be good.

Peace
-Mike

I am often moody.  I think to myself what a tragedy it is that I have to be at work making lunch or teaching when I should really be working on my own paintings and drawings.  There is an egotistical aspect of this, but also a desperation to this thought process.  I always feel like I can work more, but then sometimes I get home from cooking and I have no desire to work.  I couldn’t make myself work if I tried.  I assume that this is normal, as many of the people I talk to on a regular basis speak about the number of movies and television shows that they find entertaining.  I don’t watch many of these, but I do stare at computer screens waiting for something awesome to happen.  I create blog posts waiting for someone to find my writing and say, “hey, this guy really has something going on.”

I mention this all as a setting for the mentality that I entered when I started my latest piece.  I had just finished my proposal to the Step Up Program, which sounds amazing.  I think that when you finish a proposal that should probably feel hope that you might get to do that thing, but I have submitted and applied to so many different places in the past ten years, and while yes, I have had my number of successes, I have had a greater number of defeats.  I have also never been responded to on a bigger juried show.  In the past this has taken over moods for days, as I ponder what to do with myself, coming up with plans to make some dough off of my art, desperately finding some other means to post my work all over the internet, searching for that mode of living that is what I want.  However, when I turned in this last proposal, I did not feel any sense of desperation.  I did not feel any despair and most importantly, I didn’t really mind that in another 18 hours I was going to be cooking in a commercial kitchen again.  ( usually here people constantly make statements about how “cooking is creative too” and “That’s a way to get your creative juices going.”  Thoughts like these are appreciated because it shows that other people do not want you to get down on yourself.  They care.  But at the same time, cooking is cooking and great for cooking sake.  My art is my art and I have no time to think about it while I am cooking.) I left the coffee shop where I had been putting the last bits of my proposal together, got some lunch and hit the record shop.  I went home and started to feel that sense that there was nothingness if I had nothing to prepare for and I had an epiphany.  I really wanted to make the piece that I proposed, but I didn’t have a space large enough to do it in the manner that I had proposed.  Up until my second show in 2007 at the now defunct Gallery 070 on Vashon Island, I had reveled in making my own work, no matter what.  At that show, I made a bunch of really quick bird pieces and a lot of them sold.  It was not a huge payday as they were not terribly expensive, but I got it in my head, that that was the manner in which I was supposed to work.  You got to give the people what they want.  This mood continued through much of grad school and I’m clearly still feeling a bit of that poison today, but I think I am finally moving past it, because I fought through my moment of apathy and started my piece.  I’ve been working on it in and around work and feeling really confident about it.  The subject matter is finally something incredibly meaningful to me.  I have consistently been of the opinion that society attempts to make machines of its members.  Machines are efficient.  They work.  They are productive. Their thoughts are programmed. 

Now think about the majority of jobs you have had in your life.  What is stressed?  Efficiency.  Work.  Productivity.  How are these qualities achieved?  These attributes are achieved by staying focused on work, using the patterns that you are taught to use which make that work easier to achieve.  These attributes are achieved through good programming.  Our free time is spent in front of various modes of communication offering better lives through purchasing power, ensuring that we must remain well programmed so that we can continue to enjoy ourselves.  But, what is this enjoyment?  I think it is rather diversion from the idea that we are all living as machines.  Place a smart phone or a tablet in our hands and we can even let our thoughts conform and not just our actions.  (mind you, this is how I feel about technology and work for me.  I am aware that some people feel very differently and remain very positive and soulful while using technology and working in society.  Kudos.  It makes me dead.)

When I started working out this piece in my sketchbooks, I had no idea that it was a big thing, but it is. This may be my large glass.  I’ve realized that it is not freedom from my situation that I seek, but freedom from the way in which I perceive the structure of the relationships that create my situation.  The onus is on me.  I am making the machine that creates my work.  It is not as fictional as it first may sound.  I have let myself buy into the machine, despite the rebellious teenage anthems that I championed. 

And so, I am left with a desire to create this machine.  It is two dimensional.  People will ask me why it isn’t a functioning 3-d object.  But it is mine and my romanticism is built around the novels of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  My dreams are not incredibly tangible but they are immensely elaborate.  Here are some shots from the beginning of The Magnificent Pensive Mark Maker Model No. 2.

I have finished a lot more on the panel which Cedric is sitting on, but haven’t taken a good photo yet.  Soon.  If you made it all this way, thank you.  I care about you too.  Let’s all work to free ourselves from our own Machines.

Peace
-Mike

Today I woke up with a tremendous sense of peace about me.  Yesterday left my wallet considerably lighter and my soul significantly more full.  My friend Monkey Chow drove up from Boston to spend a day of adult beverage consumption and brainstorming with me.  Many stickers were left about town, many drawings were left for servers and bartenders, and there were a lot of very quickly written notes jotted in my sketchbook.  We visited the opening for the SMCC faculty show which I was a part of, even if the presence of my work amongst the rest of the work did seem peculiar.  Alas, my prices were a fraction of the prices on the other work in the gallery.  Perhaps this is one of those moments where I should consider selling my work at a larger profit margin so that people take me more seriously?  I will not be doing that, however.

Aaron and I managed to find a little amusement at the show, despite my social awkwardness.

Today, I was left with the task of applying for the Real Art Ways Step Up program.  I had finished all of the work for my application by the middle of last week, but hadn’t finished my image list or the edits to my CV.  I passed up on a fishing trip so that I could finish that in time.  I am usually absolutely terrible at applying to the larger shows.  I don’t usually feel much hope for juries selecting my work, but this application was better suited to my own interests than some of the work proposals that I attempt to pass off as compelling.  If you are attempting to sound smart compelling thoughts are really only useful for attempting to be compelling thoughts.

This proposal was better.  I am excited to see if it makes a difference, but also more importantly I realize that I am going to do this piece one way or the other.  It really doesn’t matter if the proposal is accepted or not.  That kind of feeling is the best kind of feeling.  This is some of the same confidence that makes me wake up on a Sunday more at peace with myself and the way that things in life are going.  I am excited to be making better decisions for my artwork and for myself.

Above are the completed secret plans.  I rather love these drawings and can’t wait to see what Reed Altemus does with the work.  Collaborations are good for the soul as well.

I am also extremely excited to be updating my CV and placing small exhibitions in Portugal and Ireland in Group Shows.  I am an international artist now.  Ahem.  I am an internationally exhibiting artist now.  That was one of those goals that I had that when I finally achieved it I didn’t really notice.  So, let it be known, that I just noticed.  Here is an image that Letters to Portugal shared on their Facebook page.  My piece has drops on it.

I’m looking forward to moving forward with some of these projects.  More images and comments, random notions and information to come later.  Have a good Sunday.

Peace
-Mike