Author: mightylark

Sometimes it is crazy how fast time flies by.  The past couple of weeks I have spent a lot of time hanging out with friends, running errands, providing a shoulder to cry on, being that guy that provides amusement.  It was good, but by about Monday of this last week I felt spent.  It is hard to be completely social and still attempt to work on a bunch of art work.  The two mind sets are not the same for me.  I definitely need my social time, but I have been neglecting my art time way too much since about August.  Monday was the night that Sandy hit the Maine coast and I spent it re-organizing my half of my apartment so that it is nothing but one big studio space.  I set the futon up as a couch which I’ve been sleeping on and set up the desk in my room as a study, much like in a Sherlock Holmes movie.  I just need a pipe and a deer stalking hat.  I already have the roommate.  He’s a manager of an art store, but we’ll call him Dr. Koniezcko for now.  Anyway, my studio looked dope by the end of Monday night.  I started to read.  I have a book of Keith Haring’s journals that I have just recently started.  It is amazing and provides all of that support that I needed to complete my thesis six months ago.  That is irrelevant, however.  The book has been making me think again, making me consider my own artistic dreams, and reconsider some ideas that I had a while back.

A little over a week ago, I was also given a number of panels from a good friend whose studio and gallery needed to move.  It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.  With the new found energy I cancelled my trip to Lewis County in New York and didn’t tell anyone here in Maine.  I spent the next three days holed up in my studio.  It was lovely.  My head started to think again.  I started to play a little more with the vertical series, to the point where I no longer think that I can get away with calling it the vertical series now.

I placed a number of the panels in a grid as I finished them.  The first grid was just a four pack, but started to make me think about the various layers of missed connections and interrupted lines of power.

I was pleased with this, but then started to think about how many of these I could actually place next to each other without effecting the continuity of the piece as a whole or the pieces serving as the constituents.  I came up with this block of nine by the end of this evening.

I was very pleased with this collection of pieces.  I found myself really thinking about combining old school cross hatched illustrations, Mondrian, and comic book illustration.  The layout of color was very much influenced by Mondrian, while the colors that I picked were more referential to Lichtenstein and the Sunday Comics colors.

Here are a few of the panels in greater detail.

This has been a great project so far.  I’m excited to continue working on it tomorrow.  Everything seems to be coming together nicely again.  Until then.

Peace
-Mike

I went to visit a friend last week to watch the Seahawks play the 49ers.  Marshawn Lynch is the running back for the Seattle Seahawks and has nicknamed his style of running the football Beast Mode.  When Lynch says Beast Mode it sounds something like “Beef Mo.”  I find this generally awesome.  And so, this week, when I became very upset with myself for not getting everywhere I wanted to be, I took care of myself and then came back to my work for some serious Beef Mo.  A friend had just lined up a solo show.  Frankly, I was feeling a little jealous.  I know that’s an ugly emotion to have, but it’s the truth.  I want a solo show too.  I want one bad.  I’ve felt so jaded about my work getting anywhere lately that I have been ignoring the business aspects of trying to get into new galleries.  The wake up call has come.

And so Beef Mo and the soundtrack to The Man With the Iron Fists is carrying me through.  I want to finish this large cross hatched piece and get more work like it started.  I want a gigantic show of it.  I want it as soon as possible and I want to listen to the RZA all the while that I am making that work!

Here’s a couple images of how it’s starting to come out now.

I cranked out a bunch of this piece super early on Sunday morning.  I woke up a little bit before 5.  I’ve been thinking that I need to do a lot more early morning work, that that is the key to me getting work done, but then I got home from watching a movie with my friend Julie tonight and I realized that all I wanted to do was work on this piece more.  My friend’s solo show is getting me fired up.  I don’t like being left behind.  I know it’s not a competition, but I’d like to be there and I can be.  So away we go.

I am totally digging on this large scale cross-hatched work with the brush.  I feel like I am getting better with it too.  One would hope that I would.  Thus far it’s been a good experience though.  I am very pleased.  I am also pleased to have had a couple moments this week where I just went to painting again as a gut response to life.  I need that to be okay.

Hope you’re digging the stuff.  Let me know if y’all need any work for Christmas.  We’re getting close to cut off time if you want something to be done in time for Christmas or Hanukkah (we are totally non-discriminating here).  Til next time.

Peace
=Mike 

It’s Saturday.  I’m sitting at my favorite coffee shop and hanging out with one of my really good friends.  It is a bit overcast and chill outside.  This is the kind of day that I find absolutely perfect.  Normally my face would be absolutely rooted in a sketchbook and I would have my brain completely jazzed.  My synapses generally fire at a million miles an hour, but today has been a little different.  I got a call from a very good friend who is having a rough time of it.  It makes me terribly sad.  I was nearly in tears coming back into the coffee shop, where I was immediately accosted by another acquaintance who was upset about not a heck of a lot, but upset nevertheless.

It’s strange to think about how much these things affect your creative process, but they truly do.  In a few moments I will begin sketching in my book again and although I will not be drawing any of these moments out verbatim it comes across as tension and release in drawings.  Characters generally ease the message.  Power lines and pipes say nothing while they say everything.  I haven’t entirely figured out how to say everything that I want to say without letting on to the audience, but it is a goal to approach, nevertheless. 

Here is my most recent power line piece.  Just as an exercise I am going to tell you about the emotion behind it.  I hope that that in no way ruins the piece for anyone, but I am feeling particularly open today.  The hard times are not an individual thing.  We all experience it.  Only through solidarity can we hope to do anything about our positions in life.  We must be supportive of one another.

Consider for a second the subjects of this piece.  The left and right segments of this piece are a warm orange with a very chaotic experience to the left and two large moments of opposing interaction to the right.  The cooler green in the center serves as that moment of ease in tension.  The cross hatching is more at ease.  It is a spot to relax, or as it were, the spot at the center of everything where life is simpler.  That is what I was thinking about while making this piece, though I don’t think that that was obvious from the imagery.  Also, the closer we look at things the more complex they feel, the more opposition is evident.  As we look at something from farther away there is more abstraction.  The situation seems clearer and easier to comprehend. 

Now it is time for me to draw in my sketchbook.  I’ve worked out through words what would have been my first two awful drawings.  My acquaintance may already be a winner.  He just needs to open his eyes a bit more.

Peace
-Mike

The past three days have been great.  I’ve finished five pieces, a proposal, worked in my sketchbook, and spent some quality time hanging out with my friends.  It’s really been a great weekend.  I can go to work confidently aware that I couldn’t do much more in a weekend and remain sane.

The Power Lines series is really starting to come into its own.  I am getting a variety of different poles and lines, which is enabling me to really tap into a different type of feeling for each piece.  Coupled with color choices the works seems to really get at a lot more than a simple thing that is necessary to our modern way of life.  It has been good for me psychologically to dwell on these simple subjects as well.  I feel more at peace after a weekend of staring skyward while walking around town, going to the farmer’s market and cooking.  This is more me than the life I had been living for a little while through August and September.  It is pleasant to be coming back to some work here and feeling recharged and excited by it.

The majority of my day today was spent putting together a proposal for my friend Shirah and I to put together a painting show in Portsmouth, NH.  The show would be coupled with a cooking event from Chef Michael Beers and all be based on the Jim Jarmusch film “Stranger than Paradise.”  I am hoping that our proposal will be accepted as this would both be a fun project and a stretch of my capabilities, two things which I am very interested in doing right now.  I will keep you posted.

When I was through with that proposal though, I was feeling stoked and wanted to put together one more Power Line piece this weekend.  Here is that piece.

Now it’s time to finish a glass of wine and listen to some indie music to wind down.  For those involved, thanks for the awesome weekend and for those just stopping by, hope you enjoyed the update.  I’ll be back soon.

Peace
-Mike

I determined that I am going to make 100 paintings like I made yesterday before the month of October is up.  I think I can do it without any trouble.  I really don’t know.  With two Holiday sales coming up it would just be nice to have a slew of new stuff.  If I can make 100 of the drawings then I can get away cost wise to charge ten bucks or maybe less each.  Small things seem to do better for me anyway.

As a result I’ve been walking around staring at the sky, however.  I must look like a crazy man, which is, well, not that different than usual.  I found a couple cool power lines walking around after the farmer’s market this morning and tried to get those across in these two pieces.

I was especially impressed with this image while walking down Congress Street today.  I don’t usually like walking down Congress as it is the most populated street in Portland.  For the most part you walk past tourists, homeless folks, and crazies.  It’s really just a point a to point b sort of road, but while I walking with a friend today I caught sight of this beauty of a light pole.  I had to do a piece of it.

This second one I am unsure of.  While I do like that green quite a bit I don’t think it goes very well with that psychedelic blue and I really don’t want to get rid of the blue.  It may become a strange orange tomorrow.  I should probably calm down and go to bed.  Listening to Graceland and then doing just that.

Peace
-Mike

I’ve mellowed out a lot this week.  I was a little crazy there for a while, but Monday morning I woke up with this sense of urgency about life.  I felt like I had to do something to better my situation.  After proposing to two CS classes and procuring an interview next Friday for teaching an illustration class, I feel like I am more on the right track.  It’s time to start working again.  As if my general outlook wasn’t enough to get me on this track, Maine has now suddenly decided to be in the thirties.  It’s cold.  I don’t want to leave my house anymore and if I do, it’s for coffee or some other warm substance.

I’ve been really pleased thinking about the power line series.  I think there is a lot of potential in it.  I’m trying to find the secret to it so I can include images of other subject matter.  The way that I put together the one piece for Bard Coffee allows for far more experimentation than I have so far indulged in with this particular process.

Tonight while sitting in my newly cleaned apartment there was nothing that sounded better than working on a couple new smaller pieces.  I want to make a lot of small guys for the upcoming Holiday Season.  The idea is to have a slew of pieces for $20 and under.  Here’s the work that I put together tonight so you can get an idea of what I am after.

The work is smaller than most of the pieces I’ve put together in the past couple years, but it is interesting to me to push the scale of these pieces.  As the poles get smaller, the shapes become more and more abstract much like power lines off in the distance seem to appear in reality.

Well that’s it for tonight, but I’ll try to get some more stuff up tomorrow.  Until then, take care.

Peace
-Mike

I haven’t been very good with the blog for the past two months.  I was working a little too much I think.  I’ve done a lot of work that I am pretty pleased with, however, and have applied to several jobs and proposed some classes.  All of this is is really good stuff.  Next week, I am proud to say, I will be meeting with the chair of the Art Department at one of the local colleges to talk about teaching an illustration class.  This would be absolutely amazing to me.  I have wanted to teach illustration since I was in undergraduate school at Syracuse learning from Steven Cerio.  He’s amazing by the way.  Absolutely amazing.

It’s been slow getting a couple of projects done with.  It took me forever to put the poster for Bard together this month, but once it was done I was really happy with it.  Here it is.  It’s Nintendo themed.

The second image today is of one of my commissions hanging in its new home.  A lot of people have responded to this type of work very positively.  Perhaps I should do more of it, but this particular piece was very much a logical process and not so much a non objective piece.  I’m not sure I can do one again without attempting to train my eyes to do so.  I guess I’ll have to give it a try.

I am very excited for the next couple of days.  I don’t have anything that I need to finish right off and I am looking forward to working on a couple of things that I have been leaving on the back burner for a while.  Be chill and I’ll be with you soon.

Peace
-Mike

I have been working two jobs.  It isn’t a lot of hours, but two days a week I’ve been working all day and then a shift most days of the week at one or the other.  I’ve been feeling a little depressed, wondering how I will get the money together for the college loans from graduate school that I have to start paying next month.  I’ve also been making a bunch of work that I’m really pleased with.  Unfortunately the work has been for last minute shows and I feel claustrophobic.  Last night I had a dream that I was stuck in the corner of a large school and that I couldn’t get out because there were too many people and I couldn’t stand it.  So this weekend, I’m going to leave for a bit.  I need a break.  The trip to New York was awesome, but far too quick to count as a break.

Here’s a bit of what I’ve been working on though, if you’re interested.

This is the newest piece that I’ve put together in the power line series.  I really am getting into it.  This imagery is really pretty interesting to me right now, but even more so I am into the way that this piece was put together.  I also wrote what is perhaps my most concise artist’s statement to date about it.

I also put together a bunch of small animal pieces for Artstream studios.  The opening is this Saturday.  I will be at a wedding in Connecticut and unable to make it, however, my friend Susan will be there and her new work is excellent.  The opening is from 5-7 in Rochester, NH.  Be there or be square.

 It’s been some pretty exciting work, but I need to stop for a weekend.  I need to regroup.  Hope you dig the work though.

Peace
-Mike

There are times when I find myself completely in tune with one set of thoughts.  The past couple weeks I have idling on an inner peace that is best described by the feeling of Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline.  His easily flowing chords and finger picking, turns in key to the minor and back to the major, all with a slight twang.  That is where I’ve been at.

I’ve been working on more power line pieces.  I think that the goal of these pieces will be to hang them interspersed with some jelly fish and phone booth pieces.  I will share that sketch sometime soon when I have a clearer idea of what it means and what I intend for it to do.

Here is the newest power line piece.

I am also attempting to put together a few small pieces for one of the galleries that I’ve worked in the past.  These pieces are very quick and more or less used as a method to get my juices flowing again, to find that passion and exuberance.  A friend of mine recently lent me a Philip Guston article where he describes his process of elation in a painting followed by despair the next morning.  It revolves around the elation of attempting to describe something in paint.  It sounds right on.  Here is one of those small pieces.

Have a good day peeps.  Enjoy the sun because it goes away for a couple months soon.

Peace
-Mike

It was a day of discovery, work, and errands.  Today I found one of the books that I lost when I moved from Minneapolis to New Hampshire.  I was so pleased that when I got home I looked up another one of those books on Amazon and purchased a used copy.  As I was purchasing this second book, I received a call to work on a t-shirt project.  The company seems legit, though I the art direction seemed relatively limiting.  It’s still a cool project though, so I will happily work on it. 

I also finished a sketch of the Crest that the Fish and Splits bowling team is looking to use for their league this season.  I am very pleased with it, although it hasn’t been tightened up yet.  I also completed another square foot of the large scale painting.  It’s taking forever, but coming out great.  I may need to get another brush, though.  I am terrible on them.

Here is the bowling logo.  I would share other images tonight, but everything is in process and I didn’t take any good images while the light was right.  I will have to wait until tomorrow.  Hopefully I finish more of those two projects before I post anyway.

The end of the evening was taken up by a Built to Spill show.  It was great.  What I took from the show was more than a love for a band’s music live, but rather an idea of what it is to become an aging artist.  Doug looked so plainly calm on stage, completely immersed in his work, but aware at all times of what he was doing.  There was a poise within him that struck me.  I hope that I can approach my work with that level of professionalism and confidence one of these days  I also hope that growing old will not hinder my ability to rock out.  I guess we’ll all see.

Peace
-Mike