Author: mightylark

There is so much to tell.  I think I will write a couple of blog posts tonight just so there is no confusion between the different ideas and projects that I have been working with.  In some cases it seems that the only unifying characteristic is that I did the work to begin with.

It has been a massively productive year.  I have no complaints with my work ethic.  My writing ethic seems to have fallen a little by the wayside, however.  I think I left off on some images of my large scale robots.  Each robot served as an internal location in which to frame a group of paintings and drawings. 

The rest of the robots looked cool too.  I definitely had issues transporting said robots when I was through constructing them though.  That said, they apparently didn’t read particularly well as robots either, but seemed more like a human-sized shape.  I’m not sure if that is really a bad thing either.  Below are the installation photos.  Only a month and a half late.

These were awesome to work on, but the big problem with them was exactly that.  They were too BIG.  I hurt my back and neck de-installing the piece and it is still in the bed of my pick up. Hence the thought that perhaps I should make something a little bit smaller.

These guys resulted.  At the same time as I started making these, I started listening to the DJ, Cut Chemist, who is the DJ for Jurassic 5.  His solo, The Audience’s Listening, features a song which repeats the line “The Robots are coming” which was stuck in my head the entire time I was making these.

I was incredibly pleased with the way that these worked out and realized while making them that it really was starting to operate in the same way that my work last spring with the blocks was working.  Naturally I decided to combine the two.  Soon I will post the sketches for my thesis which demonstrates that synthesis.

Hope y’all are well and your holiday season is great.
Keep up.
Peace
-Mike

I am pretty sure that I am not a robot.  I am tired.  Pretty sure robots don’t get tired.  Perhaps they can be programmed to get tired though.  I can’t believe that tomorrow is Wednesday.  These days just keep flying by.  I worked on two separate robots today.  I’ve determined that I will finish six or seven of them before the end of the semester.  That’s a lot of work to be pumping out, but what else is this life about anyway?  I like working.

Sculpture is a weird thing for me.  It still doesn’t feel exactly comfortable.  I still want to draw and paint things all over everything.  I suppose there really isn’t a problem in that thinking, but I would like the two to compliment each other, not be a detriment….

So far so good.

 These two images are of the Affection Receptor.  My adviser has suggested that perhaps I should take out the written text.  It may be very altar-like.  I suppose, however, that any non-functional statue will be considered a monument of some sort.  Are monuments and altars really that different when all is said and done?  I am not very sure myself.

I was very pleased to find a use for this radio.  It seemed obvious all of a sudden when I was looking at it.  I hope you dig it.  This is three robots.  Four to go.

Peace
-Mike

The past several months have been amazing.  I have learned a great deal about myself, art making, and the limits that I have placed on myself.  Apparently those limits have been too restrictive, as I’ve been involved with the Billboard Project in New Orleans and have now been accepted to the Mural Painting Bienniale X, in Santiago de Cuba.  While attempting to avoid illustration and gallery projects in school, I have been offered as many gallery gigs and more illustration gigs than I’ve ever been offered in the past.  I am truly grateful for what, as I pause and contemplate, I can only consider success.  It has been a long ride, and I can’t say that I have always used this blog as a positive outlet, but thank you to all of those who have stuck around and made this possible through your support.

Now for completely unrelated items.  I have been working on a series of found wood robots with detailed interiors.  The effect that I have been going for has been the “ugly” serving as framework for the more refined, or “beautiful”.  It is not quite as large a dynamic as that world of complete opposites, but there is a noticeable difference in the feeling of the drawings and writing that I have utilized in the interior of the sculptures and the haphazard construction that I have used to erect these robots.

Below is the first robot, which I had already shared sans detailed interior.

The latest robot that I have been working on does not include any pipe drawings but instead contains love notes, however.  The robot is titled the Affection Receptor, sports a Bo Jackson ball glove, and has hearts which I removed from a gaudy coat hanger.

Lastly I will share a quick piece that I added to my etsy shop today.  I am really pleased with the simplicity of the images like this.  It is also nice not to attempt to defeat the line work that I spend so much time working with.


There’s more craziness going on.  I plan on finishing up the first incarnation of a major project over this week, so be sure to check back soon.  Take care.


Peace
-Mike

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

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

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

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 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

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.

 

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

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