Author: mightylark

Special thanks go out to Angela Warren who hooked me up with an exhibition opportunity at Kahbang Festival in Bangor, Me this past week.  It was great to get an installation out in the real viewing public.  Reception of the piece was pretty fantastic as well.  It was also great to get to hang alongside fellow MFA’ers Kim Vose Jones, Julie Gray and Shirah Neumann.  Here’s a couple shots!!

Here’s what the outside of the Gallery looked like.

Haha, and here is my narcissistic shot of the door.

And this is what my crazy pipe installation looked like.  Be on the look out for more of these crazy things in the near future.  I think I will also be sharing some sketches for the next one.  Til then.

Peace
Mike

Today I finished a project for Artstream Studios upcoming Toy and Game show in September.  It is a series of jars containing marbles adorned with a cute and/or fuzzy animal.  It was partially based off of Barry McGee’s liquor bottles and partially because of the scene in Amelie where the fellow has the flashback about the fateful day where he wins and then loses all of the marbles during recess.

 Oddly enough the mouse is my favorite of this little series.  I like drawing creatures with no legs.  And my cats like the idea of a mouse with no legs too.  They are lazy little buggers.

 

This was a fun project.  Be sure to drop in in September at Artstream Studios in Rochester, NH if you happen to be in the area, and if not you’ll be able to purchase these guys off of their website.  I’ll keep you posted with those links.

Got some stuff coming up here.  I’m going to have a one man show in Laconia, NH next month as well as the Toy show and I will also be in the October Day of the Dead show at Lunar Boy Gallery in Astoria.  I’ll keep you posted.  Til next time.

Peace
Mike

On the 12th of the month, I headed out to Lowville, NY where I was to put together an installation for the Ghostly Heart Atelier.  The next 3 days were filled with thermoses full of coffee and sack lunches that my mother made me, and steady work in a 3 1/2 foot by 6 foot space creating a site specific installation.  My original ideas for the space bordered upon incredibly offensive to the populace, which my mother was quick to point out.  Unlike instances in the past, I chose to listen to what she said and create an homage to my father and grandfather.  My grandfather used to drive into the Adirondacks from his home in New Jersey in order to hunt and fish.  My father trekked from New Jersey to Wanakena, NY where he went to Ranger School.  He later became a forest ranger in northern New York.

Generally my work does not address these two men, but since I was making a piece in the same area that I grew up, it made sense to change that.  I painted cartoon portraits of my grandfather, father and myself wearing checked woolen jackets and tuques.  I used found wood that had weathered and carries the same sort of patina that my entire home area boasts.  I also incorporated empty ammo boxes and a few squirrels.  No matter what you are hunting it seems you see more squirrels, unless of course it is squirrels that you are hunting.

Below are a few images of the installation.

I was very pleased to include the ammo boxes and very interested at how they interacted the same way that the block constructions had earlier this year.  Yay for rectangular prisms.

 

Here’s the image of the portrait of my grandfather as well as the country portion of the hand-painted text that I incorporated.  The installation is titled Going up the Country after the Canned Heat song of the same name.   This text was included from the upper left hand corner of the wall to the center.

It was very nice to get some real time in painting on this installation.  I’ve been painting the entire time that I’ve been in graduate school, but it seems a little more obvious when the final product so very much features my brushstroke.  The stroke also seemed to mimic the paint on the walls that was chipping. 

There will be some more images coming.  I took some better photos that I will be scanning in soon.  Tomorrow the summer intensive starts.  We’ll see what we can get done then.
Peace
-Mike

Ha.  I started drawing badgers today and I’ve been giddy ever since I started.  There is something totally honest about letting yourself personify a new creature that makes you giggle to begin with.  I can’t help but think of my friend Emilie talking about badgers being violent and nasty, coupled usually with a Big Lebowski “nice marmot” comment.

Anyway, after drawing a few out, I started to sculpt one out of bass wood.  I thought that I would just get the rough cut done tonight, but I actually made it pretty far into sanding as well.  I am very pleased that I am able to keep relatively the same degree of simplification to my characters in 3-dimensional form.  I was concerned that the figures would look too much like a box and like I had simply done nothing to the blank from when I picked it up at the lumber yard.

So here tis.

Let me know what you think.  Is it badger enough?  I love it currently, riding that 1 A.M. high, like I’ve been working on it for 7 hours.

Also on the docket today were a bunch of sketches to begin thinking about the 25 framed drawings that I will be doing for Susan at Artstream Studios in Rochester, NH.  It’s so nice to be able to work with her again.  She is a wonderful shop owner.

This morning I finished a piece that I started last November or December.  I don’t even remember anymore.  At the time I was very excited about the action of the piece and not so much about the background.  Some time in graduate school had me questioning making meaningless illustration and I just ended up stalling, setting the piece down, and eventually forgetting about it.

This week though, I cleaned my studio, and in cleaning my studio I rediscovered the piece and started to think about the background as another piece entirely, a piece really which may be more important to me than the main character action, so I finished it.  And I like it, and I am excited with the possibilities, though the eventual outcome I do not think will have anything to do with this particular product except for maybe as a catalyst.  Good stuff.

I started a poem about this background.  I’m not much of a poet, but I think maybe a project working back and forth between literary and image based artwork may be in order.  It could end up being really cool and for that matter I have absolutely nothing to lose now.

So here we go.
Peace
-Mike

Today was a beautiful day.  The sun finally came out, and I managed to finish 4 out of 7 of the illustrations that I am supposed to complete for an e-book.  Nothing too exciting but hopefully some cash pretty soon.  Once I got a little bit done on that I was able to work on some projects that I have been meaning to get to.  The first project that I wanted to get to was the June calendar for the Bollard, a local newspaper here in Portland, ME.

I think I will always be submitting this to Doodlers Anonymous’s calendar contest for the month of June.  If it won it would be the feature doodle of the month.  I think I have a decent chance with this bad boy so here goes nothing.

More work coming soon. 
Peace
-Mike

Will the world end in roughly thirty five minutes?  If it does I will have gone out listening to Ben Harper and typing up a blog post.  There are worse ways to go.  Good luck to you in maneuvering zealots tomorrow. 

That said, I am very excited to begin relaying my ideas for a site specific installation at the Ghostly Heart Atelier, in Lowville, NY.  This is a very special project and work for me to complete not only because it is a chance to do an installation, but it is also in my hometown, where I thought I could never do anything artistic.  So I get to tackle two birds with one stone.  Awesome.  I also have gotten one of my classmates from MeCA interested and he is making an installation as well.  Now that is really awesome.

First off here are the first couple sketches that I came up with for the space.

The community that this piece will be immersed in is a hunting, backwoods, farming culture.  As I recall there was little for entertainment in the area besides barhopping and hunting.  Farming and farm related industries, like milk and cheese and maple syrup are the primary industries in the area.  Also of importance are dealerships of farm equipment and off-road equipment.

 These three images are of the interior of the space.  I was impressed by the claustrophobic nature of the site.  It mimicked the way that I felt while living within that community, and that seems pertinent now as well.

This door is not only awesome but also speaks to my reluctance to voice my opinions in that area of the country.  I was so closed off from the public when I lived there because I thought that no one would understand my points of view.  I now realize that this may not be as dramatic a difference in ways of thought, but this piece is about fifty fifty about me and about my hometown.

Hope you are getting excited.  I know I am.  Beware of zombies tomorrow.
Til next time, if there is one.
Peace
-Mike

I am working on a project that has been on the backburner for a couple years.  It is a relief to finally be taking some time for it.  After a lot of thought, I determined that it didn’t make sense to try to carry a full time job during the rest of school.  The first year went entirely too quickly and I don’t think that it will benefit me to keep working through the second.  So that said I have been able to devote a little more time to projects that have been left by the wayside.

One such project is a children’s book that I have been meaning to work on with an amazing writer whose name will remain unspoken until more work is done on the book.  For now I have some character sketches for you to view.

I am really enamored with these two sketches.  The second one is a self portrait as flying squirrel, which just make me giggle like a school girl.  The first was an opportunity to do something with a squirrel besides just having him sit on a tree limb.  Versatility is the name of the game.

 The bunny is really supposed to be cute.  Super cute.  So cute it makes you kind of feel ill, like if you have way too much chocolate or banana cream pie.  I might need to make him cuter.

This last one is a two headed beast.  Well yes there are three heads, but what I mean is it serves as sketches for character studies of two dimensional creatures and I am currently sculpting this totem out of bass wood with the help of a set of chisels or two that my father donated to me.

There’s a lot going on.  I’ll be back soon with some more images.  Til then.
Peace
-Mike

It’s a lazy cloudy day here in Portland, Me.  I love cloudy lazy days.  I worked my first shift at a new job, and was supposed to meet a fellow to go over some illustration work, but resolved myself to do the work by email instead and save the dough that I would have spent going to meet up with him.

I am also through with school for the time being, so it is time to get going on some work that I have had lined up for a while.  I will be exhibiting a little mini show of paintings and drawings at a local coffee shop in Portland, Bard Coffee, which is going to be great.  I haven’t shown at a coffee shop in a long time.  I think this will be much more low key, which I am all about.  Also, I am starting to talk with a wicked poet about doing a book again.  I sent him a quick text with this image to show that I was ready.  Thought I would share it with all of y’all.

I’ll keep you posted on these new projects.  I think they are all going to be fun, which is something that I haven’t been doing much of lately.  Fun illustrative awesomeness.  Fine art is cool and all, but illustration is fun.  Just a word to the wise.  Have an awesome Tuesday.

Peace
-Mike

I have been attempting to wrap my head around the work of Deleuzze and Delanda, in attempts to understand better the concept of society as assemblage.  I reasoned that if I understood the social constructs indicative of the assemblage that I would then comprehend the creative process as assemblage.  It is now evident that I use accumulation of pictorial elements as a way to organize my memories and as somewhat of a visual diary.  I draw comparisons between disparate systems of operation, and am perhaps guilty at times, within my reasoning, of oversimplifying things.

At the end of the semester this spring, I completed two installations.

 Re-using the head.

Yup, squirrel on a stump.

Disconnected plumbing in the brain!  That one may just need to be a painting painting.  I love how blurred out the no parking sign gets when a camera flash goes off near it as well.

I’m going to post some of my other totems soon.  I actually have images take already.  The head installation with pipes is essentially a modern assemblage totem.  I have been so into totem poles lately it is not even funny.  Although to be honest some modern totem poles are pretty funny, so maybe that is an incorrect statement.

Peace.
-Mike