Author: mightylark

Sunday morning the MECA MFA students all piled into a very small studio atop a lighting fixture store in Williamsburg in order to peruse the exquisite work of Julika Rudelius. She spoke incredibly eloquently of race and money and power, and also of the social male. She claimed that men in this time are equally if not more concerned with their looks than are their female counterparts. As a moniker, she dubbed them “Dandies”.

I have never aligned myself with this sort of man. I am more what my very good friend refers to simply as “a dude”. And so I decided to make some work about the subject, about how all people, men included have their anxieties, their situations that they just can’t handle, the shortcomings and inadequacies that are what make us all human.

So with the head project still pumping through my veins, and a new goal in mind, I started thinking on the bus ride back from New York. Here are the results of my thought. Finals will follow in the next couple of weeks.

The text in the one on the left reads “emotionally fragile”. It’s funny when I start to admit to myself that I do have my emotional tirades on paper, that it feels so much better. I think that most people do though.
I really like this second one. I think all these text pieces should be accompanied by men with Sam Elliot staches.

So beat. Time for bed. We’ll have to chat again soon.
Peace
-Mike

I’ve been working with some new hat sketches and some new sketches for installations. I am still fighting to include a graphic element in all of the installation work, despite the fact that professors claim that the work is stronger without it. But I wonder if it is worthwhile to be strong work if at the same time it loses the piece that is fundamentally me, the author. How do I reconcile cutting myself completely out of the piece? I don’t think I want to, so I’m not going to do it.

New sketches, graphic element included:

This piece I think is going to include a head and a hat rack with several different hats on it that people will be able to take off of the rack and apply to the cartoon’s head. I am not sure if people will really feel ok moving the hats, so if you have any suggestions on how to make people feel welcome to move the artwork around, let me know. I figure it is kind of like clothing for paper dolls, but wooden.

This is a more formalist piece that I have been thinking about. I am not sure that I am really into it, but I like the idea of a history and a texture through the wood. Not sure where it is going beyond that though…..

Lastly, I’ve been thinking a lot about where the art comes from lately. The material collection grows more and more interesting. I think that I am going to try to document where I get all of the materials from in the future for an added layer of history. I am after all relatively obsessed with maps.

Hope you folks like the work. I’m pretty pleased with the revelations that I have had of late. Hopefully it will equal some good work for all of you to view as well soon.

Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

This semester was absolutely crazy. It was a mental marathon and one that I will take the full 6 weeks to recover from and I think. For the next couple weeks I intend to focus on some more illustrative fun work. Watching Beautiful Losers today, cemented that thought for me. In 2004, when I bought the book, it really changed the way I created, how I felt about my work, and where I felt I fit into the art world. It did wonders for the development of my artwork as a viable option for shows and illustration work.

I would like to pursue some more work in the illustrative vein and really concentrate on the vitality of that cartoon imagery, hopefully pushing it into the installation work and not leaving the two mutually exclusive. Someone told me earlier in the year that everything that I do is connected, even if the only connection is that I did the work.

The last piece of school was by no means finished but I believe it was still a step in teh right direction. It was more interventionist in nature, and left a great deal of room for improvement, which I found to be a relief and not particularly a crutch. A good feeling.

I have also started sketching out more involved environments and more detailed installation pieces. I think that the endpoint of these pieces will be more sculpture than anything else. We will see.

This piece I intend to make in the round, preferably to be displayed in the middle of a room. I am not sure that I will be painting on any of the pieces, or at least whether there will be anything representational on the wooden parts.

This piece I would like to make into more of a fete of engineering excellence. The thought of balancing the large piece on a small fulcrum is immensely interesting to me and makes me think of the problems I used to give myself when trying to work with Legos and Lincoln Logs when I was a little kid.

But for now. Illustration. Cartoons. Whatever I feel like really. I might even play some guitar and exercise some hobbies or something. I’m going to get another coffee.

Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

Last night I had to put together the installation with some level of finish. I was very pleased with what occurred. I know that when people see images of it sometimes it doesn’t appear to have changed much, but in my head it has changed so much and the small things that have changed and the bits and pieces that have been added really make it work for me. It has been an incredible lesson as well. I’ve learned that this is what I’ve been trying to create for several years now but haven’t been able to. It almost seems like that realization is what graduate school is all about anyway, so maybe this school thing is a complete success.

Anyway here’s a panorama of the installation finish as it stands now and as it was critiqued.

I also finally figured out a method of hanging and creating a piece out of a few boards that I have had grouped together in my head for ages now. They are interchangeable. I am toying with the idea of hanging the piece and inviting people to move the boards around. Let me know what you think.

I really like this piece. Though I would like it even better if the room that it is currently hanging in didn’t absolute exude office space. That’s it for now though. Starting to catch a little cold, so I think I will go take a nap and enjoy my day.

Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

For some reason tonight I felt like going back to freshman year of high school. I’m pumping a little Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It’s odd, but I feel like this album should have been played in heavier rotation after the whole break up this summer. Ben Gibbard definitely had the corner on that market, but I view Mellon Collie with far more nostalgia. It makes me remember, a lot. Which leads me to the piece that I am working on now.

THE INSTALLATION

The installation has been a long time coming. Ever since I first purchased the book Beautiful Losers in 2004, I have wanted to make pieces similar to the large installations by Barry McGee, Thomas Campbell, and Phil Frost depicted within the book’s beautiful pages. For some reason, whether it be space issues or just the daunting task of changing my entire course of working, I have never done it. Until now. I am finally working on my first installation and it is, albeit not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, a start.

First Incarnation:

The head was actually far easier to hang than I had assumed it would be. A timely trip to the hardware store and two picture hanging kits later and the head and the original set of surround pieces was up. Unfortunately with this one I felt the head and it’s neighboring blocks were too crowded. You can get a better idea of what I mean from this angle.

Admittedly, I just wasn’t pleased with this crowded approach. While I feel the claustrophobia is very important, I at the same think there is a tight line to walk here. Too crowded will not do. So I tried to air it out a bit, and I’m liking it better…

And here is to the right side….

I really enjoy how the two pieces of raw found wood when placed in juxtaposition to my painted elements look painted. Also the tone on the two pieces is very similar to the wall and starts asking some interesting questions that I have had of late about art within the cube. It was also mentioned to me tonight that I should really show up to a construction site and make one of these. I do not know if I am up for this guerrilla art making ideal, but I do enjoy the idea of this type of project being site specific and located outside.

Well I’ve bantered enough for one night I think. I’m going to go jump in bed before 11. You have no idea how rare that is.

Peace
-Mike

There is a peaceful calm in the air. Finally. I find myself going to bed later and rising earlier. Things are far from perfect. I am currently working on several projects and none of them are really going exactly how I had planned, but I am pleased that I am doing them, no matter how they turn out. In fact I am viewing failure as a means to an ends now. I am not sure that this is such a radical change from the way that I felt before this term but it is good to realize that it is the way that I feel. (also of note, apparently I can type while looking out the window now, very cool)

I am amazed with where I am now. I had never thought that I would be in this kind of atmosphere, where intellectual thought is encouraged and where I am surrounded by some of the most amazingly intelligent and gifted people that I have ever met. It is a pleasure to have this opportunity, and I am finally feeling well enough emotionally that I can really appreciate that. Also thank you US government for your loan assistance!

But I blabber.

Today I received another map in the mail. Slowly this project is building up some steam. I am loving it. This one came from Massachusetts, so now I have 4 states and 1 province represented. So exciting! I have not scanned the 3 most recent maps yet. They are forthcoming in a tremendous display of scanning endurance, but for now, here is a little teaser.

This project is so cool. I am very pleased that people are getting involved. And please, once again, I am not concerned with how “artistic” the maps are. That is not the nature of the project. If you are interested in sending a map, please do, without any concerns of having your artistic abilities judged. Here’s the address to send to:

Mike Lewis
28 Gilman St. Apt 2
Portland, ME 04102

Keep in mind, that each person ho sends me a map is going to be receiving an original map drawn by me in return. Seems like an easy way to receive some free art and to continue getting to one another a little better in this world that is so digital-centric. Don’t you think?

Hope you are all well. Have a great day.
Peace
-Mike

Today I spent several hours in a coffee shop making sketches for this piece that I am working on. The head structure is becoming a much larger project, which somehow when I was originally putting it together I suspected would happen. Basically what I have determined is that I am going to put together a cross hatched support using shingles that mimic my line worked cross hatching with the big head in the foreground. The sketch comes out looking like this:The shingles that I have came off of the roof early this fall, which means that they are in pretty rough shape. It’s not like anything that comes off of this house is in particularly tip-top shape. So we’re talking a little dry rot and some brittleness, so screws seem right out. Even though drilled holes seem to go fine, the expansion that the screw would make out of the hole seemed like a bad idea, so I decided to join each piece using a loop of wire. Here is the beginning of that:

The shingles seem to be holding together well with the wire, and the wire seems relatively non-invasive to the flow of the wood. There is not too much shine, and not too much weight added. I think it will work out well.

I also managed to piece together the face with strips across the back today and added the first eyebrow shape. I went with finishing nails as I liked the repetition along the brow area.

This project is going better than I had really suspected it would. I am very pleased because the other options that I had worked up for myself in the studio were just so lacking in hands on time that I couldn’t get into them. This is meaty enough for me to really get into and it is more personal than a lot of the projects that I develop as well.

Hope you like the progression and hopefully I have more for you tomorrow as well.
Til then.

Peace
-Mike

When I did my last experiment for class, the first artist that my professor mentioned was Barry McGee. I was impressed that judging from the other artists that they usually compare my work to that they would be aware of Barry McGee, but I am glad they are, because I remembered a little bit of what I used to like to do before I became surrounded by academics and their well educated language. It is difficult to feel a part of it. I really have never been one for using big words just for the sake of using a big word. If the situation calls for it then I will use the appropriate term but I am not married to the verbose.

Anyhow, I am being verbose and tangential, so let me get around to what I was getting at. I’ve been working on some constructions lately, as you could see from my last post, but I really wanted to be making those same pieces but with an influence gained from street art and the west coast scenes, not from a NYC scene that I feel has been dead since the dawn of post-modern art.

That said, here is the piece that I have been working on. It is part of a large installation that I have begun to formulate. Hope you like it. It’s definitely the biggest head I have ever painted.

That’s all I have for now. More to come soon, has to be, my professor is coming a week early this time. Til next time.

Peace
-Mike

Good morning. This past weekend has been a whole lot of busy. I started playing with a punk band again, I carved a sweet cyclops pumpkin, I cooked crab and clam cakes at my friends Halloween party, and I painted, a lot.

I am very into this new painting that I am working on. I had actually hung the piece as an under painting in the MFA show at the end of last summer at MECA but when I picked it up from the show, I realized I couldn’t actually stand the painting anymore, so I painted over it, I drilled a hole in it and I installed a faucet. I like it, though I plan on constructing a better way to hold the faucet in the painting.

I am really pleased to be working with these constructions again. I will probably catch some flack from my professors for abandoning the conceptual project that I have had going, but over the past couple weeks I’ve realized that I need to be happy with my work, even if others are not.

I’ve also been working on some new drawings incorporating pipes. It has been suggested that the way the pieces are drawn out on small planks and blocks of wood makes the piece appear to be a game. I am not completely upset by that, though really, I feel that it speaks a bit more deeply than as a game, but really that is the least of worries now that I have so definitely absconded from my Fall Proposal.

Sorry for the glare. It is tough to take photos in the studio after dark. Only one overhead bulb and a lamp that is a bit too strong for what I need. Hopefully you get the idea though.

Go Giants!
Peace
-Mike

When I met with my studio adviser a week ago, he suggested that I try to make things in cardboard. I am a good student. I try to do what I am told, or what is suggested to me, but really the poor man has just had to deal with me floundering for the past 2 months. First I started off with a plan that incorporated mail art, but conceptually had not thought it out at all, second I started working on trading cards and those are coming along slowly, and lastly I started working with pipe drawings on blocks of wood.

This week has been incredibly intense. I spent Monday and Tuesday going through books getting a better idea of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden section and proportions. I started to read about mail art and what it meant conceptually and I started to think about the mapping systems that we use all over the world. I went to the studio and everything seemed incredibly disparate, and even now that I am typing this and riding high on some creative emotion, it may still be disparate, but things seem clearer than they have in a long time.

Today I was looking at the block pieces that I have been working on that my professor suggests looks like a game, which frankly the only game that I think is being played is me trying to get by in grad school. Like my friend Paul suggested though, “Now it’s War”. Do what you want. Anyway, I am being tangential; I was looking at the blocks and started to think about my chaos pieces and how they were just constructions and I thought, “I need to make more structures”. So tonight, I sawed, I hammered, and maneuvered a new piece. I am excited about it, and to feel excited about something that I’ve made at this point is amazing. So much criticism has occurred that I forgot what it was like to enjoy my stuff, but now I remember again.

Hopefully you like this and I am not just blowing smoke. Many who like Mike paintings like this. It takes up the entire studio floor. Oh and please, if you live near me and you are tearing down something made of wood, can I have it? Thanks.

The images are not great. I’ll upload some better images when it is light outside and I don’t need to use a flash. Hopefully you at least get the idea.

The other exciting thing that I have been working on is my new “Coffee with Mike” project. I am asking people all over the country to make a map to their favorite coffee shop and to then send it to me via snail mail and then I will send a drawing back in return. In fact I received my parents’ maps in the mail today with a pound of coffee. Amazing. Here is my quick map.

If you are interested in the project at all you can check it out here on my flickr page. This project is not limited to folks that label themselves as artists. I am truly interested in everyone’s maps. Neither of my parents are artists but their maps were absolutely beautiful.

Anyhow, I think that’s it for now. Go Giants.
Peace
-Mike