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The last two weeks have been a complete blur.  I went home, came back to my last two weeks of class, worked extra hours at the deli, and finished work for a new show at Artstream Studios.  I have trouble with weeks like this.  It is tough for me to keep my head up and focused.  It is something that I am just going to have to learn to do better, as the world grows faster and faster. 

To counteract the feelings of anxiety and urgency that I have been tormented by, I’ve been reading the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  His pacing and tendency to state the obvious are quite welcome friends currently.  His essays read like a more pedantic version of a Zen volume, but I enjoy him nonetheless.  He is like that talkative uncle that reads too much.  Thus far my favorite quote goes as such: “You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you’ve read. You shall make me feel what periods you’ve lived.”  I suppose that this is merely a statement experiencing the moment.  As I was talking to a friend last night she twisted it into a statement of phenomonology, which is one of those fake art terms stressing the sublime and the feeling of an experience that teeters on the brink of explanation.  I don’t think that that is what it was about, however.  I think that the statement had more to do with reading with a focus that allows you to become a part of whatever history you are reading about, to think about the consequences of people’s actions like they were your own, to use the acts of others as points of reasoning within your own life, to be more mindful of the texts you read and things you see.

I have trouble with this.  I am usually quite aware of the things going on around me, but have trouble with words on a screen or page and also with the words that are coming out of people’s mouths.  I find it hard to keep up.  I always start to think about different things, or rather, I am usually already thinking about those things and when people give me a hook I end up diving straight in.  And so I’ve been attempting to be more mindful and forcing myself to read more.  I think it is adding layers to my thought and as a result it is adding layers to my work.

When I was asked to do a few piece for the Tenth Anniversary show at Artstream Studios and Gallery, I immediately assumed that the gallery directors wanted more of the same type of work that I had submitted in the fall, as it had done pretty well in sales.  I struggled with this idea in my head for two months and naturally ended up with a couple days left to produce my artwork.  I realized that I wasn’t capable of making those pieces again.  There has been a shift in my thought, a desire to live life more seriously than I had in the past, to be a bit more conservative and not to make kids work for the rest of my life.  I had been adding layers to pieces that weren’t working in a different series and that was turning out quite successful, so I determined that I would use the same method with these four pieces.  Here are the completed pieces for Arstream.

In describing these pieces, I happened on one of my favorite painting descriptions ever, “A bird sits on a wire, while another set of wires grows convoluted, and all you need is to use the phone, but it won’t work any more because you are short a dime.”  I think it says more about me than a lot of my text does.

I hope everybody out there is doing okay.  My heart goes out to you every day.  It is tough to live even when there are no extra obstacles to navigate.  The only thing that I can suggest is to love the people around you like they are the greatest thing since fire was discovered, because they are.

Peace
-Mike

As I relayed on Thursday, I traveled home to New York this weekend to see my folks for the first time since Thanksgiving.  It was a very pleasant trip despite the 17 hours worth of travel on Thursday and the delayed travel today.  I do not very much mind being in transience however.  My mind is left to wander, I am forced to read books that I seldom make time for in my everyday life, and I come up with some of the best ideas that I ever think up. 

When I reached Syracuse on Friday morning at a quarter to 3 I was not very tired.  I am always filled with the excitement of being home, the thrill of my alma mater, and the rush of not having to work.  I started to search for some exhibition opportunities to apply to.  I found several that involved long application processes that I bookmarked to complete this week, but really wanted to find something that I could work on while I was sitting in the bus station drinking my swill from Dunkin Donuts, which I am positive was brewed at about 9pm the prior evening. 

I settled on a project titled “A Letter to Portugal,” an exhibition focusing on mail art to suggest alternate means of reality to the people of Portugal.  I have been very into the idea of mail art and exchange as well as to avoiding value being latched on to artwork, and so this project seemed right up my alley.  I promptly thought of my “Today may just be everything you need” piece and decided to do a new text piece that was the Portuguese translation.  Fortunately Google provided me with that little tidbit.  Although I wonder how accurate that translation is.  That makes it even more interesting to me, however, as I wonder about this thought of communication with art.  A text based piece can be appreciated as a series of lines of varying weight as well as something that is communicating via words.  I suspect that the gap in translations between languages becomes similar to the gap in translation between image and word.

Here is an image of my work station in the bus depot.

I think that I feel more of a predisposition to this type of art making if only because it is something that I can complete on the road.  I mailed the project from my home town but really could have stopped at any post office between the bus station and home.  It is a process perfectly devoid of designated spaces.  My work has become as transient as my soul.

Peace
-Mike

I am on the way home to see my parents.  I haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving, so this will be my annual Christmas/Easter visit.  Working in a restaurant since undergrad has left me with a peculiar sense of holidays.  Mostly I think of them as days that I will be working a double and allowing anyone who may be able to see their family go see their family.  It is so rare that any of the service industry employees are capable of doing so on the holidays.  Since I have never lived very close to my folks since Syracuse, the closest was central New Hampshire which was a mere 7 hours away, I have accepted my existence as the worker bee, but now it is the beginning of April and I am on my way home.  I opted not to drive because I both enjoy the leisure of transit and I do not enjoy traversing the Adirondacks when I am finally completely exhausted and do not trust my driving.  It just seems to make more sense.  It does, however mean that I will be traveling roughly 16 hours on the way out to New York.  The trip back is far less as I will be dropped at one of the closer stops, missing a couple of layovers.  It is great to have the break.  I am pleased.

At this point I have split time between sleeping a very little and reading Maugham’s, The Moon and Sixpence.  It is a remarkable book.  The narrator follows a man who has left his mediocre business life in London for life as a painter in Paris.  The narrator and the painter do not speak well to each other.  The artist is poor, inexpressive, and of wry wit.  He lives in tatters and has taken complete leave of his prior life, seems immune to love, and incapable of accepting grace.  He is a curious character to read.  This is oft the personification of artist that we are left with; moody and destructive in nature.  The artist is supposed to be so caught up in his or her own actions that nothing else is important and to be sure, they will be unaware of others.

I wonder, sometimes, if this is some ineffable quality of artists that one must possess in order to achieve any element of success.  I am incapable.  I am constantly seeking approval whether I want to believe it or not.  I constantly am running images in front of Facebook and Twitter users.  I still have that childish, “look what I built, Mommy” personality.  And yet, I am not particularly fond of being complimented.  Perhaps I am more eccentric than I give myself credit.  I am certainly not this monstrosity of a human being that is incapable of associating with people only to spend every waking hour with his art.  To be sure, I have gone out of my way to create elaborate projects which will include others.  Is this way a route to success?

I’ve been pondering this for quite some time as in the past six months I have been more interested in creating loose communities based on human interaction rather than pursuing new gallery opportunities.  I think that it is really affecting my artistic output.  I am creating just as much as I always have, but I think the purpose behind it has grown a little more about community while at the same time addressing the concerns that are very personal to me which I never wanted to talk about; how I felt excluded, how I was the Baudelaire described by Sartre to have dwelt in my own lack of acceptance as a badge of honor.  Community is not something that have felt a part of.  Community is something that I have always felt I have to fight for.

At the same time, I still make illustrations, which are decisively in opposition to those feelings of detachment from my surrounding community.  Here is the illustration that I completed for this month’s Thursday Night Throwdown.

 

I do believe that this is one of my longest ever postings, and as such I feel as though I should do you all the service of saving something to say for another day, but as I was thinking about this novel, I realized that I needed to write.  Do any of you other artists work with a feeling of abandonment or alienation from the rest of society?  Is this merely something that I think about?  The past fifty years or so in art has attempted to blur that line between society and artists, but I still wonder if it

It has been a rough spell for me physically.  Last week as you know, I lost my hearing and then my voice.  Today while both of those realities were drawing to a close, as I reached to finish making my bed I put my back out.  This is not the first time that I have put my back out, but I must admit that as I look at the situation it is one of the funniest times that I have ever put my back out.  It just seems that I am not supposed to be completely healthy right now.  I am supposed to be paying attention.  I just don’t know to what I am supposed to be paying attention.  All in all, I don’t find myself that upset about the back.  I am grateful that I can hear and speak.  Every situation bears a positive connotation, I guess.  I’m going to try to dwell on that side for a bit and see where it gets me.  If nothing else these health issues have kept me operating at a slower rate, which in all reality is better for my production and my sanity.

About a week ago I received a letter from a very good friend who is putting what I believe is his first book together.  There were some beautiful moments in it, but I admit, I must read it again before I can give him any further information in response.  It is a great feeling to get these glimpses of people’s thought processes in the mail.  It is a quieter life, one that moves slower, and at a pace that allows time to think before answering.  I’ve had difficulty in this world I think, because I do like to think before responding.  The internet, with its constant stream of information, begins to make the mind mirror the body in a long distance race.  After racing 26 miles, even marathon runners stop for a second or two.  I have to remember this.  Along with his manuscript, my friend also sent an accompanying letter in which he suggested I read Somerset Maugham and so, yesterday, I checked The Moon and Sixpence out from the library.

Within the first chapter I have already fallen in love with Maugham’s language and pacing.  “The prime minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the general without an army is but the tame hero of a market town.”  Also, more pointedly in these days where I find myself working three jobs; “…recommended men for their soul’s good to do each two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”  I find this older writing to be more beneficial to my process as an artist.  I appreciate a little poetry to my every day life, rather than recognizing the everyday as its own simple poetry.  The romantic build up is what I live for and probably the point wherein I lost my way in the Post-Post-Modernist realm of graduate school.

As a result most of my projects as of late have been a rejection of the online world, new media, and social media.  I do use all of these things, but am realizing that I need solid every day things to feel fit and healthy.  Staring at Youtube videos all day sounds like a torturous stay with Beatrice to me.  Also, I realize how many amazing resources there are on the internet, but I have little desire to sit and take them in.  It crushes my soul.  Since I have purchased this lap top that I write upon right now, I have slowly become more and more addicted to staring into the void.  I have been attempting to avoid this a bit.  I have been attempting to be more serious when I write this blog.  I have been attempting to be more “real” in this “virtual existence.”  Baudrillard, eat your heart out.  

The mail projects seem to be a good point to draw this line in the sand.  Writing on a sheet of paper requires taking your hand and your brain into consideration.  Typos in this day are allowed, however, if handwriting is too sloppy there is no sense in sending mail.  I like mail.  I like receiving mail, and so I have made more mail to send.  This life is reciprocal after all.

This drawing is a double throwback.  The arrows are all signals in guiding trains, where the top drawing is of a train whistle.  I found notes in an old sketchbook of the code that train conductors used with train whistles to communicate back and forth with stations and other trains.  I think maybe that these codes were good for our brains to wrap around.  

I have also been very much into exploring my daily life as a cook and deli worker.  I have always tried to keep my art life and my cooking life separate.  It hasn’t made me happy.  I think that if I start to accept my daily life as I cook and explore what those negative feelings are when I am working there in a more positive way that I will actually be able to move beyond that feeling and maybe push my art to that next level.  I think that it is too difficult to traverse the course of negativity at a 9-5 to joy in your passion after it is done.  I’ve explored other options, but I think that the answer is actually in making that daily life the same as the art life.  Wish me luck.

Peace
-Mike

This week has been a long week of recovery.  I unfortunately botched that up last night as I went to a Bad Religion show rather than letting myself rest up for that final night of healing.  Now I have a raspy voice and my health has not improved, but my soul is full as I finally got to see one of my favorite childhood bands up close and personal.  I had seen them in 2000, but that was at a festival at Darien Lake in New York.  I was probably a quarter mile from the actual show.  This time I wasn’t any more than ten feet from the stage.  It was an experience that took me back to my teenage years.  I’m glad for that.

Afterwords I sat with my friend, Ben.  We were talking about 2013 and how good it has been.  As I was talking and realizing how good it had been, I shocked myself a little.  I have been a ball of stress for two months now, but that’s it.  I’ve been a ball of stress because of my own expectations.  I have been working a ton of hours by choice and really, it isn’t that bad.  I needed a break this week, not from work, but from my own mental instability. 

I realized while watching Bad Religion how much that group of guys in their fifties is still rocking.  They were having fun, and it occurred to me that they must still have something they are looking for.  You don’t enjoy your work when you have figured out everything about it or you have done everything with it that you can.  It becomes rote.  It is too plain at that point.  So this group of guys in their fifties must still be looking for something.  They haven’t figured it out entirely yet.  I haven’t figured out everything yet either, but I’m not even in my mid thirties.  I am still a young ‘un.  As I watched the group play, I began to feel a bit more confident in how I am getting work done.  I have made a lot of work.  It is certainly of a better quality and more knowledgeable than it was when I was younger.   I sometimes get a little too rough on myself and discredit some of my work.  I need to stop doing this so that I can progress.

With this in mind, I decided to work on a piece for a demo which I had decided was basically trash, but not trash in a good way and not trash in a manner that I could fix, or so I had thought.  The corner on this panel had been busted when I dropped it.  The material is some kind compressed board, which is not very durable.  I really wanted the corner intact, because it was prefabricated and I felt like showing it next to the other pieces that will be in this eventual show it needed to fit snugly against the piece to its right.  While working in my class today, however, I realized that I could just bring the square over top.  Instant gratification.  Here is the result.

I have also been dragging my feet on a book project with a really amazing poet.  I hadn’t felt like my work was standing up to his.  Yesterday I woke up after a night hanging out with my friend, Ed, who is like my big brother, I started to go through old sketchbooks, revisit drawings, twist the subject around in my head and really consider what options there were for me within the words.  I started to concentrate more on the feel and less on the iconography and everything started to fit.  Here are a couple of those drawings.

Things are starting to click again.  I’m going to start applying for shows and residencies again soon.  The work is finally feeling like it deserves those venues.  For a while I didn’t think that I could justify putting the work up elsewhere, but now I realize that it is just different work than what I was doing a while back.  It carries just as much and maybe more weight as that old work did.

Peace
-Mike

I have been sick since Sunday night.  My eardrum burst early on Monday morning and as a result I’ve pretty much taken it easy all week long.  I had to cancel class on Tuesday and the majority of my waking time has been spent at two 6 hour deli shifts.  This morning I woke up feeling very much recharged and so I made my first pot of coffee of the week and then started working on a little art before work, nothing too crazy but a couple low key ideas that I have been wanting to work with.  It turns out that I am really pleased with what I ended up with.

I really hadn’t had much desire to work on anything Monday or Tuesday.  Sleep was king.  It was nice to even want to make something.  I had had the first page of a tiny zine which I had set up during my illustration class a couple weeks ago.  It was sitting on my laundry shelf, clearly something that I found when I was searching through pockets before doing my laundry, but this morning I felt that I should work on it.  It is nearly April and I have been thinking about fishing quite a bit, so I decided to use the drops as book ends to three fishing related images in the book.  I drew three images this morning, hated one of them, gessoed over it and redid it tonight.  I then scanned it in to make some more copies and ran the original over to my fishing buddy at the cafe where he works.

I am really excited to be pushing some of the ideas of “book” now.  I think this is a good precursor to my Twitter book that I will be starting as soon as I get some mail responses from my Twitter kin.  Book arts was nothing that I ever thought of doing until recently, but it all seems to tie in with the sketchbook practice and the second project which I worked on this morning.

There are many people named Michael Lewis in the United States.  One of them is the Jesus Painter, who you will always find before me in Google searches, and another is Michael Lewis the economist, who has many prize winning books.  He is apparently a Best Seller and a big deal.  I’ve collected a couple of his books, not because I care what they are about, but because my name is on them.  One of these books is Panic.  It is apparently about the state of our current economy.  I decided that I didn’t really care about Lewis’s high minded economy.  What I care about is working at a deli, as a teacher, as an illustrator, and as a painter to pay all of my bills.  I wear a lot of hats.  I kind of make ends meet.  Who actually defines this economy; hard working, poverty level to middle class individuals, or people in the upper class?  Unfortunately, I think policy is determined by the upper class, but the majority of the people affected by this policy are in the lower class.  I’ve decided the easiest way to talk about this is to tell the truth instead of searching for metaphors.

I’m going to fill up this book, Panic, with journal entries about work.  I like the contrast between the ideas of economic policy and strategies to make millions and the working man just trying to get by.  It’s sort of a shout out to the Art as Lifers, but really, I think about this art thing, and it is a thing.  It’s like a drug.  You “waste” all of your time attempting to make things that you think will make the world better, but those things don’t usually, unless you make the big time, actually make any huge difference.  So it is as if you are pumping your funds into a drug, a drug that you have to have to survive, that costs you time, effort, funds, friends and your sanity.  And it is oh so good. 

My name is Michael and I’m a Lifer.
Peace
-Mike

You must have heard the phrase, “a penny for your thoughts?”  I had never really given the phrase too much thought until yesterday when a friend of mine were discussing sketchbooks.  I had submitted a few sketchbook pages for review to see if I could get featured on a blog earlier yesterday and was telling my friend about it.  The idea that that could be a viable showing opportunity had never really occurred to me, despite the fact that I fill multiple sketchbooks and artist journals a year.  It seems like a good way to go.  It could lead to more exposure for my painting work, give people a better idea of how my art is developed, and be an interesting document for the viewer to peruse in and of itself.  All of these things are good, but the next thought that came up was wildly disparate to my psyche, would the book be fore sale?

I have no issue selling paintings or drawings.  I have little trouble giving paintings and drawings away.  I’ve spent the last two years making time consuming work specifically to give away in an elaborate fashion.  I have torn many a sketchbook page out and given it to people in restaurants and coffee shops, and yet, the idea of selling a sketchbook seems so foreign.  How much does it cost?  They aren’t terribly personal in that I write down my feelings or incredible secrets.  They don’t have any information in them that will implicate me in any crime.  I don’t understand why it seems so necessary to keep all of them.  I don’t know why it bothers me to sell one.  Perhaps that is why I had such a problem with the Sketchbook Project from Art House Co-op.  That is a terrific project and an incredible concept. ( a traveling library of sketchbooks for any of you who haven’t heard about it ) 

However, even with my tendency to finish so many sketchbooks, I did not finish that one.  I had assumed before that it was the time period in my life.  My ex and I were just getting back together after I had taken “a break” in Minneapolis.  It was a pretty emotional and unemployed time period, but that said, I also had a ton of free time and plenty of thoughts bumping around in my dome.  To make the moment even more peculiar, I finished two other books in the time that I did not finish the sketchbook for the sketchbook project.

What is the power of the sketchbook?  People that see my books are always excited about them.  Usually it would be accurate to say that they are more excited to see the sketchbooks than my other work.  Is this the case for everyone?  I don’t know, but I do know that I have no idea how much one costs.

I am curious about your thoughts on this subject.  Do any of you keep a sketchbook?  What is the process like to you?  Does it feel personal even when its contents are not particularly personal?  Please feel free to comment here or send me a tweet @Mighty_Lark or email me mike at lewisacrylics.com.

Peace
-Mike

If I were to think of myself as the illustrative equivalent to BB King over the past six months, I’d end up singing, “The Cute is gone, the Cute is gone away.”  I haven’t felt like working with over the top cute in a bit.  Several of my friends have suggested that some of my drop and pipe pieces are still on the cute side, but I wonder how they are determining cute then.  I really don’t think of my machines as cute, but they are cartoony in a way, and that might begin the argument for cute machinery.  I am not sure.

Today I spent putting together a new Mansruin Zine.  Volume II is all printed out and I’ve trimmed and folded about 1/5 of them.  Since I have been sending out the zines in sewn envelopes, I have really moved through the zines.  I’m not sure which is the important part though.

I’m very pleased with the past two zines.  They seem to have a maturity that the Pig N Pancake zines couldn’t live up to.  Believe it or not, I would like to make a little mature work, so that is good in my book.  I absolutely love the Lamp Post in this zine.  It is across from a quote out of a Highwayman song.  “I ain’t cut out to be no Jesse James.”  Whiskey Tears and Country music.  Everything is beginning to makes sense.

Hope you dig it.  Let me know if you would like one too.

Peace
Mike

Today I woke up cranky about everything.  I didn’t understand why I make art, if it is any good, why I live in Portland, why there is no art going on here.  Of course these feelings are a bit asinine, but at the same time, they come from some place.  I determined upon the spot that I needed to spend some serious studio time today.  I have long figured out that it is necessary for me to do this when I start to feel alienated or pressured to be overly social.

I have stopped thinking about these two pieces as a whole to be finished all at once and more as a piece made up of four images.  Each image stands alone.  Here again is a photo of the piece.  (Once again the camera isn’t nearly as good as the art opening. 

I have more to say about this piece, but you will have to forgive me, I’ve started nodding off 3 different times during the course of typing up this small post.  So until I am more widely awake, adieu.

Peace

-Mike

Of late I have been having issues either finding shows and galleries to submit to or with being rejected from the few that I have found.  This is sort of the nature of the beast, but a lot of my friends around me have been quite successful lately.  I am very pleased for them, but it also makes me want my own stuff all the more.  This probably sounds like pure jealousy, but I think of it more like confirmation that that is also what I should be doing.  I have, however, realized that some of the work that htey are doing and the shows that they are submitting to are NOT the shows that I should be submitting to, which is a major step for me.  Historically I have accepted everything that anyone wants to let me do.  This, I am realizing, is not a very good idea.  And so I have been working on my commission.  It is 7 months in.  I need to finish it.  I will share a better image tomorrow.  My friend let me borrow a camera to replace the one I lost via 5 finger discount.

The goal is to finish this panel by the end of the week.  This is definitely a realistic goal.  Hopefully I can finish one panel a week.  It would be great to get this bad boy out of my house and into my buddy Orlando’s place.  Til then.

Peace
-Mike