Category: Uncategorized

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the coast and the sea.  I have lived on the ocean for approximately 7 years now.  At least I have been on a bay which has ocean water for 7 years, that is.  I’ve spent four years in Casco Bay and 3 years in Elliott Bay.  Both Seattle, WA and Portland, ME are places which are very close to my heart.  I do not know that I will stay here in Portland forever, but that is not to say that I don’t have an affinity for the area.  I remember, when I was little, taking a trip with my father to Lake Ontario.  As the sun set, my father stood staring off into the Abyss, like there was something calling to him or mesmerizing him.  When I got a little older, I started to stare off into the distance of the water trying to figure out what he saw and what he heard.  I don’t know that I figured out what he was after, but it wasn’t long until the sound of the waves and the feel of the surf’s crash started to take root in my brain and in my body.  We are all water and we are all tiny.  Never is it so obvious as when you are standing on the shore of a large body of water.

The towns that I live in, therefore, need to be close to or on the water anymore.  Today, as I was creating totems which tell my own life stories and mythology, it only seemed appropriate to make a totem to the two cities that I love.  There is not so much a nautical reference in the piece, but there is the idea of steadiness coupled with that which changes.  Here is that totem:

More specifically involving the ocean towns that I love, is the second project that I have started which I would like to share today.  I have long wanted to create a pop up gallery on a ship.  Currently a friend of mine, Anne Bryant, is sailing about on her vessel the Mimi Rose.  I suggested the other day that we do a small portable pop up gallery and to my delight she liked and encouraged the idea.  So today I set about looking up nautical terms and trying to think of a name for a small gallery.  I looked through some old school illustrated seafaring maps. 

I decided upon the term Mizzenmast because in reading I have always been attracted to the sound of the word.  Also, it is not the main mast, but the second mast.  It made sense to me that since this is not a mainstream art event, but an event living in the substrata of the art world.  This is going to be a great project.  I have already enlisted my friends Anne Buckwalter and Pilar Nadal to submit and look to have several other great additions to the show.  All of the work will be in miniature and clearly portable.  Here is the first rendition of the logo.

It is great to have a little momentum back.  It is great to be working with some awesome people.  Here’s hoping we can keep bring some interesting stuff your way and that maybe you can jump aboard the Mimi Rose sometime soon and see some art.  Keep up.

Peace
-Mike

I am a momentum guy.  If I have a lot of momentum and things are going well; people are asking for more stuff, few revisions, lots of different ideas, then I work so much better.  I get more done and I am happier with myself and the work that I am producing.  The ridiculous thing is that I nearly always get stuck on the big projects.  Work that is time intensive or that requires a lot of sketches and meetings makes me lose momentum.  When I lose momentum I start to question why I am doing any work to begin with.  I really need to start working out a schedule that leaves time for the open and more spontaneous works.  It is the only way that I will ever be able to remain stable.  I need balance and a secretary.  Does anyone want to be my secretary?  I’ll pay you in…..something awesome.

Anyway, I put together two totem pieces today in preparation for my little show at Bard Coffee coming this weekend.  By finishing up these two guys, I am now stoked to wake up tomorrow too.  See how simple a creature I am.  Life is rad.  Here be:

 I also love working on longer rectangles and warped pieces.  It was good to end my day this way.  Much love peeps.

Peace
-Mike

It pains me to say that I will not be making a mural in North Adams, MA.  Contracts didn’t match proposals and I just can’t afford a residency situation currently.  Perhaps someday I will be able to work under those circumstances, but for now, paying my bills and feeding myself seem more important than being able to have an extended stay to make a piece of artwork.  However, like so many other things, when you lose one opportunity you gain another.  Within moments of cancelling the mural I received an email from Diana Matoso from DS Way Community in England.  She’s producing a community through artwork and crafts made from our re-used refuse.  Her site shares ways in which we can re-use materials which are commonly thrown out.   We have been talking about doing some collaboration, which would be amazing.  I can’t wait to get my work overseas a bit.

I was also offered the opportunity to make a different mural in the city of Laconia, NH next summer.  I just had a meeting this morning with the owner of Bard Coffee in Portland and we are moving forward with the t-shirt designs that I had been putting together.  It is going to be great to see my work on t-shirts around town. 

I’m also putting together a few small pieces this week to hang in that same coffee shop.  It’s going to have to be one of those quick groups of pieces as time keeps escaping me.  Today I believe that I am finishing up the last project for Eco Kids that I will have for a while.  I’ve been working on a set of stickers.  I only have one left to finish.  Here is a small sample of the 26 that I have put together.

The large scale commission that I have been working on is also coming out well.  It is a slow process cross hatching work that is the size of an entire wall.  I wonder how Robert Motherwell’s work would have looked if he had cross hatched it instead.  Perhaps that would be an interesting project to attempt.  Re-creating someone’s work that was so dependent on blacks in a manner where blacks are so time intensive to develop.  Here is a sample of that piece.

Last but not least for today, I have been working on a new piece for a fellow who I made one commission for earlier this year.  The second piece is quite different and really seems like a blast from the past in painting style as well.  I think that I am leaning more towards working like this in the near future.  I may be mixing some of the characters in and working those out the same way.

There’s a lot of good going on here.  I’m really grateful to be able to turn down a project that I thought was going to be amazing and still have work to do.  This is turning into a great ride.  Thanks for coming along.

Peace
-Mike

It’s July.  It’s been hot.  Not super hot; I live in Portland, ME.  It is hotter, pretty much everywhere than it is here.  Perhaps not, but it has been super warm.  I’ve determined that introspection is the mother of second guessing.  I’ve also determined that being amongst people, even talking to said people, doesn’t necessarily equate to being an extrovert.  In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase: “alone in a crowd.”  To sit and draw and reflect on the people around you, even to give them pictures, to smile and joke, to laugh uproariously, this isn’t really being an extrovert.  If you want to know what I think, steal a sketchbook.  Everything that I am is in my sketchbooks.  Everything I understand, and everything that I can’t wrap my head around.  It’s in the sketchbook.  When I have a bad week, it’s in there, disguised as cute furry creatures loving one another, one magnificent world of coping.  It’s all so small, trivial.  Thoughts built upon thoughts.  None of them take up much space, but when you add page to page, day after day, it starts to build up, and you realize that you are a sum of billions of moments in this life, positive and negative, all added to each other and making you, for the better or for the worse. 

I bring this up because I realize that when I take work from the intimate arena of a sketchbook to a mural or a large installation it is like amplifying my thoughts.  The introvert becomes the extrovert in one fell swoop.  What is it too, to see thoughts amplified at this scale?  Is it egotistical?  I wonder what this desire to see my work so large is.  It is probably in reaction to feeling ignored as a kid.  Well if that’s it, “Ignore this!”

This project has been pretty great.  I have been going through some awkward social business this week and it has been incredibly cathartic learning to cross hatch with a paint brush.  Cross hatching to me is like feeling the crash of the surf; an ebb and a flow where in the ultimate rhythm of life is felt.
Heaven essentially.

Peace
-Mike

Apparently today is twice as awesome.  I am so incredibly excited about this series.  This is the heaviest geeking out that I have done in the past 3 years.  I think these pieces are finally pushing my plateau.  I fought so hard to learn to use acrylic paint and now it is definitely time to reject that ability.

I think I will soon be changing up the imagery in these too.  I want to do more power line pieces like I had been working on in the past month but utilizing this same method.  I feel very interested in how these pieces are more dependent on the materials than previous works.

Anyway, back to work.  I was just excited and wanted to share.
Peace
-Mike

It has been a very busy week thus far.  I have, as yet, only made it to Wednesday thus far.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.  That would be amazing.  I finished working on a coloring book project and constructed a model for a second project for one client this week.  It is such a relief to look back at those two projects a little rather than telling myself I need to finish it over and over again.  During last weekend I realized that I needed to start spending some more time on work for my Fine Arts practice.  I love making illustrations, and there is definitely some stability in making them that I have not yet found in making paintings and installations, but if I do not make those paintings and installations then I lose some of the vigor that I have for making artwork.  With that in mind I determined to really dig in a little bit to my Square Foot pieces.  I do not think that I will even make the deadline for submitting to this show, but I very much enjoy the catalyst to making these works.  I think they will function well in some other mix too.

This series has led to a lot more experimentation.  I have been working back and forth between pen, acrylics, and sandpaper.  In letting the sandpaper have as much say as the other two very controlling methods of application, I am able to distance myself a bit more from my pieces than I usually feel capable of doing.  I suspect that I will make enough of these to fill an entire wall space.  It’s interesting to me as well to consider how similar in a way this is to my idea for my thesis, but how this looks more mature, despite the complicated nature of that thesis work.

It is an interesting thought.  While illustrating lately I have been thinking, “if you mess up, do it confidently.”  Perhaps it was that which I was missing while producing that thesis work.  I don’t know, but I do know that I am pleased that I have begun to understand some areas to improve on that work, and I am pleased that people have been pursuing some of the work.  Life is shaping up again.
I’m glad you’re here for the ride.

Peace
-Mike

To say that I have been in a bad mood lately is probably a bit of an understatement.  My poor friends has been getting an earful all week long.  They say that very emotional periods in artists’ lives lead to their best art.  After this last week I would counter that argument.  I propose that perhaps those emotional times are super crappy and you get nothing at all done.  Then when you get through the week of being super upset, you think, “I gotta get my mind of this” and you start to make, and make, and make, and make, because really at the end of it all that is what you do.  That is how you cope with anything, but obsessing over something else.  Perhaps this is still in keeping with the first adage, but it seems different to me.  The work that I end up creating about emotional events in my life is really crappy but when I am done being emotional, I feel like I’ve wasted so much time, that then I get things done.  Anyway, I ramble.  If you come to this site, you probably want to look at some art.

I’ve had a ton of illustration projects that I’ve been working on.  They are kind of okay to be working on, but nothing that I want to spend the majority of my life working on.  If anything, they make me realize how much I want to work on my own stuff.  So really, I guess I should be thankful for any projects that I receive like that, because they not only help me subsist, but also fuel the desire to make more fine art. 

A month after the thesis exhibition has come down, it still sits in the back of my truck.  I don’t know what to think of it.  I put so much time into it, so much thought, and learned so much from it, but in the end, it does not function with the rest of my work yet.  It is a separate entity.  And so it sits in the back of my truck waiting for me.  I did, however, think of it, when I saw notice of a Call for Entries in Toronto.  The show is a square foot show.  All the works are priced the same and measure 12 by 12 inches.  The pre-cursor to the wood blocks was a series of pipe drawings on 2 X 4’s which I just so happened to still have.  I sawed 6 of these pieces down to a foot and started to revisit the drawings that I had already done on them.  I worked back and forth between sandpaper and pen, acrylic paint, and then back to sandpaper.  It was one of the more painterly processes that I’ve been involved with in the past couple years.  Here’s a work in progress look at it:

I am really excited about this piece.  I enjoy the wood grain, the bits of paint that show and the bits that have been flecked with the sand paper.  I think this could be an exciting new direction to really explore.  I have done this many times in the past when I want to paint over something, but I haven’t left most of them. 

I also ripped through a couple illustrations this week.  I can’t share all of them due to contractual limitations, however, here is the upcoming cover to the Bollard Newspaper here in Portland.  This was such a fun project to work on, if only because I used baseball cards as reference.  I love my baseball cards.  I have way too many.  If you saw them, you would think that I was still 8 years old.  I may be.

The text is modeled after the Score Boys of Summer cards from the early nineties.  I love it.  Also of note, I’ve been drawing a lot more people recently.  It is good to get back in the act of drawing people.  I miss spying a little at the coffee shops and markets.  Just a little.  I don’t like being creepy.

Have a good Sunday.  It’s beautiful out there.  And if you’re from New York, like me, Go Mets.
Peace
-Mike

I am so pleased to have finished my friend Adam Farrell’s commission.  He and his wife are amazing people and I am very happy to be able to do one of the Cloud Constructor pieces for them.  These pieces are some of my favorite to work with.  It was also a pleasant departure from the very gouache looking solid colored pieces that I have been working with recently.  I forget how much I love to push paint and respond to layers of color.

In addition to the commission I also started working on a wildebeest character for a local shop owner who wants to do a monthly narrative work featuring a classy wildebeest.  Projects like these are so amazing.  Frankly it is as if people are giving me liberty to do the things that I want to be doing anyway.  So check it; finely dressed wildebeest, right here.

I hope the shop likes them.  I’d really feel privileged to work on this on a monthly basis.  It is just such a cool idea.  For some reason it makes me think of Flight of the Concords, but that is beside the point.  I’m hungry.  Gotta run.  I hope you have an awesome day and thanks for stopping by.

Peace
-Mike

I really had no idea that it had been two weeks since I last posted to this blog.  Part of me has no idea what I’ve been up to and the rest of me is entirely aware that I have spent most of that time working, visiting galleries, openings, and trying to help my friends.  I have been busy.  I have arrived, but I am tired.  It is time for a night off, which I know probably sounds ridiculous from a guy who is typing a blog post at 10 pm, but usually I end up working until at least midnight, and I’ve spent the last couple hours listening to the Mets game on the radio. 

I have been finishing up the two coloring books for Eco-kids, a company located here in Portland, ME.  It’s been a lot of work but they are looking like quality productions.  I have also been putting together more work for my Etsy and Society 6 sites.  I reworked the opening page of my website, although it still needs a little work. 

Here are a couple of the items that I have worked up for my Etsy page recently.

If you haven’t been over to the Society 6 page it is super cool.  You can grab Iphone skins and prints.  Framed prints are available relatively cheap as well.  Check it out.  I’d love to see some iphones with my artwork on them.

I also put together my first sketches for the Mural in North Adams this week.  I’ve been working with the idea of electricity and conducting currents, so I’ve been thinking about capacitors and Portuguese Man o Wars.  It’s been super fun to draw a couple of those.

I can’t wait to see something that size 104 feet long.  This is going to be the coolest summer ever.
Lastly, I re-arranged my studio to feel better organized.  It’s been a long time coming.
The post it notes are my to do list.  It’s long, but I think that I’ll be able to get through quite a bit of it tomorrow after taking the majority of tonight off.

I hope you all are doing well.  Thanks for checking out the stuff again.
Peace
-Mike

Here is a piece that I put together yesterday which falls under the proper category for Illustration Friday.  Woot.  It has been a while since I’ve done one of these.