Today I was sitting at the coffee shop and my buddy Sam looks at me and says “I am the feature poet at Mama’s Crowbar tonight, I have to go home and make merch”. My immediate response was to ask him if he needed some cover art for his hand written small run zines.
I put together five covers. Here is the first. I will share the rest later as I am running off to see Sam’s feature.
I worked at the restaurant all weekend. It was awesome. I love my chef and my co-workers. They are great great people, but when I leave my job I am so exhausted and ready for bed. Add a 2 and a half hour drive to the end of work and I am pretty much lost to the world for the next 24 hours. Such was the case this weekend.
I was sitting at my kitchen table eating lunch today wondering if I was ever going to finish anything today. I cleaned up a little around the house, which I guess is worth something, but I have 2 illustrations that I need to finish this week as well. It was at about lunch time when I realized that it would do me no good to attempt to do more work for clients after working an entire weekend. Hopefully this is a sign of logic to come. Tomorrow I need to wake up and work on illustrations, but after a night of working on my fine art stuff, which is more cathartic and less focused around communicating a specific idea, I feel more prepared to do so.
I am also pleased to have finished up another 15 or so pieces for my installation in May. My thesis project really is a bit ridiculous, so I think any time that I am feeling a little non-plussed with my day over the next several months I will do as I did today and just crank out some more drawings. I am also sharing a couple commissions that I wrapped up at the end of last week today.
Hope you dig the stuff.
I am stoked to even have gotten moving today. At about 6 I didn’t think that there was a hope of doing so. Have a good night peeps. Will talk to you soon.
Peace
-Mike
I’ve been making a bunch of the Vertical Mixing series for Christmas presents over the past several weeks. I have been absolutely awful at documenting them, but I remembered to document this one. I love the Owlbot. Expect more from him.
Speaking of which, I was approached by an old friend recently and he has Mighty Lark scripts written up. I am absolutely floored with them. He really captured the essence of what I was looking for in that character.
Starting next week, as a result, I will be putting together a full Mighty Lark story to be unveiled, well, whenever I am comfortably through enough strips that I have a buffer. I got burned out on that project very quickly when I was behind. I don’t want to do that type of thing to myself anymore.
Thanks for checking in folks and Happy Holidays.
Peace
-Mike
Thanks to the lovely Meighan O’Toole of My Love for you, I was selected to work on a series of illustrations for the Boston Public School’s library. The illustrations are used as depictions of subject headings in the card catalog. I’m posting a couple of these now, and will post the rest when they have all been approved. This was a really fun project to work on and I am very pleased to share it with you.
I have definitely figured out this year that I love being an Illustrator. It has been a huge step for me to answer the “so what do you question?” with “Illustrator” rather than “cook”. Projects like this one really help me to think of myself seriously though and I am incredibly pleased to be in the position that I am now. I’ve tried pretty hard to get to this point, but all of that work kind feels worth it when I see work like this in the world.
Hope you all like it too.
Peace
-Mike
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