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Tomorrow I begin installing at The Studio in Laconia, NH.  On Friday I will be rolling out a limited run of prints of my new painting Love Me, which goes right along with the show, which is titled, Love Me.  The prints will be available at The Studio, however, if you’ve gotta have one, they will be signed and numbered and matted at a whopping 15 bucks.  Email me and I will set one aside for you if you like, though if I’ve gotta mail it, I may charge a couple extra for shipping.

Here’s the piece.  Pretty cool I think.  The big one has changed a little for the show as well.

Also, I will be updating the blog this week while I work with photos and perhaps videos of the installation in progress.  This project should turn out to be totally dope and I’m pretty excited by it.

Be sure to check back.
Peace
Mike

This morning I was reading the Design Sponge’s newspaper, a new project that the folks over at Design Sponge have put together.  It is quite good.  There was an article about Hess surfboards, which interviewed the owner about his shaping of custom surfboards.  For some reason it occurred to me that I really wanted to shape wood today so I started to think about a project that I had had in mind to make masks.  I had originally planned on making them out of card stock but wasn’t particularly into the idea of having them printed and cutting them out.  It did not seem hands on enough, however, shaping them out of wood sounded great.

I got started on them right away, and although they seem to be a bit small right now for the average human face, they still look pretty much like what I had wanted and I think with a little editing they will work well as masks too!

Check them out.

 I have not decided whether I like them better painted or cross hatched.  I have heard opinions to either end and I like them both.  Hopefully folks will feel inclined to use these bad boys at the opening.

Come check out the show as I install next week at The Studio.  Play with a mask, make me take a break, whatever you feel like.  It should be a good time.  Catch you folks later.

Peace
Mike

September 6 through 8 I will be assembling my biggest and best installation of the year at The Studio NH in Laconia.  From 11 to 4 each day the public is welcome to come and see me setting up what is sure to be the best piece of the year.

Thanks to Melissa McCarthy, owner and artist extraordinaire, at The Studio for the opportunity to work in this manner.  Over the next week I will be adding images of pieces that I will be including in the assemblage.  For now, here is the promotional card.

I hope some of y’all can make it out.  If you can’t make it out for the assembly, be sure to hit up the opening.  I hear that there will be a dj spinning some random noise and hip-hop dream. 

I’ll be back.
Peace
Mike

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