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I am working on a project that has been on the backburner for a couple years.  It is a relief to finally be taking some time for it.  After a lot of thought, I determined that it didn’t make sense to try to carry a full time job during the rest of school.  The first year went entirely too quickly and I don’t think that it will benefit me to keep working through the second.  So that said I have been able to devote a little more time to projects that have been left by the wayside.

One such project is a children’s book that I have been meaning to work on with an amazing writer whose name will remain unspoken until more work is done on the book.  For now I have some character sketches for you to view.

I am really enamored with these two sketches.  The second one is a self portrait as flying squirrel, which just make me giggle like a school girl.  The first was an opportunity to do something with a squirrel besides just having him sit on a tree limb.  Versatility is the name of the game.

 The bunny is really supposed to be cute.  Super cute.  So cute it makes you kind of feel ill, like if you have way too much chocolate or banana cream pie.  I might need to make him cuter.

This last one is a two headed beast.  Well yes there are three heads, but what I mean is it serves as sketches for character studies of two dimensional creatures and I am currently sculpting this totem out of bass wood with the help of a set of chisels or two that my father donated to me.

There’s a lot going on.  I’ll be back soon with some more images.  Til then.
Peace
-Mike

It’s a lazy cloudy day here in Portland, Me.  I love cloudy lazy days.  I worked my first shift at a new job, and was supposed to meet a fellow to go over some illustration work, but resolved myself to do the work by email instead and save the dough that I would have spent going to meet up with him.

I am also through with school for the time being, so it is time to get going on some work that I have had lined up for a while.  I will be exhibiting a little mini show of paintings and drawings at a local coffee shop in Portland, Bard Coffee, which is going to be great.  I haven’t shown at a coffee shop in a long time.  I think this will be much more low key, which I am all about.  Also, I am starting to talk with a wicked poet about doing a book again.  I sent him a quick text with this image to show that I was ready.  Thought I would share it with all of y’all.

I’ll keep you posted on these new projects.  I think they are all going to be fun, which is something that I haven’t been doing much of lately.  Fun illustrative awesomeness.  Fine art is cool and all, but illustration is fun.  Just a word to the wise.  Have an awesome Tuesday.

Peace
-Mike

I have been attempting to wrap my head around the work of Deleuzze and Delanda, in attempts to understand better the concept of society as assemblage.  I reasoned that if I understood the social constructs indicative of the assemblage that I would then comprehend the creative process as assemblage.  It is now evident that I use accumulation of pictorial elements as a way to organize my memories and as somewhat of a visual diary.  I draw comparisons between disparate systems of operation, and am perhaps guilty at times, within my reasoning, of oversimplifying things.

At the end of the semester this spring, I completed two installations.

 Re-using the head.

Yup, squirrel on a stump.

Disconnected plumbing in the brain!  That one may just need to be a painting painting.  I love how blurred out the no parking sign gets when a camera flash goes off near it as well.

I’m going to post some of my other totems soon.  I actually have images take already.  The head installation with pipes is essentially a modern assemblage totem.  I have been so into totem poles lately it is not even funny.  Although to be honest some modern totem poles are pretty funny, so maybe that is an incorrect statement.

Peace.
-Mike

It is the twenty fourth.  This year escapes me.  I have four more days of first year graduate student status before I cross the threshold and begin the downhill slide into an MFA in studio arts.  These are exciting times.  However, there are still a number of people looking for me to do my old work, which I think will inevitably be crossing paths with the new work, and this has made me one stressed little monkey.

But, things are looking good now.  I need to pull together a small show for a spot in my hometown, which is great.  I have never shown art in Lewis County.  I am working on a piece in exchange for a new American made Fender stratocaster, which is very exciting, putting together a small group of works for Bard Coffee in Portland, working up some more pieces in a series of paintings for a commission, and trying to work on a couple illustration projects.  I am feeling a bit busy, but it is a happy time.

I’m posting a couple images of my most recent installation.  It is really a portrait of an artist as you will see.  I’m pretty excited about it, but I am far more excited for my newer ideas that have come of it.  Stay tuned, at this rate, I’ll have something new up in a couple months or so.  But no, in all seriousness, I’ll try to get some sketches up soon.

 This is really a kind of a continuation around the room of the piece that I showed a couple months ago.  I have gotten way more into the making of this piece than I was though.  I think that the artist manning the stereo and thinking about a big black cloud is right where I am at.  Like I said, a self portrait of the artist.

It has been good.  Things are coming together.  Answers to questions that I hadn’t even considered are becoming more and more readily available.  I am feeling good.  More to come.

Peace
Mike

Two weeks ago I visited the site of Henry David Thoreau’s shack on Walden pond with a good friend of mine.  A small vacation in Seattle means that you don’t see the images until now, but I didn’t figure that anyone would mind the wait.

I am incredibly interested in the persona of Thoreau.  The man stated that he thought that the working man was miserable and that you should just go do whatever helps you subsist.  Interesting in theory I suppose, but it does seem relatively impossible in this day and age.  And also, it is worth noting that while he inhabited the cabin, friends would bring him food and drink.  He was not completely living off of the land, no, he was really just avoiding the tax man.  I think that in late March and early April a lot of us can kind of appreciate that mentality.

But the way that I have been thinking of Thoreau is as an icon.  He is an icon of thinking above work and of attempting to experience things to the fullest as an individual.  These are things that I feel my wooden block project is starting to hint at, so I decided to share my blocks with Mr Thoreau.  I am sure that he approved:

 

Thought I would start off the morning with a little Smashing Pumpkins reference.  Apparently they were in conversation twice yesterday in Portland.  The question of “are they still relevant/cool?” came up.  I don’t really know, but I still dig some of their stuff.  So anyway, moving on to artwork….

This has been a super difficult semester, unlike the last one that was super difficult, wait.  Ok, so no change on this front really, but I’m starting to create some very different, though fundamentally me, artwork.  I decided to share the component installation with all of you.  It is in progress, and I am just starting to get more excited with the process so we will see what happens with it in the near future.

 

I have been commissioned by a friend from the coffee shop to fill his living room wall one piece at a time.  When looking through the site he was a particular fan of the After the Ice Caps pieces.  I was pleased to hear this as that gave me a great excuse to work with water again.  So today when I was at wits end trying to deal with graduate school schtuff, I whipped out this piece.  I was completely drawn in, which is great, because the work for grad school has not been doing that.  I need to figure out what it is that makes that line for me.  I think that the block project does have the capability of getting me excited but depending on what people say about in my online forums for school, I either ride really high on the idea or beat down on it.  Currently I’m feeling a bit negative about it.  But all in all, if I can just respond by doing an illustrative piece that I am pleased with, I really can’t complain.  And now I am looking around studio at unfinished works and thinking about wrapping those up as well.

Here’s the piece that I did today.  What do you think?

I am excited as well for the upcoming pieces that will connect to this one.  It is an old concept that I worked with several years back, but one which I never developed to complete fruition, so this should be pretty good.

For now, I am pleased.  I need to do more of this to keep me happy.  The seriousness that they push at school seems so oppressive, and I am a pretty cheery guy most of the time.  I hope you all have a great day!  Do something that makes you feel awesome, as a favor, for me.

Peace
-Mike

All of you.  That’s right.  I love you, and all of my other friends, and my cats and just about everything on the planet.  It’s great.  Except maybe snakes.  Snakes scare the crap out of me.  This is my piece for the
“Lovers and Haters” show at the Hive Gallery.

It’s good to do one again after a little while off from these group shows.

I have some more stuff to blog about soon as well.  Actually the images are already scanned in and everything, but I am 90% certain this blog is going to be moving to Lewis Acrylics dot com soon, so I haven’t been adding as much as usual since I will have to export all of the posts to the blog over there.  I will give plenty of advance notice so you can change your pointers though.

Hope you have an awesome January 27th.
Peace
-Mike

I am finished with the Jar Project. I feel quite good about the finished product too, which is great. I received the final checklist and reminder list and saw that the jar top wasn’t allowed to be painted, but I also notice that we are supposed to remove all labels from the outside of the jar, so I just sanded off the paint, because Smuckers insists on emblazoning their jars with their logo all over the cap as well as on the paper on the jar.

I also added a small handwritten biography to the underside of the jar cap and repainted Cuddles himself so that he shone a little brighter in the glass jar. I think it looks pretty great. Check it out!

And here is another view from straight on so you get a better idea of the colors used.

There she be. More to come soon. I’ve got some more in the works and I’m pretty excited about it all. I am also going to be teaching a class of fifth graders soon, so we’ll see what comes of that as well. For now I must go, it is nearly impossible to type with a cat sitting on your hands after all.

Peace
-Mike

The Jar Project is a show that as I have informed you will be at Whitney Art Works here in Portland, ME. It will be the first time that I am showing in a well recognized East Coast gallery. I am very excited for the opportunity.

I thought that I would begin the year by showing a little bit of the process behind this piece. I had intended to use the overlapping blocks like I described earlier. I set out with 7 or 8 painted blocks and looked at the different compositions that I could make with them, thinking that I would only incorporate the blocks in the final product. I wasn’t really into the final piece with that in mind, but more into the process, which from the perspective of the post-modernists may not be a bad thing, but keeping in mind that this is a project about jars and things that are kept in them, it seems important to think of the object within the jar and therefore this post-modern thing just won’t work on this piece.

So I said to myself, self, I need some cartoons in this bad boy. My friend Mattie came over and I started drawing out a squirrel for the inside of the jar. Later that night as I was walking home I found a piece of what I assume was a cross on the side of the road at some point, but had found its way to the road way. The piece of wood read “Cuddles / We Love N Miss You / 1 – 2008 to 8 – 2010. It’s kind of a sad thought, but really got me thinking so I started working with this:

I decided to add some direct references, another block and to paint the lid of the jar and came up with what I presently have. It interested me to put the monument of a pet within a glass jar much as we keep the living animals in captivity within a glass jar, cage, or at least our doors and windows in our houses. Anyway, here is how the piece currently looks:

I am not sure at this point how close to done the piece is. I kind of feel as if I should paint the squirrel more, but I am not sure that it is necessary. Either way, I think the piece is a big step for me, and I am excited with the results.

See you soon.
Peace
-Mike