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When I did my last experiment for class, the first artist that my professor mentioned was Barry McGee. I was impressed that judging from the other artists that they usually compare my work to that they would be aware of Barry McGee, but I am glad they are, because I remembered a little bit of what I used to like to do before I became surrounded by academics and their well educated language. It is difficult to feel a part of it. I really have never been one for using big words just for the sake of using a big word. If the situation calls for it then I will use the appropriate term but I am not married to the verbose.

Anyhow, I am being verbose and tangential, so let me get around to what I was getting at. I’ve been working on some constructions lately, as you could see from my last post, but I really wanted to be making those same pieces but with an influence gained from street art and the west coast scenes, not from a NYC scene that I feel has been dead since the dawn of post-modern art.

That said, here is the piece that I have been working on. It is part of a large installation that I have begun to formulate. Hope you like it. It’s definitely the biggest head I have ever painted.

That’s all I have for now. More to come soon, has to be, my professor is coming a week early this time. Til next time.

Peace
-Mike

Good morning. This past weekend has been a whole lot of busy. I started playing with a punk band again, I carved a sweet cyclops pumpkin, I cooked crab and clam cakes at my friends Halloween party, and I painted, a lot.

I am very into this new painting that I am working on. I had actually hung the piece as an under painting in the MFA show at the end of last summer at MECA but when I picked it up from the show, I realized I couldn’t actually stand the painting anymore, so I painted over it, I drilled a hole in it and I installed a faucet. I like it, though I plan on constructing a better way to hold the faucet in the painting.

I am really pleased to be working with these constructions again. I will probably catch some flack from my professors for abandoning the conceptual project that I have had going, but over the past couple weeks I’ve realized that I need to be happy with my work, even if others are not.

I’ve also been working on some new drawings incorporating pipes. It has been suggested that the way the pieces are drawn out on small planks and blocks of wood makes the piece appear to be a game. I am not completely upset by that, though really, I feel that it speaks a bit more deeply than as a game, but really that is the least of worries now that I have so definitely absconded from my Fall Proposal.

Sorry for the glare. It is tough to take photos in the studio after dark. Only one overhead bulb and a lamp that is a bit too strong for what I need. Hopefully you get the idea though.

Go Giants!
Peace
-Mike

When I met with my studio adviser a week ago, he suggested that I try to make things in cardboard. I am a good student. I try to do what I am told, or what is suggested to me, but really the poor man has just had to deal with me floundering for the past 2 months. First I started off with a plan that incorporated mail art, but conceptually had not thought it out at all, second I started working on trading cards and those are coming along slowly, and lastly I started working with pipe drawings on blocks of wood.

This week has been incredibly intense. I spent Monday and Tuesday going through books getting a better idea of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden section and proportions. I started to read about mail art and what it meant conceptually and I started to think about the mapping systems that we use all over the world. I went to the studio and everything seemed incredibly disparate, and even now that I am typing this and riding high on some creative emotion, it may still be disparate, but things seem clearer than they have in a long time.

Today I was looking at the block pieces that I have been working on that my professor suggests looks like a game, which frankly the only game that I think is being played is me trying to get by in grad school. Like my friend Paul suggested though, “Now it’s War”. Do what you want. Anyway, I am being tangential; I was looking at the blocks and started to think about my chaos pieces and how they were just constructions and I thought, “I need to make more structures”. So tonight, I sawed, I hammered, and maneuvered a new piece. I am excited about it, and to feel excited about something that I’ve made at this point is amazing. So much criticism has occurred that I forgot what it was like to enjoy my stuff, but now I remember again.

Hopefully you like this and I am not just blowing smoke. Many who like Mike paintings like this. It takes up the entire studio floor. Oh and please, if you live near me and you are tearing down something made of wood, can I have it? Thanks.

The images are not great. I’ll upload some better images when it is light outside and I don’t need to use a flash. Hopefully you at least get the idea.

The other exciting thing that I have been working on is my new “Coffee with Mike” project. I am asking people all over the country to make a map to their favorite coffee shop and to then send it to me via snail mail and then I will send a drawing back in return. In fact I received my parents’ maps in the mail today with a pound of coffee. Amazing. Here is my quick map.

If you are interested in the project at all you can check it out here on my flickr page. This project is not limited to folks that label themselves as artists. I am truly interested in everyone’s maps. Neither of my parents are artists but their maps were absolutely beautiful.

Anyhow, I think that’s it for now. Go Giants.
Peace
-Mike

Um, September wasn’t very productive. Whoops. I’ve spent a lot of time in my head. Got back together with my ex, broke up again with the ex. Proposal for fall semester was turned down. Had to rework it. trying to get back into it.

That all said. It has been a great month. I did my first illustration for a newspaper. The Bollard in Portland, ME features a calendar made by me this coming Thursday. I am stoked with it. I think it turned out well, and although it does contain robots, it also has a squirrel, so I am not entirely relying on my a two character scheme anymore, which has been a large source of my mental insecurity with my work recently.

Here tis:

I’ve also been photographing the found wood that I have in my collection as a way to try to determine what exactly it is all about. I am not sure that I have figured anything out yet, but I got a pretty cute photo of my cat on top of one of the compositions!

And lastly, I did in fact finish a painting in the last week and a half, but it’s the last thing I’ve managed. I am still not quite right in the head this month. I don’t know what is going on. Think I am letting the emotions hit me a little too hard right now….

How is that for some old skool Mike. We’re talking circa 2005. Grad school is hurting my head, but I really can’t complain. Most days I am learning a lot, and the others I very well could if I would chill out a little bit more.

I’ll be back. I swear. The project that I’m working on is cool and I am certain that I will be working on it a lot soon. Feeling better, just a bit stressed.

Til next time.
Peace
-Mike

I have wanted to do buttons for a very very long time. Guess what. I am sick of waiting. Tonight I ordered two sets of fifty buttons. I am not sure how much I will be charging for them. I think maybe 2 bucks each, though that again brings up how much it will cost to ship them. Probably not too much. They are 1 inch buttons. But anyway, the moral of the story is, I am making buttons, and that makes me very very happy.

Check em out, and email me if you’d like one. I hope you’d like one!!!

I love this painting, so I decided it would be a good first button! My friend Jesse from high school has this original. I hope you folks think it is a good starting point.

I had to warp this painting a little bit in order to make it fit to a button. But I found that I really liked the robot a bit better when it was a little fatter anyway. What do you think? Skinny or fat? I assure you this is not any kind of politico argument developing, merely a curiosity about the robot.

Lastly here is another robot wringing out a cloud. Hope you dig it. I was very pleased with the drawing. Still not sold on the paint handling. I may work into it again.

I’ll catch you cats later. NH weekend, so no posts from me for the next few days. Have a good one, and enjoy the last days of summer! I sure will.

Peace
-Mike

Sending out a show always feels like jumping off an emotional cliff, like so:

The show is finished. Finally. The different gears for operating in Illustration and Fine Art mode become more and more difficult as I attend this graduate school. It is frustrating though, because I feel like the answers should become more clear, not less clear.

Anywho, here are a couple last minute pieces that I compiled for the show. Hope you like them.

Just a simple little guy here. I needed to develop a companion for Rita. She was lonely and nagging me. Never mess with an overactive Pigeon in need of a man.

This guys just a chill little angular man. I was thinking of Damon Runyon short stories and how Big Julie would look if he were to be a bird. I wouldn’t mess with this one. Just saying. He’s got 13 arrests and no convictions.

This poor dude is completely confused. He doesn’t even know who he is. Surely he is completely into existentialism and Sartre. He can’t even figure out whether to talk into a word bubble or into a tree. So strange.

Ahh the trapeze artist. Do you think it would even hurt him if he fell though?

I am in such a strange mood tonight. I think I need to go to bed. It was a very late night getting everything together and then an early morning packing the boxes. Be on the lookout in the near future, I have three commissions that I am working on this next week as well as the Day of the Dead show for Lunar Boy in late October.

Catch you cats later.
Peace
-Mike

My documentation this summer hasn’t been great, and I apologize for that. Think with me for a moment if you will that I was merely conducting a true performance piece where the subject was of complete disappearance. Or just think that I had about a million disparate thoughts crowding my head at any given time. But tonight, tonight is Robin Hood and a pot of coffee, call my parents and call it a weekend. Tomorrow begins the first full week in the new kitchen job, which is great. Full from scratch kitchen. I am learning a lot and loving every minute of it.

But I digress. Here are a couple images from this summer that were actually for class and have nothing to do with the show coming up.

I picked up this chair the first day we were at school. I love it. Everyone in my program, however, thought I was a little loopy from the get go. I carried it from a tour to a meeting that we were having on where to get studios. It was more comfortable than the chairs that they were sitting in though. Just saying.

This is where the water system pieces started to head at the beginning of the summer. I kind of lost track with it after this, but I think I’m going to come back to it full force soon. Anybody know where to score some old pipe?

This is officially my first interventionist piece. It was brought to my attention afterwords that most likely it would be more successful if it looked more like the real sign, but I dig it. Haven’t figured out my support for it yet, but this project isn’t completely dead yet.

And woooooord. This is what I wanted to do when I got to school. Straight up. I just finished another one today as well. I am loving the mismatched constructions. Explanations later people, don’t rush! They are coming soon enough.

For now, the Beta Band has me pretty chill and I’m drinking coffee at nine o’clock. Good times. I have more stuff from the semester and quite a bit to do before I send a package to Cake Spy next Saturday, so be looking. Til then.

Peace
-Mike

Aaah. I am so far behind in the art world. I need some serious catch up time. Unfortunately, I do not think I can make my opening in Seattle, but at least it looks like I will have paintings to send. Still, I am always bummed when I miss out on a trip to the Emerald City. Especially when I am only doing it so that I can have a job. But when I heard the relief in my mother’s voice that I would have to work and wouldn’t be able to go spend more money on a ticket, I realized that conservative is probably better in this instance. So I guess, if you are in Seattle, please go to the show, perhaps I will send a card board cut out or something so you can meet that, or maybe next time.

Anyway, here is my piece for the beer show at Lunar Boy Gallery. It is totally late, but at least I like it. It’s a play on the Kool Aid Man in case it isn’t obvious…..

Summer is winding down. I will have more time for all of this, and less time spent reading about beholders and absorptive subjects. I look forward to the possibility of being on here more.

Have a good Monday.
Peace
-Mike

This weekend I am running a promotion on my Facebook page for a free drawing. Post your favorite color and why and I will throw everyone’s name in a hat and have a friend select someone at random. The winner receives a free framed drawing that I will send out on Monday. The winner also gets to choose whether it is a robot or bird drawing! Check it out. You have to play to win, right?

Here Tis

Til next time
Peace
-Mike

I really need to get some more work done, but I’ve been in this strange realm where I am not finishing much. I guess I’m doing better than I’m letting on, but I wish that I had more done anyway. I did pull off a painting in roughly a half hour today though. Talk about old school.

This one is almost done, but I am just not with it enough to render tiny birdies. I think I need some groceries so that I can eat something real. It will help my awesome rendering energy. Starting to wan, you know.

Here is my half hour painting. I love this robot, and there is no intent whatsoever, so I guess I won’t go showing it off in crit at MECA. It would be good to develop an intent for these guys you know. Just safer when it comes down to it.

I love this painting though. And Jeane told me to keep painting cartoon work and painting based on old literature today. It was odd to hear the other half of the coin after this entire summer of crazy content.

Anyhow, I don’t know where this is all going. I’m happy with these two pieces though. Hope you like them. Have a good one.

Peace
-Mike

PS I get a new cat tomorrow!!!!!