DPT Spotlight: Photography by Mikiep

Update:

Congratulations! OAKMONSTER is the winner of the "Seventeen" printer's copy of the original Mike Pedersen fine art print contest! Thanks so much to everyone who entered...and be sure to check out this week's give-a-way by Kat Roman!

LA-based photographer Mike Pedersen translates and transforms unconventional subject matter most would describe as ugly, industrial, neglected or bizarre in a manner that gives pleasure to the mind and senses...and this is the very reason that I fell in love with his work. Using a Speed Graflex camera from the 1950’s and Polaroid Type 55, a negative / positive film, Mikie takes photographs interpreting a conscious arrangement of colors, forms, movements and other graphic elements. He then deliberately damages and mutates the negatives with sandpaper, steel wool, a hammer or other odd objects. After scanning the images into his computer, he creates and builds layer upon layer, reconstructing the new image into an aesthetic success.

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Don't miss his upcoming show "Deciduous" which takes place next weekend here in downtown Los Angeles. Please see the end of this feature for more information, directions and YOUR chance to win one of his fabulously haunting pieces of work. YAY!

Spotlight Feature: Mike Pedersen

* Tell us a bit about yourself... My name is Mike Pedersen aka Mikiep. While most men over the age of 38 really wouldn’t like to be referred to as “Mikie”, it’s just stuck for me. Growing up with a father and an uncle who had the first names of Mike and Michael, it was just natural for me to be Mikie. Luckily, I wasn’t my nephew [another Michael…he got the nickname “Mickey” instead. : )

* What inspires you? Where do your ideas come from? My ideas come in 2 parts. First the photography aspect…I love to document landscapes, so I love going on trips with my beautiful wife where we just drive, drive, drive and find great shots along the way. I zone off and watch the vistas go by like they are on a TV. When my hawk-eyed wife or I see something we like, we do a little pit stop and I click click away. Sometimes when we drive long-distance, it can take 8 hours for us to go only 100 miles during the daylight hours because we stop so many times. Then during the dark hours, we put the pedal to the metal and go 700-800 miles straight to our destination. Luckily, my trusty better half keeps me happy and awake, armed with lots of caffeine and entertainment. I let the photos sit until one jumps out at me and then I start the digital part of the process. Being a darkroom fixer junkie and having idols such as Ansel Adams, Avedon and Salgado, I love seeing black and white images with subtle tones. I age my pictures by compositing layers upon layers to obtain depth and texture. My pictures build themselves inside my head…some flow freely and some I fight with and put away until later.

* Apart from creating things, what do you do for fun? I love spending time with my wife, traveling, going to flea markets, watching movies or snuggling up on the couch to watch HGTV or the cooking channel…yes, ladies, I can cook. : )

* What has been your most memorable moment selling your art? After buying my first Epson 9600 and printing the first print, I was ecstatic to be able to sell anything…but that first print turned out to be one of the first prints I sold for $500.

* Any advice for fellow artists... When you can see the finished product in your head, you have to shut out the rest of the world and all of it’s influences and to be able to create art that comes from your heart. In the beginning for me, my work sure didn’t look like it does now. Technique and personal style really is a growing process. Your art will grow and change with what is happening inside of you. Stay Inspired.

*Any upcoming shows or projects? I actually have a show coming up next weekend April 5th & 6th at the Brewery in downtown Los Angeles. It’s an Artwalk where we, along with other artists in the complex, open our studio to the public and usually thousands of people walk through looking at and buying art. This show is called “Deciduous” and it contains tree images that I took over the past several years. I love taking photographs of trees because no two trees are alike. They each seem to have their own personality. I guess I have a love for trees because they take me back to my youth where my Sunday afternoons as a little boy were spent climbing trees or laying under them letting the shadows dance around on my face. Trees create shapes and sounds all their own as each branch moves…Truly fascinating and peaceful.

Website: http://mikiep.com
Etsy Shop: http://mikiep.etsy.com
Blog: http://mikiep.blogspot.com

Sales, Bookings or Press contact:
Patricia at Serpentine Republic AR - 323.397.5599

Upcoming Exhibition:

"Deciduous" Exhibition of Fine Art Photography -
Brewery Artwalk, Los Angeles 2008
620 Moulton Avenue, Studio 209, Los Angeles CA 90031

• Saturday, April 5 [11am-6pm]
  
• Sunday, April 6 [11am-6pm]

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Enter this week's Give-a-way!!

This week's give-a-way is a super special treat and I am so happy to be able to offer it to you!

Mikiep is giving away a printer's copy of his limited edition "Seventeen" print from his upcoming show "Deciduous". Image size is 15.5"x 29"... printed on a 16.50"x30" sheet of Archival watercolor paper with border for framing. This print will be signed by Mikiep and is a $200 value!


How to Enter...
Take a look on Mikie's website www.mikiep.com or in his Etsy shop and
leave a comment here regarding your favourite photograph or illustration!
NOTE: If your favourite photograph or illustration is not part of your comment, your entry will be disqualified...sorry, but yes, it's true.

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This contest has been extended and now be 2 weeks long since I won't have a chance to do an artist feature this weekend due to our art show..., meaning the deadline for this contest is now to be until the very last most littlest minute and second of Saturday, April 12th, 2008, PST.
This contest is open to everyone around the globe, but please leave a viable way for us to contact you. Duplicate entries will be deleted. The winner's name will be drawn out of a hat...the good ole' fashioned way to do things.

Best of luck to you, My Pretties!

Brewery Artwalk Spring Dates Announced!

Mark your calendars!

The dates for the next Brewery Artwalk have been announced and YOU are invited!

This Spring, the Brewery Artwalk will be held Saturday, April 5th & Sunday, April 6th in downtown Los Angeles. The Brewery Artwalk is a twice yearly event where you can visit the working studios of resident artists...and me and Mikiep will be there!

If you'd like to come and want to be on our guest list, please comment here or convo me with your regular email and I will make sure you get an invite and give you further details.

◦ ○ ● Carnivale ● ○ ◦

I've got BIG plans for my exhibit at this show! My exhibit will be entitled "Carnivale" ...and it will be full of all the weird and wunderful things that have been spinning around in my head for the past several months:
Siamese twins, oddly shaped women and lots more to be seen at the freak show, so stay tuned!

I've been working on new paintings and have started some new sculpture pieces as well.
Here's a sneak peek of just some of my art in the works:




Candles, bath salts and lots of other goodies of mine will also be at the show as always. I am trying to also have my new line of candles ready, but as of right now, I can't promise that they will be finished and perfected.

Not much time and still lots to do!

And, for those of you who can't make it to the show, some of my new work will be posted in my shoppe.

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Mikiep will be showing his new illustrations and black and white photography. You can check out his past works at mikiep.com.

Hopefully, we'll get to meet even MORE of you Pretties... Will we see you there?

xxx
Raven

DPT Spotlight: Dave Lefner

I'm gonna let you in on a secret....His name is Dave Lefner.

You haven't heard of him? You will.

Dave is a true artiste, who has resurrected and mastered the century-old technique of linoleum reduction printing made famous by Picasso. In each limited-edition linocut print he makes, Dave reinterprets the beauty, spirit and historical significance of the forgotten beauty that surrounds us.

Dave was drawn to this process because it restored the artist to the "proper role of artisan," allowing each piece to slowly reveals itself with each bold new color.









He's been featured on the Carol Duvall Show and also in the Los Angeles Times, where Richard Duardo, chairman of the Graphic Arts Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a master printer himself was quoted as saying,

"...few artists or printmakers still do linoleum reduction printing..."We're a dying craft. Reductive printmaking is a time consuming, tedious process. In this day and age, people don't have that much patience. Artists turn instead to large-format printers, which are glorified Xerox machines. That's why when I see somebody that has mastered this craft, I'm flabbergasted. Lefner has gone beyond being a master printmaker. He's hands down the best linocut printmaker on the West Coast."

Spotlight: Dave Lefner

* Who or what inspired you to become an artist? I was ALWAYS drawing and always received such praise for my ability that I never remember a time when I didn't consider myself an artist.... I have that 1st grade drawing on my refrigerator of me at my easel complete with beret that boldly states "Someday I will be an artist and paint a lot of pictures". I never really thought of it in terms of a profession until high school when you're forced to decide what you what to do with the rest of your life. I entered college as a declared Graphic Designer because that was the only box to check that remotely involved art.

* Describe your childhood in 2 sentences: My childhood was a wonderful, blessed, unbearably mundane, suburban life. Norman Rockwell would have been jealous- blah!







* Who inspires you in the Art Scene? Stuart Davis paintings, the graphic black and white images of the German Expressionists, woodcuts from the 1940s, the Paris art scene in the 1920s, the New York art scene in the 1950s, Picasso reduction linocut series in the1950s, interesting typefaces and fonts, the negative white space of the paper against another color.

* Who are your favourite artists? It may seem cliche, but Picasso is one of my favs just based on sheer output and influence on Art history in general. He was a machine and pushed the boundaries until there WERE no boundaries. But it’s funny how most of the artists who I respond to on a gut level, actually don’t inspire my own art at all. I love the ones who have a completely different take on Art than I do- a lot of the Abstract Expressionists; Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko. I love Jean-Michel Basquiat, because I’m jealous that he could be so free and loose, but still have intellectual and philosophical content. I like Chuck Close- he found one thing, the portrait, and did it a million different ways and kept it fresh.

* What Inspires you In Life? The Greatness of human achievement, whether it be in the form of art, literature, music, movies, architecture. Things that have stood the test of time and remain as relevant today as when they were created. As human beings, we are capable of so much- it’s sad to me how little we settle for in ourselves as well as others. Some other things that inspire my work are the graphic silhouettes of telephone and electric wires that zig-zag over our heads. They are everywhere and so crucial to life as we know it in the city, but taken for granted. Also, things like the graphic images on dollar bills, anatomical drawings from Gray’s Anatomy and just type in general, especially blown up on a huge scale. Things that we are used to seeing on a small scale, have a different feel when presented on a larger scale.


* Where do you want to travel? I desperately want to travel- especially Europe- all the places I’ve read about in the biographies of my heroes- France (for Matisse, Picasso, all those cats in the 1920s-), Spain, Italy are the top 3! Life can be so expensive. It’s hard to find the money and the time to travel the way I want!

* When did you start to notice the cityscapes of Los Angeles? Well, I suppose that it had to be in my early 20s, when I really started driving around town to go out with friends to new bars and clubs. Hollywood and its adjacent areas had a very colorful nightlife- literally. The glow of the neon and glitz was amazing. Driving down Sunset Blvd. was always such an experience, because it always looked so bright and glamourous. But you knew there were things hidden by the cover of night. Hollywood at night was too cliche. So as I drove some of those same routes in broad daylight and got the real story. An aging building in the harsh light high noon didn’t look as glamourous, but other interesting things were going on. Shadows cast off broken neon tubing, rusting architectural elements, torn advertising posters. It opened a whole world of inspiration for me.

*What sort of imagery do you try to capture with your work? Being born and raised in Los Angeles made me want to comment on and capture the uniquely-LA landscape. There is something intriguing or maybe even disturbing about the bombardment of billboards, advertising, signage, storefronts, every kind of typeface and font screaming at you, etc. New York City has that inspiring effect on me, but Los Angeles is laid out differently. People are in their cars, driving around so quickly that the urban beauty surrounding them needs to be pointed out to the average person more here. Sometimes, in our busy lives, we don’t see how beautiful the shadows cast off some broken, burnt out old neon sign can be.




Contact:
Serpentine Republic AR - 323.397.5599










Upcoming Exhibition:
Brewery Artwalk, Los Angeles, 2008

• Saturday, April 5 [11am-6pm]
  
• Sunday, April 6 [11am-6pm]
  

For appointments or more information, call or comment & someone will contact you.