I’m proud to announce my T-shirt and tank line! Most of the designs are based on my balloon-quote photography, and they were illustrated by my talented friend Jen Van Horn. The profits from two of these designs will go to SMYRC, a Portland based resource center for sexual- and gender-minority youth.
In addition, they’re available in extended sizing, and a ton of color combinations. Please click here to browse the designs and thanks for supporting queer art!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEyiUw1ujSJ/?taken-by=blcksmth&hl=en
“What? Another webseries announcement?” A few years ago I came up with the idea of pulling some of the dating horror stories from the blog and making them into an original series. It would take place in three cities! It would involve a cast of thousands! Well, then reality hit as I did the math and realized that this was a really ambitious project for my first time out of the gate. I’m still in love with the idea of How To Save Your Own Life, and it’ll always be percolating in the back of my mind until I have the resources to execute it properly.
In the meantime, I’m thrilled to present “This Ends Badly”! Continue reading
I was happy to direct this 4-minute short for the Shorty Shorts Film Festival in Portland, but I was even more thrilled to work with this talented, generous cast (credited at the end of the short). Thanks much to Gula Delgatto for including my short, and Donovan Edwards, Ace Hotel Portland, and Pepe Le Moko for donating their resources and locations. Hope you like it!
Once in a great while, an artist comes along who pushes boundaries, gives viewers opportunities to rethink their paradigms, and creates bold, brave art that’s sometimes not fully appreciated in its time. Occasionally, that artist is honored with a retrospective, and given a chance to participate, bringing their beautiful creations to a larger, more mainstream audience. That artist was Marina Abramovic.
But now, we have been graced with the Björk retrospective at the Museum Of Modern Art. This quirky singer, originally the lead singer of The Pixies The Treaclies The Sugarcubes, debuted her solo album in 1993. It was called Debut. She’s known for her unconventional style and eclectic production design of her music videos. She’s also known by basics-at-large mostly for wearing a dress that looks like a swan to the Academy Awards in 2001 (seriously, people can’t let that go). I visited New York last month in balmy February, and was given early access to what is by all accounts definitely a retrospective. Continue reading
So much love for these Fools (photo by Jessica Sherman-Prince)
I studied theater in college, because of course I did. I mean, I didn’t get this weird entirely on my own, right? Then I fell in love, moved away from Albuquerque to Chicago for a few years, fell out of love, and eventually found my way back to New Mexico. It was then that I really immersed myself in the theater scene there. I helped found a Shakespeare company, directed for the first time, and found a passion for theatrical production design.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2001, ostensibly to start an acting career, but also because all of my friends made a mass-exodus to the west coast. I quickly found myself discouraged by the constant rejection. This isn’t making art, I argued in my own head, this is a business. There were so many other people who wanted it more than I did, and were far better at it than I was. I stepped away from pursuing acting, put my nose to the grindstone at my retail management job, and didn’t look back.
Fast forward a few years. Continue reading
As I posted recently with as little fanfare as possible, I released Part One of my first novel, The Tropic of Never last month. It’s very “me”: a gay sci-fi epic with a main character, Edgar Locke, thrust into an unfamiliar world full of wonders, on a city-sized ship that shouldn’t exist. Recently, I asked three artists whose work I admire greatly to read the book and create art from it (with minor, but barely minor spoilers). I couldn’t be more honored to have these talented people interpret my words. Here are their creations:
by Nick Fauble
The above is Edgar Locke’s beginning of his passage through The Spikes, interpreted by Nick Fauble, a Portland-based artist and graphic designer. This passage was easy for me to write, because it was a sequence I always knew was coming and I had lots of time for the ideas to marinade in my brain before I typed it out. I’m really looking forward to future collaborations with Nick, do check out more examples of his awesome work here!
Dragon capsule, manufactured by Space-X
It’s not for lack of material that I haven’t done a “4 Things” post since my big announcement in February. I’ve been living in between two cities since then, and working on the book a lot, so it’s been tough to consistently write for BLCKSMTH. But I think I’ve reached an equilibrium, and saw 4 amazing things recently that gave my creativity a boost (click here to check out previous “4 Things” posts). Here are this month’s, in no particular order:
1) SpaceX! Wow, I had no idea what I was in for. A new friend, Meharban, showed me the SpaceX warehouse in Hawthorne, CA. SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, who gave a really excellent TED interview a few months ago (ya know, the guy who also invented PayPal and Tesla Motors? Yeah, that guy). As we entered the vast front office space, Meharban gestured casually over to a large open cubicle: “Oh, Elon’s here today.” OH HOLY SHIT, ELON’S HERE my brain shouted as I nodded casually, noting the intense man hunched over his monitor. Continue reading
Neil Gaiman and Michael James Schneider, on the set of “Neverwhere”
Fourth and final in a series. Here is Part 1, Part 2, where I speak to the inspiration and construction, and Part 3, where I interview the playwright.
The project I’ve put so much of myself into, alongside an amazingly talented cast and crew who did the same, is finally up and running! Designing the set for Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” (adapted by Rob Kauzlaric, see my interview with him here) has been a dream project, I’ve learned so much from it, and it’s strange to suddenly be done.
And then last night got even stranger: Neil Gaiman himself came to see the show… Continue reading
Who reading this hasn’t had a labor of love, a creative project that they’ve been thinking about for months, or years, or their whole life? Well, designing (in Part 1 of this series), then creating the model (in Part 2 of this series) for the set of the West Coast premiere of Robert Kauzlaric’s masterful stage adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, directed by Scott Leggett, was that project for me. And this week, that dream got even better when I connected with Mr. Kauzlaric, and asked him a few questions about his writing process, Neil Gaiman’s fanbase, and what role staging plays in his imagination when he’s writing.
After the break, check out our chat, a great “teaser” video with some of the people who helped bring this production to life, and a first look at the finished set!
Michael James Schneider, in London Below
As anyone who has been reading this blog for the past few months already knows, I’m designing the set for the Robert Kauzlaric adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere”, at the Sacred Fools theater. I’ve gone into great detail about the musical, artistic, and cinematic inspiration for the scenic design in this previous post. As I type this, auditions are underway at the theater, and I’m going to deliver the set model this afternoon to director Scott Leggett, the intrepid leader of this creative expedition. This set will be heavily influenced by the sculpture of Lee Bontecou, and I’m finally ready to reveal the set model to the public! Some snaps of it follow later in this post.
To be honest, it’s kind of a dream of mine to mash-up the art of two of my “artistic heroes”, Neil Gaiman and Lee Bontecou. The former, because I enjoy the hell out of his storytelling, and the latter because find her art moving. Below is an example of her canvas-and-metal sculpture that I’ll attempt to replicate for the set:
Untitled, Lee Bontecou, 1962…the jumping-off point for my set design for “Neverwhere”
The process started with a simple sketch (more after the break), Continue reading
“The Enemy Within”, acrylic on canvas. Photo by Shaela Cook.
Sometimes it can be an exercise in futility to explain one’s art to people: creativity is so personal and subjective. Lately I’ve fielded a few questions about my art; in particular, the Periodic Table of Elements painting that started it all.
It was back in 2005 that I started my search for a vintage periodic table to fill a space on my wall. I’ve always had a slight obsession with medical and scientific ephemera, as also detailed in this previous, controversial post. I was looking for a very specific size, and wanted it to have some color in it, if possible. After searching flea markets and ebay, I gave up quickly: I was impatient, I was particular, I was determined. I decided to paint one myself. Continue reading
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Frame 9
Ten years ago, I had an itch: I wanted to create a piece of art that incorporated an X-ray or MRI film in it. At the time, it was simply an extension of my lifelong obsession with the aesthetic of scientific equipment and medical ephemera. I had a coworker who also worked at a hospital adjacent to our workplace, and I asked her to obtain some X-ray films for me. At the time, I assumed that she would procure an old film that was going to be discarded. Instead, she gave me a recently taken MRI film, and that started a now 10-year-long obsession with someone whose brain I have seen, whose voice I have heard, but whose face I still do not know. Continue reading
Ehridahn
I’ve been a little preoccupied with “world-building” lately, thinking of the toys and imaginary friends I played with during childhood, and thinking of the progression in sophistication they took from when I was very young, to right before when I stopped playing with toys. When I was young, it was just “good versus evil”, good guys versus bad. But as I got a little older, I started working other characters in, the story got a little more nuanced, and eventually a couple of franchises worked their way into the imaginary world I created. Lately I started thinking, what if I made a physical representation of the world that all of these characters inhabited? And what if I could help others do the same?