It’s finally here! Here’s episode three of my puppet webseries This Ends Badly.
The production values keep improving, and we keep learning a lot. One big takeaway recently was how to streamline scheduling so that we can produce quality episodes faster. So stay tuned for more This Ends Badly sooner than you think! Thanks for watching.
To get caught up, here’s episode one, and episode two.
The last time I was in New York, I was interviewed for Chris DeRosa’s Loud and Curious podcast! THRILL as I describe my artistic process in agonizing detail. GAPE SLACKJAWED as I tell the story of my first staged photo. SHUDDER when you hear my actual unlistenable voice. Click here to start the horrors.
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
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!
Sina Grace has been busy, but wrote this for BLCKSMTH recently. It’s pretty great:
Sina Grace, by the artist himself
There was this six-month period right after college when my friend (and former classmate) and I came to LA with the dreams of being prolific and fantastic writers, just like we were at UC Santa Cruz. In college, I received not only one but TWO awards for my thesis: a novel about a gay wizard detective (I know, right?). One of those awards was for MONEY. I also won a research grant. If life was anything like college, my proactive peers and I believed we were going to make our dreams come true on the reg.
We were in for a Super Fucking Rude Awakening. 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
Pumped-up Kicks
photo by Helen Darby
Breathless with the cold, eager eyes open to everything around me: this was a trip I was looking forward to…it’s my third visit in a little over a year. In between seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a long time (and in the case of my very first boyfriend, I hadn’t see him in 20 years!), and making new ones (Nina Robinson’s photography is awesome), I got time to check out some inspiring art that fueled my own brain’s creative juices…and yes, handed out more than few of those crazy business cards. Saw stuff that you should check out too. Except in one case, I tried to pick longer-running stuff to include here so by the time you read this, it isn’t over already. So away we go: Continue reading
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
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
A few days ago, I posted a couple of new paintings in a series that I announced in the post “Hello, I Have Seen Your Brain And Made Art From It“. The series is being created from some old MRI films that I acquired 10 years ago, which I originally thought were anonymous, old films that were being discarded, but then found private, current information with them. I thought the inspiration of the art was an interesting story worth telling, as I am just as invested in the process of making art as I am the final product. In the piece, I openly acknowledged the terrible breach of privacy that occurred, and my impulsive, selfish decision 10 years ago to keep the MRI films.
I posted the link to the story on Facebook, Twitter, and in the Art forum on Reddit, a web-aggregate site that I am using for the first time.
The reaction could not have been more intense. 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
Entrance to the Garden of Flowing Fragrance
I’ve decided to make “4 Things…” a regular series! I’ll publish it monthly, and eventually bi-monthly. Why? Well, no man is an island, and no one can be expected to create art in a vacuum: I need inspiration from other sources to keep me fresh, to keep my voice relevant. Here are a four things that stayed with me, long after I experienced them.
1) The Huntington Gardens are over 120 acres of carefully maintained collections of botanical curiosity, in San Marino, California. I’ve gone there a few times, and this time was ostensibly to see the recently restored and reopened Japanese Gardens, but I found the Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan (“The Garden Of Flowing Fragrance”), really breathtaking. Check it out for both the botany and the architecture.
And then I found a giant baby. 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?
Sometimes my brain needs a jump-start. Here are a few things I checked out this week, to fan the flames of my imagination.
1. Made In LA at The Hammer Museum
Meg Cranston’s California (2006), photo by Jeff Sturges
This was pretty great. Made In LA is what it sounds like: a show of artists living in Los Angeles. There was some cool stuff, including Liz Glynn’s Anonymous Needs and Desires, an installation of a huge cabinet of brightly colored drawers, with cast-lead everyday objects that patrons could place in, take out, and manipulate however you want. Another highlight was the app for the show, the Soundmap. You turn it on your phone, drive around, and it plays music curated by local collective DUBLAB. But then you hit a “hotspot”, and an artist briefly interrupts to tell you something specific to that area of town that inspired them, or just a random observation. So cool!
photo by Shaela Cook
It was never a part of my plan, never something that even factored into my life-changing decision to “pursue my bliss”, to consider what people would think about the inherent uncertainty of the act. It never occurred to me to wonder if people would scoff, or mutter about the rashness of the decision…and I was startled when I, a person known for putting everything I do through the filter of “But what will other people think?“, realized I didn’t care about that. But it surprised me even more when I started wondering what, if anything, the people in my life who have passed would think of my decision, and of my art. What would my brother John, who passed away 20 years ago, think of all this? Continue reading
So. Pensive.
photo by Shaela Cook
I just opened my Etsy store. This is the first time I’ve ever sold my art…well since “Feria Artesana” in New Mexico when I sold retablos and wooden birdhouses that I made with my Dad, when I was in middle school. I’m more than a little nervous.
Most photos in the shop (the good ones, I mean) by Shaela Cook. Check out her stuff.