AV Arts Convo – pop artist Michael Jones
Presenting Pop Artist Michael Jones
SATURATION 2.0: The Arts in Conversation project at Antelope Valley Arts is an ongoing, weekly publishing series: Local artists (painters, poets, photographers, fiction writers) have been invited to submit art and partake in a conversation on artistic influence and inspiration as the print arm of Antelope Valley Arts goes digital.
Michael Jones, an exciting young pop artist whose vibrant colors and iconic images make his work timely and powerful. Michael’s positive message art created under street name Dream Bigger works to change the inner city dialogue of anger and hopelessness.
Who is your favorite visual artist? How does he or she influence your work?
My favorite Artist is Basquiat aka Samo, his work inspires me because he wasn’t afraid to do what he wanted.
One of the most original and influential artists of his generation, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988) produced deceptively unsophisticated-looking works that belied a complex and unique talent. Born in Brooklyn of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, Basquiat first gained notoriety with graffiti artwork. He catapulted to fame with paintings that incorporated a fusion of words, symbols, stick figures, animals, and historical and cultural references. Befriended by Andy Warhol, Basquiat collaborated with the renowned Pop Artist on 100 artworks. Despite a career tragically cut short by a heroin overdose, Basquiat introduced the unique African-American and Latino experience to the elite art world.
Is there a certain emotional valence or emotional register that characterizes your work?
Yes I would say happy haha Most of my art is bright, with bold colors. I want to portray happiness on canvas threw colors if that makes any sense at all.The art to losing yourself in life, is to first love yourself and appreciate the beauty of your place in the world.
More from the AV Arts Convo
- Poetry by Tino Garcia
- Poetry and Art by Edwin Vasquez
- Poetry by Hollie N. Martin
- Mixed Media Art by Julie O’Sullivan
- Photography by Douglas Paul Wade
- Painting and Collage by AJ Currado
- Museology by Larissa Nickel
Laguna’s Labor
The artists Jason Upton and Rita Springer are two of these people, and they produce music that I just can’t classify into a specific genre. Upton is extremely free-flow, in the sense that he often writes songs while in the concert experience itself. That creativity helps uncork me, especially when I am suffering from writer’s block. Springer channels a Janice Joplin type of voice and pounds out melodies on the piano. She is very raw—like a wild lioness who could kill you at any moment and afterwards comfort her baby cubs. She is so different from me that she also uncorks new arenas of creativity. Their albums can’t even capture how they sound live, so whenever I can, I try to see them, often with a notebook and a pen in my hand.
The art in Extraordinary Day is sometimes about how the world sees us and sometimes about how we see ourselves. It is also about how the imagination stands at the center of each of these directionalities/points of view and how, if a person wants to instill a change in perspectives, the imagination is a necessary part of any self-creation, self-shaping or new world view.
To risk stretching just an iota, it is tempting to say that Extraordinary Day treats the landscape of 1950s commercial imagery as a pseudo-Garden-of-Eden, offering, maybe, a glimpse of where our ideas have come from and how far (or how little) they have traveled since being ejected from that well-known paradise where everyone had a new car in the driveway, a slim-waisted home-cooking wife and a work-ethic matched only by a great, blustery sense of humor.
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