Joe MacGown Art happenings in January

Second Saturday Pop Up Shows  at the Pop Porium

It has been a busy month with lots of stuff happening, as always! We had our inaugural Second Saturday Pop Up Art Show at the Pop Porium Popcorn shop on Main Street, in Starkville, MS on January 13, 2018! Despite frigid temps, we had a steady crowd of art loving folks swing by and view and/or purchase art. In addition to my own art, my son Joseph had art there, as well as several other vendors! We have several more Second Saturdays planned through at least May with the next occurring on February 10 from 12 to 6 pm. Come by and see what we will have!

Joe and Joseph MacGown Art Setup at the Pop Porium

Buying art! 

Taylor Dunn, Andrea Rendon, and Joseph MacGown

Pop Porium Art Sales

Our Second Saturdays look to be a hit! But, wait, there's more! Rosa Dalomba, Pop Porium owner will be working with several of us local artists to sell art in her store on a regular day to day basis! Art will range from the trippiness of us MacGowns to beautiful ceramic works by some amazing local potters!  Look for this soon! 

MacGown Postcards for sale at the Book Mart

Wow! Local businesses are embracing us and our art! Carolyn Abadie, owner of the Book Mart and Cafe on Main Street in Starkville, invited Joseph and I to put up a rack of some of our colorful postcards! All cards were printed at our amazing local Chalet Arts in Starkville! Go buy some of these wonderfully printed cards and your proceeds will go toward us and Carolyn! 

Joe MacGown art in Commodore Bobs

Yet another business, Commodore Bobs, has provided me with an opportunity to sell art! Commodore Bobs is a crazy good little restaurant tucked away in Starkville's Cotton District. Basically, all the art on the walls is now mine and for sale. The art is aquatic themed, as is the restaurant. Go check them out and while you are there, give a glance at my art. If you like it, let me or the folks there know, and I will gladly it to ya! Here are few images of some of the art I have at Commodore Bobs! 

The entrance to Commodore Bobs. 

Some cool ink painting of fish on wood, $500 each

Inquistive Fish, this is a framed print on canvas, only $150

Red Fish, acrylic on wood, 24 x 48 inches, $850

A primitive fish I painted on wood, only $350

This blue crab was done with India ink on wood and is double framed. Its available  for only $350 

things happening in the studio...

What in the works? What's happening in the studio? Stuff. Several things going on in this first photo below. The picture on the left has been through several incarnations, and I still have no idea where its going. You can see a close up of part of it below. Sort of demonic looking angel creature with rays of light emanating from its head. Demonic angel. Haha. I guess that's an oxymoron. If you believe in demons, then you already know they are angels. In the middle, a collaboration I am doing with Elli Gotzi. Not quite done, and not sure I like where I am going with it. But, skunk. Of course, on the right, a crazy fly with weird things happening in the background. Faahhhh. Upper right, bird/bat thing I started about 12 years ago. Its watercolor and ink on Claybord. 

fly and things

part of painting/drawing deal from left side of above photo

On this table (photo below), a new watercolor ink thing in the same style and color as my recently finished "Convergence" piece. Above and partially covered by that piece is a spray paint/acrylic paint beginning. Hopefully, something will come out of it! 

take a walk on the weird side

elephant man? just started

More or less finished this largish fish painting. Its 2 X 4 feet, acrylic paint, spray paint, and housepaint on primed masonite. Why? Because, I love dem fishes man. They are so weird. Right? Manic fish painting. 

Fish, 2 X 4 feet, acrylic on wood

Another photo of the same image. Notice the colored pencil portrait on the wall
that I did of Joseph (did this about 5 years ago)

Joseph has stuff going on as well. Because, that's what we do man. Yeah. he likes the collage action. Also, drawing weird stuff. Combine the two, and play some crazy music, and you start to enter the mind of Joseph the strange singing running boy who paints weird things and writes stories about the unknown and obscure.

painting/collage that Joseph is working on

The piece below (by Joseph) is a pretty interesting image. The colored pastel picture is matted with a hand painted matte. I say hand painted, but its not just paint. Raised areas were created with Elmer's glue. Gives this matte a unique effect. 

One of Joseph's pastel pictures with a handpainted matte

First step to something new, primed some wood. About ready for a second coat. These are Joseph's, but its not an uncommon scene for me either.

primed birch plywood, have to wait to see what he comes up with

crazy fish painting activities and other art stuff

Started a crazy manic fish painting late Friday afternoon and early evening. The weather was fantastic, so I painted outside and also in my smallish barn/storage/workshop type building. 

in the barn area

Fun. 2 X 4 feet on primed masonite. Used some spray paint, house paint, and some acrylic paint. Kind of slapped the paint on there and it started looking like a fish creature deal. Had some Ids music playing from inside the studio. I love the Ids! One of my favorite bands. I guess they must be fairly obscure, because no one seems to know about them. 

Got a couple picts of the progress of the fish deal. Will update as it comes along. 

After some supper, got back in the studio to work on some stuff. One thing was my weird acrylic and oil pastel deal. Here are some photos of it. 

closeup of face

After a while, I moved to the other table and put in a little time on a bigger picture. This one is on a 42 inch by 40 feet long roll of awesome art paper. May never finish, or at the very least, it will be like 20 years from now. Have not made much progress, but like some happenings so far. 

start of really big drawing

While I was working on that, Audrey, who was also doing some random artwork, decided she want to paint on my shoulder. So, yeah. She took a photo of her work on my shoulder. Interesting concept, art being done on artist doing artwork. 

Audrey Sheridan did some painting on my back. Here is the result.

another view of Audrey's art on my while I was doing art

Not sure why, but I seem to love painting and drawing fish and other fishlike things. Some people might think its some sexual bullshit, but honestly, I just think fish and fishlike creatures look cool as hell. Jellyfish too. Nothing wrong with freakin jellyfishes! Fascinating creatures.

Also worked on this thing for a bit. Kooky creature guy. Part of bigger picture.

the complex, yet simple, process of creating art

Well, I don't know about other art type folks, but like to have at least 20 different things going on at once in the way of art. Bounce around from one thing to another. Much of the work I do is time consuming to begin with, but it actually usually takes longer to finish because I don't generally work on something straight through. In fact, I probably take this too far. I have stacks of unfinished pieces of artwork. Some, I might have started 20 years ago! Yes, true. I probably did not like where they were going or could not find the right path. However, if I pull that same piece out years later, I often and suddenly know what to do with it. Or, it gives me inspiration for something else. Crazy?

old sketches and stuff

Another thing I have noticed, is the direction I seem to be going. When I was a kid, I liked to paint and do pastel stuff. Then, I got into super detailed things with ink.

super detailed image

Although I still dig the crazy detail, lately I have found myself going back to simple lines and manic expression through painting in an almost abstract manner. I enjoy the simple process of making colored marks with a brush or whatever tool. I like the feeling of motion. I seem to be obsessed with fishes and jellyfish type creatures too. What's up with that? I am constantly intrigued with the idea that we are surrounded by floating creatures that occupy a parallel universe that overlaps ours, but that most people can't see. Obviously, I can see this universe. Duh. 

Recent stuff happening in studio.

But, yeah, some stuff lately is almost childlike. Could a kid do it? What does this mean? A fellow artist told me that this is the eventuality of most artists. You start out simple as a child, get more complex, then as you age you get back to the simple. For me, simple is cathartic. The act of painting or drawing is much more important than the result. Nobody will ever be able to know how I was feeling when I put down certain spirally strokes, or why I put this color here or there. But, I can guarantee this, when I was doing each and every image, I was conveying an emotion onto the piece of art. Perhaps a kid could do something comparable. I don't know. Maybe that is why the art of children is so wonderful. They are not inhibited like adults. They don't know any better. When my son Joseph was very young, he drew some cool little pictures. Ok, well, he still does. But, I used to look at them (ok, I still do), and find great inspiration and ideas would stem from his childhood views of life and the imaginary.

Some pretty weird but simple stuff

So, art for me is a constant back and forth of old and new. Trying to finish up three elongate ink and graphite pieces right now. 

weird creature guys

It is funny, and my own fault I guess, that people have always thought I only did black and white drawings. My own fault, because I mostly only showed the black and white ones. Weird? I do find the need to add serious detail much of the time, but not always. Here is a little buggy creature deal and a fish thingy I was working on the other day. 

buggy guy

fish creature thing

So, not sure what this all means, but there you go.

Things happening, new art finished, more to come.....

Busy as hell almost all of the time, but somehow finding little pockets of time for art and yard work, which is artistic in its own way. I literally have over 30 pieces of art that I am working on here and there. Crazy! Wish I had more time. BUMMER!

Finally finished up a couple of pictures though. The first one I called "Gordenobyte". I did this one with acrylic paint, colored inks, and Rapidograph pens on primed 3/4 inch birch plywood. It started out bigger, 2 X 2 feet, but I completely hated where it was going, so I cut out the part I kind of liked. It was totally abstract to begin with, but gradually, I started to see something as I added detail. Got it too dark in places and thought I ruined it, but was able to work around that a bit.

Gordenobyte, by Joe A. MacGown

It finally started looking like some kind of fish or something. Anyway, I worked on it some, then put it up, stared at it at various times, then would come back and add something here and there. Eventually,  I stopped, and here you go!

Detail of "Gordenobyte"

The second one is called "March Madness". This was a crazy random painting thing. Started with a piece of 2 X 2 feet 1/4 inch birch plywood, which I primed white. Then put some spray paint on there, some random splashes of black and red house paint, pour motor oil on there - stuff like that. I moved the board around to let paint flow, put spray paint on top of the wet house paint, even set the oil on fire at some point. Had to wipe the soot off. Anyway, after it mostly dried, I ended up wiping off the excess oil. Later, I started adding some acrylic paint with a paint brush, basically just pulling out stuff that was already there. Here is the result.

March Madness by Joe MacGown