THE WORK

My work draws on the visual language of growing up in LA, where the confluence(?)  of music, film, art, design, car culture, surf culture, pop culture and the Hollywood fantasy all collide.

ABOUT MICK

I remember as a young boy how much I enjoyed looking through Life Magazines, gazing at so many photographs, not caring about the accompanied story as much as how each photo created it’s own reality, leaving my imagination to speculate about their unique history.

Having been born & raised in Los Angeles it is hard to ignore the influence of Hollywood and the film business, usually referred to as “the industry”. In fact my uncle Hal, once a cinematographer for the army during World War II, became a still photographer after the war, and one of his assignments was to photograph Marylin Monroe when she was beginning her modeling career. He was another person who ultimately influenced me to take up the art of photography.

Fast forward to my college years when by the time I reached my junior year I felt aimless, having absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for a career, became depressed, and out of pure desperation I decided to take a photography class, and it became a catalyst for change, switching my major to fine art, never looking back. I knew nothing about art but it didn’t matter, I needed a change, a big change.

INSPIRATION

I’ve always been fascinated by fine art, wondering what it would be like to be a successful fine artis like my teachers at UCLA, including Richard Diebencorn, Lynn Faukes, and Robert Heinecken.

Relatively recently I began to reminisce about my past, and to my surprise I became inspired by events, people, places, experiences, and, with the help of 3D printing I began to find ways to connect the dots resulting in a series of 3D works loosely based on those experiences. My love of cinema, not just as entertainment but also as another form of fine art led me to create diorama type scenes, or as I like to refer to them as Sets.