Mike Houston

Mike Houston is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  These days he lives in Brooklyn where he co-runs Cannonball Press, an amazing woodcut graphics and print studio.




Chief Magazine: When were you first introducted to woodworking and carpentry?

I started with crappy art school carpentry, like building painting stretchers and pallet tables, and talked my way into a picture framing job, and then talked my way into working at as a cabinetmaker, and here I still am, ten years later, building libraries and kitchens for obscenely wealthy Manhattanites.

But occasionally I like to slip some carpentry into art shows.  Martin and I did a show called Hillbilly Housewares, and I built all this ridiculous furniture that we painted up with snakes and rednecks and stuff.  And for this latest show in New York, I built a full-on treasure chest, with inlaid woodcuts.

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What artists first made you want to do this yourself, and who are your key influences?

Something kind of clicked when I first saw comic artists like Berni Wrightson, Joe Kubert, Bob Burden, Jack Kirby, and Mort Drucker. They could all draw their asses off, albeit in pretty different ways. I, too, wanted to draw my geeky, white, suburban ass off.  My parents were (and are) great, and recognized this, and hired this cat named Eric Knisley to come over on Friday nights and draw with me. He taught me the finer points of drawing fists, veins, dragon’s teeth, capes, and more fists. Everything a 13-year-old screamin’ head artist needs to know.

Later, I really got into Max Beckmann, Philip Guston, Peter Breugel, and Posada. I first got drawn into woodcuts by the raw power of Kirchner’s graphic work.

The Futurist art movement was all about embracing modernity and advances in technology, but a piece of yours, like “Amateur Rocketry,” suggests a questioning of that notion - not in a pastoral, Walden Pond sense, but definitely in satirizing the need to develop a bigger rocket. Do you see your work as satirical?

I satirize the pop culture that’s within me, I suppose. I’m not above anyone. I’ve ingested as much crappy pop culture as anybody, and often am making fun of the sorts of universal negative American tendencies (complacency, laziness, willingness to follow, obsession with things material) that I find creeping into the edges of my psyche. BUT! And this is important: while doing that, I try also to celebrate what I love about this country – the total oblivious full-steam-ahead, mad creative and entrepreneurial energy that has been the engine behind some of the greatest cultural and scientific innovations in history. I’m talking love-hate relationship, yin and yang,
balance. Or trying to, at least.

Your artistic style at times has roots in the hallmarks of expressionism, from the swirling lines of the sky to the pained expressions on some people. It calls to mind the styles of Munch or Van Gogh, but you are then able to incorporate that with a surrealist spin, along with modern subjects like television and advertising. Do you see expressionism as spurring, or at least influencing, your art? And how do you manage to still make your pieces feel contemporary?

When I was taking art classes in college, most of my teachers were abstract expressionists. So for a while I tried making big gooby abstract paintings. Ultimately, I came back around to telling stories and making representational pictures, but I try to incorporate a bit of the good stuff I learned back then into stuff I make now.

The titles of your pieces are frequently featured in the pieces themselves. Do you typically involve words in your work? Why do you like using words?

I love telling stories and think of most of my stuff as big one-page comics.  I like having a bit of mystery in the narrative, though, so I don’t often give up the whole story. I’m shooting to create oversized comics with some abstraction in the narrative, if that makes any sense – hence, the words.

You have some paintings that are fake advertisements. What’s the idea behind that, and what’s your take on the state of advertising today?

It’s so insanely pervasive and irritating and reprehensible for the most part. But you have to admire the genius behind some of it. So again, yeah, I’m completely making fun of how absurd the stuff is, while at the same time celebrating some of the highlights.

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What’s the most interesting reaction you’ve gotten?

My favorite is always this: I’ve done a lot of mural work in public places: in the city, and elsewhere. You’ll be on a ladder, painting a big-ass picture on a wall, with buckets of paint and supplies around, and a bunch of artists around you doing the same damn thing, and someone will come up and say, “Is this some kind of project?”

“No, dude – this? Definitely not a project. No makings of a fucking project here at all.”

Which piece of yours do you feel the most satisfied with?

I did a piece about my job called Daily Grind. I think it’s the closest I’ve come to depicting a decent everyman image in recent history. 

Where do you live now? What’s your take on the scene there?

I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If I had any sense of fashion other than flannel, maybe I could shed some light on the runway show that Bedford Avenue has turned into in the past decade.  That said, I still love it here. There are so many incredibly visionary and inspiring people in New York. It never ceases to amaze me.  And I love McCarren Park, near where I live.

What artists are doing some crazy shit that everyone else needs to be aware of? Who are you really digging right now?

My man David Rees who writes the strip Get Your War On is one of the best satirists and creative minds I have run into thus far on this planet. I think Joe Coleman’s work is mind-bogglingly beautiful. But right now, for my money Walton Ford, who just had a show at the Brooklyn Museum, is Fuckin’ SLAMMING. 

Do you currently work both with paintings and woodcuttings? Which of those two are you most enthusiastic about at the moment?

For the past couple of years, I’ve put most all of my energy into Cannonball Press, meaning publishing prints and making huge woodcuts. I really dig going back and forth, though, as I think both media inform each other.

I guess I assumed woodcutting had peaked with Albrecht Durer. Is there a burgeoning woodcutting community out there now?

OH, YELL YES!

Witness: The Amazing Hancock Brothers, Dennis McNett (can I say again, Dennis Freakin' McNett!), Tom Huck, Swoon, Yeehaw Industries, Joseph Velasquez and Greg Nanney of Drive-By Press, and Isle of Printing, just to name a few. It’s on. We’re comin’.

What’s your process like? How time-consuming are the woodcutting pieces to create, and what’s the longest amount of time you’ve ever spent on a single piece?

Ok, here’s the breakdown for this piece Martin and I just made in six weeks for a show at David Krut Gallery in Chelsea, called “Marketplace.” It’s pretty accurate.

Two dudes working for:

20 hours, each drawing and transferring images
130 hours each carving
1 hour each shellacking
3 hours each schlepping blocks
16 hours each printing
20 hours each collaging and gluing
1 hour each hanging piece on wall

So--

382 hours total of labor, or 16 24- hr. days, or 9.5 40-hour weeks

How many hours a day do you usually spend in the studio?

It totally depends – namely, on what’s on TV.

How integral are you in the running of the alternative press Cannonball Press? How well do you know the artists involved, and how did they all get brought together?

Cannonball is just me and Martin Mazorra.  We founded it: we do all the hustling, work, printing, schlepping, working with artists, and editioning. We started by soliciting work by friends whose work we dug and from there branched out and developed relationships with other artists, whose work we printed as well. It’s only in the past three years that we started making these huge collaborative woodcut pieces.

How has the business side been? Are you still holding down a day job?

Yeah, we both have day jobs. Selling 20-dollar prints ain’t exactly investment banking.

Do you have much spare time when you’re not in the studio or working elsewhere? What do you like to do in your downtime?

Dude, I watch too much damn TV. That’s the plain truth.  But I like to draw in front of the TV, and when I’m not doing that or in the studio, I like to see the occasional band, sort my socks, file shit, and battle my broken-ass piece of shit sink. I’m a wild-ass, I know.

What can you tell us about the short film that you directed about Chuck, a printmaking heretic? What’s the biographical basis for the film?

I made that film years ago. It’s been in several festivals, and I’ve been told bootleg copies are being shown in a number of universities. Chuck is an incredibly devoted artist, and when he told me what his plan was, I had to document it.

Are you looking to do more filmmaking and directing?

Yeah, I have a few ideas. One involves setting a giant sound system I built years ago on fire.

What do you see yourself doing or working on five years down the road?

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I would consider myself blessed if I have the opportunity to work on art projects of greater scope, depth, quality, and ambition as time passes, and that’s my goal for five years from now.  

Be it woodcuts or eggplant sculpture.

Your piece Nightly Spell puts the audience in the point of view of someone staring at a television set. How much condemnation is intended, and are you much of a television watcher? Are there any TV shows that are guilty pleasures of yours that you want to come clean about?

Yes. I want to come clean to Chief Magazine in this exclusive interview. I turned down requests from People, Essence, Tokion, and Popular Mechanics, but for you, I will say –
I like Law and Order.

Website

www.cannonballpress.com

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