Show & Tell: Mike Perry reveals his dog, backpack and rock collection

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Date
9 June 2015

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Mike Perry is a man with fingers in many creative pies. An artist/illustrator/designer by trade, he has perfected his craft by utilising all manner of media, turning his New York studio into a laboratory for dynamic experimentation. It’s a potent formula, and one which he’s channelled into books about screen-printing, hand-drawn type and pattern, not to mention lectures, magazines and ad campaigns. It seems few can resist his inclusive belief in what he calls “the transformative power of making things” or the brightly-coloured aesthetic with which he creates them. Mike’s work has always suggested that he might be a secret hoarder, so we stopped by his studio to find out about some of the objects he keeps lying around and what they mean to him…

1. Bass the Dog
My wife Anna and I have this jokey thing where we can’t move until Bass is dead. It’s a bit fucked up to think about it, but it’s a benchmark, you know? Bass is probably the most grounding of characters in my story right now because we could be loose and free and adventurous but she needs to be walked and fed twice a day. And when she wants attention you have to give it to her, so she’s pretty damn important. We’ve had her for three years and I love her to death. She’s not going anywhere until she’s old and no longer with us. And that is desperately sad – it will be the worst time ever – but that will mark another stage of our existence. Right now our lives are so tied down to being in Brooklyn and doing this, but someday it’d be cool just to travel to another place and be on holiday and not be thinking about her all the time.

Having her has been amazing because it’s forced me to go outside. I think everyone could use a walk in the morning and a walk in the afternoon. You forget that sometimes you just need to breathe fresh air and stretch your legs. Dogs also have a beautiful ability to say hi to any strange dog they meet. They don’t have to know each other, they don’t care about the other dog’s income level or social status, they just want to smell each other’s assholes. That in turn engages me with a complete stranger who I don’t have anything in common with either – which has been great!

2. 0.9 mm Alvin Draft-Matic mechanical pencil
I love mechanical pencils, because if I play my cards right I only need a couple of them. But I’m really into the Alvin Draft-Matic with the 0.9 mm lead. It’s got a good weight and is nice and sturdy. The feeling of pencil on paper is probably just one of the best things in the world.

I think one of my most formative memories as a kid was at some random book fair where I convinced my mom to buy me these wooden coloured pencils and this book called Chuck Amuck about Looney Tunes and Chuck Jones and that whole universe. Those two things combined led to a summer of drawing Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny.

As a kid I drew cartoons all the time, but when I became an angsty teenager I got more into realism, and I kind of lost the figure for a long time during that process as I got a bit more abstract and started doing things differently. But over the past few years I’ve really wanted to have humanoids in my work, and I think that’s the thing that I’m most excited about right now, going back to this drawing and animation thing. I’ve never done as many drawings as I’m doing right now. Some days it feels like I’m drawing eight hours a day.

3. Backpack full of handy items
A couple of years ago I fully committed to carrying a backpack all the time. It felt kind of juvenile – like going back to my youth – but I was over the tote bag existence where everything just gets thrown in there and the bag doesn’t even matter.

It’s been super practical, and with the backpack has come this whole idea of preparedness. Jay who works with me is always prepared so I’m trying to learn from him, trying to carry more things. It’s funny because it’s mostly just junk; a level, pens, extra framing wire, sunscreen – because when you paint murals you always forget that you need sunscreen! Everything is just there and ready, because you never know what you’re gonna need.

My brother would always say I looked like I was going camping because I’d have my backpack with all my shit in it – tubes sticking out and things tied to it – and I’d just be walking the dog. It’s been good for me to learn how to be prepared though.

4. Painting by my grandfather
I had this grandfather whose name was Thomas Williams. He was a bit estranged from my family so I didn’t see him a lot when I was a kid but he always had this artist’s presence that was around somehow. As a kid I always thought he was a crazy person, but then one day I was like, “Oh man, that’s me!” When I was 13 he gave me a tackle box filled with oil paints. I don’t think he even thought about it. It doesn’t matter either way. He lit this crazy fire when he gave me this box. It just went up in flames and I painted like crazy.

He made so many paintings over the years and I only have this one but it’s really beautiful and special. When we were doing the Wondering Around Wandering project we put on a different exhibition each month, and our very last show was a still-life group show. It was during Hurricane Sandy so shit was crazy; there were storms and water damage, lower Manhattan didn’t have any electricity. None of the artwork was being sent in so we needed some extra pieces for this show, and I thought I’d bring my grandpa’s still-life in to put up.

I brought it into the gallery and leaned it up against the wall, and on the back of the painting in pencil my grandfather had written: “There is a dark cloud over my life.” I’d had the painting for what must have been about ten years and never once had I seen that. And because of Sandy, because it was raining and dark and all of this shit had gone down, that became the title of the show.

5. Dolls by Chrissie Macdonald
When we got married my friend Chrissie Macdonald, who’s part of Peepshow Collective, made these beautiful sculptures for us. They’re incredible handmade objects, almost like giant toys or chess pieces – simple and strong and interesting – but they’re important because someone made them specifically for us.

My grandmother was a very sentimental person, and for a while she would write out the history of any important object in her home and tape it to the bottom. You’d lift up a desk and there would be a handwritten note underneath it, explaining that your grandfather built this in 1932. So I’ve been trained to want objects to have meaning and life and a journey.

6. Geoff McFetridge painting
I have a Geoff McFetridge drawing of a man on a horse that I bought in 2000-and-something. It was probably the second piece of art that I purchased as an adult. It was my first real attempt at understanding that you have to participate in the art world, and that it’s so important to invest in people that you believe in and whose work you love. I think that’s one of my favourite roles as a human being, to celebrate and support other creative people. I think it’s a nice symbolic way to encourage another person to continue on their creative path, by taking ownership of a piece of their work.

I came across Geoff late in college. When I was at school I was doing a lot of digital work because that was what graphic design looked like then; everything was the opposite of organic – it all had really sharp lines and was made on Illustrator – and then a friend at school shared Barry McGee’s work with me. We all put our money together to get this book of his work and when it came I discovered that there was a whole little world of artists and designers who were really celebrating handmade work, and Geoff was in that pile. I really responded to it.

I’ve always really wanted to have a mentor figure in my life – everybody wants an emergency phonecall to somebody who’ll have an answer for you – and I feel like at one point in time his work could facilitate that relationship for me. It felt really earnest and true, and it showed me that I could make the work that I believe in.

7. Rock collection
I have a rock collection. I kept going places and I didn’t really want to buy shot glasses or whatever else it is that you buy when you travel. So I’d go looking for rocks.

Now they’re all in my yard. They’re all different and crazy. You know that blue paper that you get when you’re a kid and you put stuff on it and put it in the sun and it kind of takes photographs? They’re really fun to make rock patterns with.

8. Sketchbooks
I’ve always kept a sketchbook. I don’t have all the books from my life, but I have a lot of them. They’re so important, and I think it’s just because they function like memory for me. I can go back and immediately see what I was doing, what I was looking at, what I was thinking about and the kinds of drawings I was interested in making. It’s a really fun way to think about your process.

As far as things that are precious to me go, it’s the books that I’d be bummed about if they disappeared. I’m trying in general to tell myself that I’d be cool about it if every drawing I’d made over the last 15 years just disappeared one day, but I’m not sure. They’re a record of the man-hours, learning what to do, what things go on what pieces of paper. It’s like the ultra-nerd aspect of making stuff, knowing all of those secrets.

With a lot of the work that I make, half of the pleasure to me is just the making of it. I’m a very fast maker and I like things that are fluid and efficient. When I was in high school I was painting so much I’d rarely go to class, but I’d finish a painting and the next day I would just gesso over it and start the next one. It was just about making the work, not keeping it. But these books. Yeah, it’s a weird thing I have with them.

9. Jim Stoten drawings
A couple of years after college I came to stay with a friend who was from Brighton. She was living in London with a roommate, and it was Jim. We hit it off like crazy, ended up spending more time hanging out together than I did with my friend Maddie, and we have aways kept in touch. He’s spent a couple of summers in the studio working – he’d be in town and come by to work – and he would just leave these insane, massively complicated drawings, and they’d end up in my files. I have so many of his drawings.

I’ve learned so much about how to draw from Jim, how to take it slow and really get into it. Actually the best drawing I own is from a time when Jim was visiting and Josh Cochran was over at my house. I was making food or something like that so I just gave them a piece of paper, and they did this drawing that was bonkers. I was like: “Uh guys? Can I have this?” Luckily we did a trade, because it’s fucking brilliant!

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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