Concept to Creation: “A Peek into the Process and Passion”

What drives my creative process?

Structure.

The best games are fun because they have rules. Not too many rules though.  We want just enough to know the boundaries but also have the opportunity to play within those boundaries as freely as possible.  My style, Typograffic Abstraction, has a very defined recipe, a clear process to follow that helps me to arrive at that signature Jared Michael look. Within that structure though I have the freedom to express myself in an infinite amount of ways.  Words of any language I choose, color palettes of any conceivable combination, manipulations of multiple planes of dimension, again in any conceivable combination I can dream of.  I am very naturally inclined to push the boundaries though. I want to know how far that boundary can be pushed before it breaks.  Yet, there are always consequences to breaking boundaries, many of which aren’t good for us.

I live life on a tight rope, but not without a harness. Maybe it’s age, maturity, or wisdom creeping up on me, I do not know.  I’m rebellious but I am not stupid.

Can you describe the moment or experience when you first got the idea for your current work?

Absolutely.

2014, I was in between jobs, and thinking a lot about my future. We had just found out my wife was pregnant so a bunch of questions about every area of life were at the forefront of my mind. I could see the arch of my graffiti career moving from a peak toward a valley and I began to explore the thought of what an artistic transition would look like. As well I could sense God pulling me out of this place that was super comfortable and routine. What came very naturally was something I had done in my earliest days of graffiti. During the day we’d skip school and go explore different spots, places where graffiti was being painting. We’d take our cameras and burn through a roll of film or two. I used to study those picture for hours. As I laid down to sleep at night I would visualize the day, relive it in my mind. I would reconstruct my favorite pieces of graffiti and imagine the kinds of pieces I wanted to create while drifting off to sleep. I wasn’t 15 though , I was now 30. The totality of my graffiti and building careers, years and years of study, skill and application swirling around in the workshop of my mind was both exciting and maddening at times. Then, one day, I saw it.

Finally getting to the point of actually producing that work with regularity and accuracy, well, that’s a whole other story..

Where do you typically find inspiration for your pieces? Are there recurring themes in your work?

Study.

I have always been an extremely curious explorer of all things. If there is something to know I want to discover it. Since my childhood I’ve studied history and culture. When I moved to Tacoma, I lived two blocks from a library. I spent hours there in exploration over the course of our cold and rainy winters. I am fascinated by every nuance of humanity. Our thinking, emotions, patterns and actions. The myriad of ways we have lived life throughout the ages. More than anything, and it has grown significantly through the years, I am enamored with consciousness. The immaterial side of our nature that is pure and inexhaustible. Complexity and intelligence beyond our ability to contextual it at times. Yet, here we are, driving ourselves mad in an effort, so much effort, to capture it. We try capturing it through pictures, written words and strange sounds we make with our faces. Our brains can’t help but try to reason this thing away, to organize it neatly and stuff it into tiny compartmentalized boxes for some strange and justifiable means. And I, too, can’t help it either.. I love the abundance of things I have at my disposal. Every resource and tool of recorded history is available to me. For some reason, I can and must leave my mark, I have to communicate this experience, the meaning, for someone else, somewhere, at sometime in the future, to experience it too.

It’s as though Earth is a truck stop in the cosmos, and everyone of us wants to leave our graffiti on its bathroom stall.

“I was here.”