Howdy interwebianz!

Here’s my first “artist profile” with my good friend Clovis Blackwell [CB].

LG: How do we know each other?

CB: We go way back Luke, we go back to San Francisco, to the Upper Room that Church group thing that we were doing. But what kinda cemented the friendship was us being able to talk about art ideas and stuff. You were working on your short film for school it was…

LG: “Coming To”

CB: That’s it. The conversation that really strikes me was about the main character’s transformation in “Coming To.” It came when someone dropped a piece of fruit in his bag and he tried it. We were talking about what that fruit might be conveying. That was a really great rapport that we developed. Being able to discus things has been a really fun part of our friendship, being able to bounce ideas off of each other.

LG: Yeah Totally. When we met, what sort of art were you making?

CB: When we met, I had just graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute and I was making “box art,” kind of Joseph Cornell-style. After graduating I started working on an installation that I came to think of as a large “Cornell Box.” I think I titled that show Cedars. I was collecting a bunch of different materials and putting them in jars and bottles.

CB: I made one small box out of those objects and the rest of the show was those objects filling the gallery space like the space was a box. That was a nice progression for me to move out of small objects into a larger space. I think that led to some of my more recent work.

LG: So what is your more recent work? What have you been working on?

CB: I’ll go back to my last show, my show for my Master of Fine Arts. I made an installation where I hand-cast 200 action figures and set them up in battles on miniature terrain that I made. I had 4 tables that filled the gallery space; they looked like model train or war gaming landscapes. The figures were fighting on that. It was a sort of transition from my previous work.

LG: Because that work was installation based?

CB: Yeah, it hasn’t all been installation based, I do tend to play around with a lot of different media. The media that I choose needs to incorporate whatever theme that I’m thinking of in my work. It was important that they were action figures because it was thinking of the role of the Hero and taking it down to a toy, a commodity, a throw-away thing. Sort of parodying the idea of what a Hero is, but also moving past that idea and it was a lot about just having fun and playing, being playful.

LG: What was that show called?

The name of the show was Time of Trial and that came from a couple of things, from Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” which identifies The Road of Trials as the part of the heroic cycle where the Hero is in struggle, where it looks like he might not make it. Where he suffers. It’s in that moment where he learns something important. That’s where the transformation takes place.

LG: Like where Luke learns to trust The Force?

CB: Exactly where Luke learns to trust The Force. Down in that cave on Dagobah.

LG: Actually he’s in the Trench…

CB: I’m thinking of “Empire.” [The Empire Strikes Back] Let’s all just go to “Empire,” cause “Empire” is The Road of Trials. The whole movie is The Road of Trials. That’s where all the struggles happen; that’s where Han gets frozen, where you don’t know if they are going to make it. That’s where Luke learns the truth about his father, where he learns to actually become a Jedi, where Han and Leia began to fall in love. Everything happens in “Empire.” And the resolution comes in “Return [of the Jedi].”

LG: Let’s bring that back to Time of Trials.

CB: First, I should say what the action figures were, there were 100 Super Clovis action figures and 100 Anti Clovis action figures. The Hero and the Villain. It’s in their struggle and their fight, in MY struggle and my fight within myself that I found transformation. Part of that has to do with my experience with Rheumatoid Arthritis and learning to understand my own weakness. It also gets pretty Jungian dealing with the psyche and how one comes to terms with who one is. Which is exactly what that Heroic Journey is all about.

LG: So did Time of Trials somehow inform or set you on the course for your current work?

CB: I’d gotten really fascinated with the apocalypse and trying to understand why I have felt an allure towards the “end of the world” and towards a post-apocalyptic future. I was starting to think about those things while I was working on Time of Trial. I was thinking about how I was influenced by movies, how these Hero stories filtered into my life and my way of thinking when I was a child. A lot of those were these post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies and I was thinking about the glamorous Hero, the survivor Hero. So the Hero is the connection.

I’ve been working on these Mushroom Cloud drawings and screen prints and thinking of making a series of miniature sculptures. I’m trying to take away the power and the fear from the Mushroom Clouds. I’m trying to make them pretty and seductive and kind of harmless. I want to make them really attractive because of what comes after the destruction, what comes after the death and suffering is this moment of new life, this moment of rebirth. You have death then you have life and resurrection. You have this transformation. You have the apocalypse, then you have the post-apocalypse. You have the survivors and society and the world rebuilding.

“untitled” | 11×14 | chinamarker on paper | 2010

That’s the fascination for me, that’s the connection to Time of Trial. Now I’m using the Mushroom Cloud as the moment of struggle in the Hero’s journey. I guess it’s kind of the same thing as what I was doing. I’m looking at the same thing, that moment of struggle but through a different lens. [laughs] It’s not a self portrait. [LG laughs] Most of my work has been self portrait for the last 8 or 10 years. I kind of wanted to get away from that and I am, but I guess it’s the same thing. It’s learning the importance of struggle in my life and how that’s transformative and the beautiful things that come after that.

LG: I like that. I hadn’t made that connection either.

CB: That was new for me [laughs] I hadn’t made that connection to Time of Trial, that solidified things for me. So thank you.

LG: You’re welcome.

CB: That’s why I like these conversations. We do this.

LG: Things come out.

CB: Yeah.

—{END Part 1]—

Stay tuned next week when I ask Clovis questions like:

LG: I’m curious as to why you picked the Mushroom Cloud and not say the “Robot Apocalypse” or the “Zombie Apocalypse” or the “Monkey Plague Apocalypse”?

-Luke

Luke & Clovis at the AEM art show, circa 2006

howdy friends!

a couple of months ago I set out to make the most epic episode of The Real Luke yet. I’d been growing my beard for the last 5 months and had been meditating daily on the filmography of Michael Bay. I was ready.

the film would take place in 3 different locations. first we would be shooting by the Pacific Ocean, then in the desert, and finally in the mountains. at each location I would have a different length beard and slightly different costume to indicate the passage of time.

at our first two locations everything went great. at the ocean and in the desert we got the shots we needed without being hassled. which was a good thing, because once again I was shooting without permits. we were in the mountains, filming a scene where The Real Luke crosses a creak when disaster struck. A scan disk full of footage fell into the stream…

and quickly disappeared beneath the rushing water.

exclamations of dismay (that shall not be quoted) were uttered (at volumes best not to mention).

but all was not lost! using the knowledge he’d acquired as a white water rafting guide, Angel was able to find the disk. he followed the flow of the water to where it had been wedged in between two rocks and fished it out. naturally it was soaked.

Angel charges.

but would the vital footage it contained be ok? would the water have fried the circuit board?

if the footage was lost, the project could NOT be completed. many of the clips on the disk featured me in the desert, with a two-month long beard. that beard have been shaved for the scene we were currently filming. so I’d either have to drastically change my plans for the piece OR wait until my beard grew out and go back to the desert to reshoot. neither option was that appealing.

we tried not to worry about this…it was what it was. either we were hosed or we weren’t. fretting about it wouldn’t make the footage come back. so we finished shooting the mountain scenes and headed home to LA.

as soon as we were back into cell zone, I google searched “dropped scan disk in water.” there were stories of people who had retrieved pictures off of disks that had gone through the wash…so I was hopeful. we decided to wait a week and let the card dry out before we attempted to load it.

so, here’s video from when I attempt to load the card for the first time…

the teaser for “The Real Luke: Pursuance of Justice” is nearing completion. picture is locked, voice over is done, sound mixing is complete…all that is left is color correction. hopefully it will be online in the next couple of weeks!

stay tuned!

-Luke

Howdy friends!

So the interview with Clovis Blackwell is taking a little longer than I expected. This might have something to do with being off the computer for 3 whole days (*gasp* I know, right?)

In lieu of the interview, I’m going to do a little behind the scenes on an older project, the “Yaaaris!” spec commercial.

The concept was pretty simple, “What would happen if a pirate tried to buy a Yaris?”

But why tell you about it when I can just show you?

Now the pirate was totally typecast. As in, he’s an actual real life pirate. I built a time machine and pulled him off tall ship cause a skinny guy w/ an AK-47 was just not the look I was going for. (Too soon?)

Heh, I kid, I kid. The pirate is actually my neighbor. And he’s not really a pirate, he’s a country rock musician.

Since this was a spec project that I was funding, I tried to keep spending to a minimum. The camera was borrowed. The lights were rented. Props were constructed. And everyone worked for free.

Troy on the boom.

Our pirate wasn’t free…but his cost was pretty cheap. He asked that we just get him some Budweiser so he could have a few beers while we were shooting. Up until that point I’d been really against performers being on any sort of drugs/alcohol while on set. But for some reason, I decided to let this slide.

“He’s doing me a favor” I said to myself. And myself responded, “Yeah, how much beer can he drink in a couple hours?”

The answer: A lot.

In his defense, it was the weekend…and he had been drinking when we picked him at 11am, so…the 8 or 12 beers he drank on set had more of an effect since they were on top of what he’d already had.

Costume & makeup test.

He kept getting the lines wrong and started to get a bit frustrated. At one point he got up and left set. Luckily, I was able to get him back… I told him it “wasn’t a big deal,” “everything was going to be fine,” and I could give him the lines “one at a time.”

I’d say the line, then he’d repeat it. It actually worked out pretty well. We got the takes we need without adding too much time. Since it’s such a short piece, the line prompting probably only added another 45 minutes to the shoot. And more importantly, I learned a valuable lesson:

Never feed your pirate beer.

Now as a special treat, for the first time on the interwebz, is the OUTTAKES Reel. Enjoy!

More pictures of the production and myself in various pirate garb tests can be seen in the Flickr set.

-Luke

howdy,

so if you’ve been following along you know that for the last few months I’ve been working on updating my flickr. I’ve finally finished uploading all my hold photos…and now I’m in the process of organizing it.

here are some selects from my new “friends” set.

Christian

Max

Tada

Charlie & Micah

Angel

Drew

Dave

Lex

Will

next week I’ll be posting the FIRST of my Artist Interviews series. I’m going to be interviewing some of the many talented artists that I’m proud to say are my friends. first up, and a proud space-monkey – Mr. Clovis Blackwell.

-Luke