“ Self Portrait / Work in Progress…” / Photo by Francis Michaels Photo composite by Jim Wagner

Dusting the “Shiny Art” Bio….

TRACK 1: The Beginning:" Why did I attend art school?”

I was born on April 29, 1954, in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. Bridgeville is small town out-side of Pittsburgh, just south of the rusting steel mills that line the banks of the three great riv-ers that come together there. My earliest memories are of subdued colors, dark fields and soot-tinted skies, where factories outlined the landscape. I remember streams running bright orange with pollution from steel mills. I called them, “Orange juice creeks.” I remember the rotten egg smell of sulfur mixing with the foliage of the woods where I played. The valley was de-fined by steep hills lined with winding roads that dead-ended at open cliff faces. Houses were built into these hills as though they were part of the earth. They rested one upon another in ir-regular abstract patterns dictated by the lay of the land. At night I could see the red glow of the mills simmering like suburbs of hell amid the dark shadows cast by the tree covered hills.

My Father worked in the steel industry as a salesman. He was transferred to Middletown, Ohio when I was ten. My family moved into a new home in a new subdivision built over the flattest piece of land I ever seen be-fore. The subdivision was a planned neighborhood with streets in grids and newly planted trees lined up as monuments to a sun god. This arranged development reminds me now of some of the shapes in Frank Stella’s early canvases. Not only was the landscape different, but people also talked differently. They spoke slower with fewer physical gestures and with less inflection in their voices, except for an occasional twang. This was something I was not used to hearing. I came from an area of the country that was a true melting pot of every ethnic group of people on this earth. They all decided to form their own take on the English language, though not intentionally. The new language was built on facial expressions and hand gestures. It was choppy and to the point. The inflec-tion in ones voice could change from high to low in less than three words. For me the point of this contrast was basically one of phonetics. Phonics was a very popular educational learning method at the time, but at school the process was unfortunately lost on me. Reading and for that matter communicating by speaking were diffi-cult for me to do in my new geography. I was caught in some sort of cultural change that hindered expressing myself in the conventional manner of reading and writing. My Father took notice of this situation very early. He was always buying me books with a lot of pictures. I especially liked the ones on the Civil War with all those wonderful illustrations of the battle scenes. I was fascinated with the lines and gestures of the human form in the movement of the soldiers. This is still very evident in my work today. I learned to draw the human figure from the inside out. All in all, I had a very normal Midwestern up bringing. There is no emotional trauma or high drama here. I did have to work hard for my grades in school, but I excelled in art. I knew how to do it well and it made me feel good. The art made me stand apart from others. I was proud of it. So being noticed was not a problem for me. I fit in. Apart but in… If you were to ask me why I attended art school, my answer would be, “I didn’t; I majored in art.” A more revealing question would be, “How did I get accepted into Miami University?”

Photography by Francis Michaels

TRACK 2: The Grateful Dead 1972: “Sugar Magnolia”

The summer of 72 was the best summer I remember having. “ Heads all empty and I don’t care” was a line to a Grateful Dead song and summed up that time for me. I didn’t have a clue of what I was doing and didn’t care. It was the age of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. I thought nobody had a plan. I was wrong. My Father did. Miami University had just opened a branch community college in Middletown. This was a time when a state education was cheap and even cheaper at the community college level. The Miami Uni-versity Middletown campus did not consider S.A.T. scores because at that time the state forced the cam-pus to accept everybody or they wouldn’t be considered a state institution. That translated into, “No fund-ing.” My Father never talked to me about college. I didn’t visit any colleges or even looked at any bro-chures. My guidance counselor wanted me to consider being a shop teacher. He assured me it was an easy gig. All this advice was just noise to my ears and who could blame me. I was having the time of my life. The day of reckoning did come; it was executed by my father with precision. He had my best friend take me along with him to take the SAT test. At the time I believed this was probably a good thing to do. One must be prepared. The SATs ended and later I found myself sitting in a counselor’s office discussing a plan for my freshman year of college. The ball was rolling. My father set the whole thing up. He even picked my first quarter classes: English, Western Civilization, Drawing and Design Fundamentals. I was in. My father was a businessman and cherished a sweet deal. My grades for my first quarter at college were as follows: an “F” in English, an “F” in Western Civi-lization, an “A” in Drawing and an “A” in Design Fundamentals. I remember these words from my Fa-ther. “I got you started and now you know your strengths and weaknesses. Stay true to your art and work like hell on everything else. It is up to you. Now, you have direction.” I seized the opportunity. This was the time I meet some very influential friends. They were older than me and much wiser. These branch colleges catered to the thirty-something aged student. We also had very young and innova-tive instructors getting their first chance to teach. These people took me under their wing. These ingredi-ents, mixed together with the cultural freedom going on in America at the time, set the stage for a wonder-ful adventure in education.

Photography by Francis Michaels “Forecast“ / 2007”

TRACK 3: Welcome to the real world ” Why did I stop painting?”

After graduating from Miami University in 1978, I found myself floundering with the reality of making a living outside the safe-haven, institution of school. I knew that earning a living in art while living in the Mid-west was virtually impossible at that time. A bunch of my friends had bought into the promise of a fast track to success in New York City. I visited them numerous times and that location seemed to fit my career direc-tion and me. The move there took some front money, but my father was not buying into that business plan. He had little faith in what I was doing or didn’t understand it. My father just wanted to see to me succeed in the sane world. But that didn’t matter at the time. What was important is that I had no front money and my educational vacation was over. Like the Rolling Stones lyric, “Lose your dreams you will lose your mind,” I lost mine. I dabbled in teach-ing and in the printing industry, which in no way were avenues or outlets for me to display any creativity. Eventually I ended up in sales and management, just like my father. I remember him giving me this advice at the time, “ If you are going to sell something, make sure it’s big and worth a lot of money. Don’t waste time on the little shit.” I didn’t. During these years I got married to my wife, Kathy, and later she gave birth to our daughter, Francesca. I understood then that the world was a place that valued corporate thinking and corporate values over individ-ual creativity. Everything was about the stockholders. I had endured enough of it and realized that I had made a mistake by following in my father’s footsteps. He had died during my foray into business at the age of sixty with a bad heart due to stress. The only thing I enjoyed during these years was meeting and working with people. I learned many things from these people; even the corporate criminals left an imprint on my psyche.

Photography by Francis Michaels

TRACK 4: Epiphany or magic: “What brought me back to painting?”

By the spring of 2005 I had lost my job and realized that my opportunity in corporate America had passed me by. During unemployment, I began to use my spare time to remodel and paint the inside of my house. My biggest project was stripping and finishing the hardwood floors. The methodology of going step by step became a process with great therapeutic success. I was like a machine. Before long I had painted almost everything in the house. One summer day while I was down in my poorly lit basement in the midst of yet another project, something scared me. I started seeing objects as just shapes, forms, lines, and color instead of recognizing the object by its name. Then after smoking several cigarettes, I began to observe the geometric shape of the basement stairs and the shadow it was casting as the day progressed. I began to feel a little freaked out by the whole vision. I had been taking medication for depression for about five years, because my Doctor believed I had been in that state for a long period of time. I called her and made an appointment to discuss my visual transformation. During the time I was wondering what was happening to me, the answer was very simple, and I understood that I had felt this way before. The creative calling of art was giving me a wake-up call. For the first time in years, I actually began to take the time to view my house and my family with full atten-tion. I became inspired and started back into the creative process with an old camera. I took the camera back to the stairs in the basement to finish my study of shapes, forms, lines and color. Finishing things you start is an important lesson I learned during the last thirty years. You finish the job no matter how silly it may seem. Be-lieve me, I have finished a lot of silly jobs for the while working in the corporate world. From that point on, though, every project I started was like the first one I ever did as a child. I was living and using all my senses again. I was human again- learning, feeling and being. I eventually gravitated back to education as a substitute teacher in the public schools. It was scary, fun, and exhilarating after being out of the classroom for thirty years. My mother passed away in 2007 after suffering from a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. These images along with my views of the world at large have be-come some of my current most influential visual subjects in my art. As a twenty-two year old, I am not sure that I had anything to express on canvas. After living and working these past thirty years, I have viewed the world with some of the best and worst it has to offer. Now the drive is back and the direction is clear!

Photography by Francis Michaels

TRACK 5: “This is how feel about painting 30 years after”

Art is now a constant obsession for me. I even enjoy the simple act of buying the supplies. The guys at the lumberyard have become part of my routine. When I go there to buy wood lattice, we drink coffee and they give me tips on wood and how to construct things. My process of painting has come back full circle from when I was a child. I look at any object as possible project and then attack the job relentlessly. As for selling my work, I have sold a few pieces and this has given me a sense of validation for the work I have completed. The biggest reward came one day when my daughter, Frannie, came home from college and declared me a postmodern expressionist. At the time she was a sophomore at Ohio University. This young lady has seen her Father move from being a pawn of the corporate mainframe, working 60-70 hours per week, to this guy who now teaches little kids how to create their own art. My final words are the lesson I have learned after thirty years absence from the brush and canvas. I will never put them down again. They are my salvation, sanity and insanity all converging like the three great rivers near the hometown of my youth. Jim Wagner Revised 3/11/2009

“Gumball Man” / 2009 Work in progress….

Acknowledgement: Text Editing: Alan Freeman Photography: Francis Michaels Spiritual leader: Ben Neal Thank you