_______ .-. .-.,---. .---. .-. .-..-. .-.,---. ,---. .--. .---.
|__ _|| | | || .-' ( .-.)| | | || \| || .-.\ | .-' / /\ \ |\ /| ( .-._)
)| | | `-' || `-. () \ | | | || | || |-' \ | `-. / /\ \|(\ / | () \
(_) | | .-. || .-' _ \ \ | | | || |\ || |--. \| .-' | __ |(_)\/ | _ \ \
| | | | |)|| `--. ( `-' ) | `-')|| | |)|| |`-' /| `--.| | |)|| \ / |( `-' )
`-' /( (_)/( _.' `----' `---()/( (_)/( `--' /( _.'|| (_)| |\/| | `----'
(_) () () () (_) '-' '-'
|__ _|| | | || .-' ( .-.)| | | || \| || .-.\ | .-' / /\ \ |\ /| ( .-._)
)| | | `-' || `-. () \ | | | || | || |-' \ | `-. / /\ \|(\ / | () \
(_) | | .-. || .-' _ \ \ | | | || |\ || |--. \| .-' | __ |(_)\/ | _ \ \
| | | | |)|| `--. ( `-' ) | `-')|| | |)|| |`-' /| `--.| | |)|| \ / |( `-' )
`-' /( (_)/( _.' `----' `---()/( (_)/( `--' /( _.'|| (_)| |\/| | `----'
(_) () () () (_) '-' '-'
2.18.08
OLD REVIEWS! ! ! !
FROM MIKE VS. MIKE SHOW @ FRONTROOM GALLERY, CLEVELAND
Cleveland Plain Dealer, ART MATTERS, Friday, November 10, 2006
By Dan Tranberg
Showing exciting art is only one ingredient in creating a successful art gallery.
The founders of Cleveland's year-old Front Room Gallery are exploring a variety of recipes, including a pancake breakfast fund-raiser held last Sunday in their vast live-work space at East 36th Street and Superior Avenue.
The $10 all-you-can-eat buffet of every breakfast food imaginable brought a few dozen people to the artist-run gallery, in a mammoth-size industrial building on the edge of the city's Midtown Corridor.
But the main attraction was the gallery's current exhibition, "Mike Vs. Mike," a two-person show featuring Milwaukee artist Michael Kloss and Cleveland's Michael Lassins.
Playing up on the artists' seeming oppositions, the show (up through Saturday, Nov. 18) mixes diverse approaches and media in a veritable duel of creative production.
Neither of the two artists loses the tongue-in-cheek battle. Instead, the show cleverly reveals that both realize art-making isn't as easy as coming up with a formula. Moving from piece to piece, it's not immediately apparent which artist made what work.
Lassins graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in spring 2006 with a degree in drawing. In addition to cartoonlike drawings, he also makes mixed-media sculpture and puppets. His puppet troupe, Les Yeux Dujour, performed at the show's opening reception in early October.
Kloss, who earned a degree in sculpture in 2004 from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, is represented by several groups of small, childlike ink drawings, many of which are casually tacked to the gallery's walls.
While they vary in style, Kloss' works seem to come from a stream-of-consciousness approach in which he lets his imagination run wild. Lassins clearly uses a more deliberate, preplanned method. Yet, his work is full of surprises.
Such dualities make both artists' work more interesting. Ultimately, their interaction prompts a larger dialogue about the role of artists' intentions -- and the way in which intentions don't always produce predictable results.
The same can be said about Front Room as an ongoing experiment, continually trying different approaches to make the gallery thrive.
Cleveland Scene Magazine, Oct. 2006
No one really wins this friendly but nonsensical duel between Cleveland's Michael Lassins and Milwaukee's Michael Kloss. Not Lassins -- although he outranks his opponent on every technical measure -- and certainly not the viewers encountering a random, uninspired display. Lassins, a recent grad of the Cleveland Institute of Art, might fare better alone, in a different context. Most of the strong punches thrown here are his. The best (and least confusing) is a large, untitled charcoal drawing of an overweight, bug-eyed child similar to South Park's Eric Cartman. Lassins lavishes painterly attention on the figure, deftly shading his many contours and framing him in an elaborate border pattern. But this isn't Cartman, not with a power cord sprouting from his head and mechanical guts bursting from his limbs, like a robot whose hands have been chopped off. This is any child of the 21st century, living and breathing technology so deeply that they're almost literally wired. Childhood is a theme for Lassins. He picks it up again in a mildly affecting collage of 1970s memorabilia arranged like a Rube Goldberg contraption. But where Lassins comments on childishness, Kloss revels in it. Aside from a few underwhelming Rorschach-like studies in perception, most of Kloss' black-ink drawings could be the doodling of a seven-year-old. With Kloss in one corner of the ring, the fight is mismatched and meaningless.
-- Zachary Lewis
FROM MIKE VS. MIKE SHOW @ FRONTROOM GALLERY, CLEVELAND
Cleveland Plain Dealer, ART MATTERS, Friday, November 10, 2006
By Dan Tranberg
Showing exciting art is only one ingredient in creating a successful art gallery.
The founders of Cleveland's year-old Front Room Gallery are exploring a variety of recipes, including a pancake breakfast fund-raiser held last Sunday in their vast live-work space at East 36th Street and Superior Avenue.
The $10 all-you-can-eat buffet of every breakfast food imaginable brought a few dozen people to the artist-run gallery, in a mammoth-size industrial building on the edge of the city's Midtown Corridor.
But the main attraction was the gallery's current exhibition, "Mike Vs. Mike," a two-person show featuring Milwaukee artist Michael Kloss and Cleveland's Michael Lassins.
Playing up on the artists' seeming oppositions, the show (up through Saturday, Nov. 18) mixes diverse approaches and media in a veritable duel of creative production.
Neither of the two artists loses the tongue-in-cheek battle. Instead, the show cleverly reveals that both realize art-making isn't as easy as coming up with a formula. Moving from piece to piece, it's not immediately apparent which artist made what work.
Lassins graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in spring 2006 with a degree in drawing. In addition to cartoonlike drawings, he also makes mixed-media sculpture and puppets. His puppet troupe, Les Yeux Dujour, performed at the show's opening reception in early October.
Kloss, who earned a degree in sculpture in 2004 from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, is represented by several groups of small, childlike ink drawings, many of which are casually tacked to the gallery's walls.
While they vary in style, Kloss' works seem to come from a stream-of-consciousness approach in which he lets his imagination run wild. Lassins clearly uses a more deliberate, preplanned method. Yet, his work is full of surprises.
Such dualities make both artists' work more interesting. Ultimately, their interaction prompts a larger dialogue about the role of artists' intentions -- and the way in which intentions don't always produce predictable results.
The same can be said about Front Room as an ongoing experiment, continually trying different approaches to make the gallery thrive.
Cleveland Scene Magazine, Oct. 2006
No one really wins this friendly but nonsensical duel between Cleveland's Michael Lassins and Milwaukee's Michael Kloss. Not Lassins -- although he outranks his opponent on every technical measure -- and certainly not the viewers encountering a random, uninspired display. Lassins, a recent grad of the Cleveland Institute of Art, might fare better alone, in a different context. Most of the strong punches thrown here are his. The best (and least confusing) is a large, untitled charcoal drawing of an overweight, bug-eyed child similar to South Park's Eric Cartman. Lassins lavishes painterly attention on the figure, deftly shading his many contours and framing him in an elaborate border pattern. But this isn't Cartman, not with a power cord sprouting from his head and mechanical guts bursting from his limbs, like a robot whose hands have been chopped off. This is any child of the 21st century, living and breathing technology so deeply that they're almost literally wired. Childhood is a theme for Lassins. He picks it up again in a mildly affecting collage of 1970s memorabilia arranged like a Rube Goldberg contraption. But where Lassins comments on childishness, Kloss revels in it. Aside from a few underwhelming Rorschach-like studies in perception, most of Kloss' black-ink drawings could be the doodling of a seven-year-old. With Kloss in one corner of the ring, the fight is mismatched and meaningless.
-- Zachary Lewis
2.11.08
roads and cities
the band will be on the road at the end of march, so look out for us in your city!
TBAHPE tourdates etc.
the band will be on the road at the end of march, so look out for us in your city!
TBAHPE tourdates etc.
2.1.08
come see me play with my band at the beachland ballroom on the 8th of february. it'll be funnnnnnnnn!
12.07
I'd like to thank Kim Venable and Paul Sobota for their time and help in shooting much of my work. You guys are for real.
new site
thanks for stopping by...
I'm getting a few things together...
check back for new stufffffffffffffffffffff.
