ms www.​slackart.com

Intro­duc­tion

As a kid Michael wanted to be Eddy Mun­ster and have a pet Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon. This was impos­si­ble, so he cre­ated his own creepy world to inhabit. Michael devel­oped his draw­ing skills by copy­ing mum­mies and pira­nhas out of checked out library books. In his teens Slack’s artis­tic aspi­ra­tions grav­i­tated towards under­ground comics and punk rock gig poster graph­ics. After attend­ing a summer art pro­gram at Cal-​Arts, Michael decided that art school was his only real option for a higher edu­ca­tion.

Michael enrolled in the San Fran­cisco Art Insti­tute and went from paint­ing moody pic­tures pop­u­lated with all sorts of strange crea­tures to large abstract oil paint­ings, and in 1992 earned a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts Degree in Painting.

Upon grad­u­at­ing Michael turned his love of mon­sters into a career cre­at­ing and ani­mat­ing char­ac­ters for com­puter games. After only a few years in the gaming indus­try Michael decided to jump on the free­lance roller coaster which he has been hap­pily riding ever since. Michael’s illus­tra­tions have appeared in books, mag­a­zines, and on TV. His paint­ings and draw­ings have been exhib­ited in the U.S. and Europe.

Cur­rently Michael is ful­fill­ing one of his life long dreams illus­trat­ing children’s pic­ture books. Michael has two new books sched­uled for release in 2008.

Do you ever have night­mares? Like being chased by giant monsters?

I used to be plagued with chronic night­mares. Really graphic and weird. I’d wake up ter­ri­fied, then a moment of relief that I was dream­ing, go back to sleep, con­tinue the night­mare where I left off. Repeat this for eight hours and that is how a night would go. Then I had one and it seemed to be a res­o­lu­tion to the pre­vi­ous years of night ter­rors. It was kind of like seeing the last instal­ment of a TV show, "Oh so that’s how it ends." and then they just stopped completely.

One reoc­cur­ring dream I had as a kid were these giant swampy plant mon­sters storm­ing through a shop­ping mall. I enjoyed this dream though. They didn’t hurt anyone they just smashed up the mall. Leav­ing behind, busted appli­ances, man­gled racks of cloth­ing, and giant clumps of dirt.

How much are you making in roy­al­ties from Chron­i­cle books for ICK! the game?

Noth­ing yet. It just came out. You have to pay back the advance before any roy­al­ties kick in. The roy­alty changes depend­ing on how many copies sell. After cer­tain sales goals the per­cent­age increases. It is going to be fea­tured in the Decem­ber issue of Mad Kids Mag­a­zine. I’m very psy­ched and hon­oured that MAD wants to have it in the mag­a­zine. How cool is that? Hope­fully it will get all the kid­dies to start nag­ging their par­ents to get them a copy.

How did ICK! come about, did you approach them or did they approach you?

Well, the ini­tial idea came while play­ing domi­noes with my Grand­mother. She refers to the draw pile as "the bone yard". I thought, "that would be cool, a big gross pile of stuff you would need to draw from". I came up with the char­ac­ter and the first ver­sion of the game which was more of a match­ing game. Then it mor­phed into a Crazy 8’s type of game with spe­cialty cards to inter­rupt play, penal­ize play­ers, etc. After ini­tial game test­ing and show­ing it to some friends, I real­ized the game logic needed to be changed to a col­lec­tion and set build­ing game. I was at Chron­i­cle show­ing my port­fo­lio to a designer in the children’s book depart­ment and I took a pro­to­type in with me as a port­fo­lio piece. She asked to leave it to show the art direc­tor. A few weeks later I got a call saying they were inter­ested in pub­lish­ing it.

Right! Bottoms… Why does Fart­tho­lamew (one of your mon­ster char­ac­ters) have a bottom for a face? Are there any hidden mean­ings in your character?

That’s just who he is. No hidden mean­ings. I’m not one for alle­gory. I tend to be more crass and stupid.

Apart from art and illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

Travel! I don’t do enough of it. I recently went to Stock­holm and Berlin. I would have liked to have stayed in Berlin longer. Let’s see… I’ve started col­lect­ing vin­tage sci-​fi books with cover art by Richard Powers. Plants, I love plants. Not just the giant one’s that smash up shop­ping mall’s, but exotic and non exotic alike. I think that if I wasn’t an artist a botanist would be high on my list of alter­na­tive careers.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Wow! There are so many. Top of the list would be Henrik Drescher, Melinds Beck, Laurie Keller, Lane Smith, John Hersey, Darren Water­ston, Bob Staake, Calif Brown, Nate Williams, Ronald Kur­ni­awan, Grady McFer­rin, Hekio Muller, Bren­dan Daniels­son, Attaboy, Ben Walker, and on and on and on….

The lamp designs you did for Moody Buddha are great! The illus­tra­tions are very appro­pri­ate for the children’s market. You seem to be having push­ing all your work towards the children’s market over the last couple year. With this in mind; your work like the Land of O is not suited to the children’s market in any sense. So when you’re work­ing do you have to refrain your work to suit the market you’re gear­ing your work towards, or was your work like the Land of O and some of your darker per­sonal stuff – just to shock? In other words is your style nat­u­rally darker and more sinister?

The mar­riage of words and images is some­thing that I’ve always been drawn towards. Pic­ture books are a unique medium where the illus­tra­tions hold the same weight as the words, and in some cases become more impor­tant, It a sim­i­lar thing with comics. I don’t really gear towards one par­tic­u­lar market. As your work keeps evolv­ing so do the ways it can be used. Since I started illus­trat­ing, the major­ity of my work has been some­how con­nected to the children’s market, whether it is, ani­ma­tions, mag­a­zine fea­tures, or char­ac­ter designs. Even my edi­to­r­ial work tends to have some type of "kid" angle to it, and I love it! This type of work suits me well, and is where my cre­ative sen­si­bil­i­ties are. The only restraints on my work are self imposed as I’m a bit of a per­fec­tion­ist and detail freak. This is where the paint­ing comes in. It’s a play­ground. What is great is its break­ing me away from my per­fec­tion­ist ten­dency and is becom­ing more preva­lent in my com­mis­sioned work.

I never do any­thing for shock value. I think the sto­ries in Land of O are more melan­cholic, funny, and some­what inno­cent, espe­cially the "Loss" sec­tion. Land of O is a "what if" sce­nario. What would if be like to live in a place where the things I fear most like, gluti­nous over con­sump­tion, greedy global cap­i­tal­ism, and exces­sive genetic tin­ker­ing, have become common place? What kind of char­ac­ters would pop­u­late this type of world? I’m still very fas­ci­nated with this idea.

So I guess I would say my style is goofy, with a dash of agi­ta­tion, and melancholy.

If you were a mon­ster, what would you look like?

Kind of apish with extra arms, whistling spout on top of my head, and a set of giant hum­ming bird wings. Oh and a head the swivels around 360 degrees.

With a choice of any space or gallery in the world; which city and venues do you con­sider to be hotspots and which ones would you like to show at?

Hot spot cities? I don’t really know. Brook­lyn was pretty hap­pen­ing when I left. LA has a thriv­ing art scene. Think­space in LA has great shows. DVA Gallery in Chicago is great gallery. I’d love to be in more shows in Europe. My dream space to show in would be in the New York Public Library. That is one of my favorite places.

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

I con­sider most of my com­mis­sioned work col­lab­o­ra­tive. For exam­ple with ICK, I had my nieces and nephews, family, and friends, game test and make sug­ges­tions on how to improve the game play. My girl­friend came up with names for some of the char­ac­ters. With books there are art direc­tors, edi­tors and design­ers, making sug­ges­tions. Some are great that really make the end prod­uct much better and then there are some that get chucked out instantly. There are two projects I’d like to fish around. One is a fun twist on the his­tory of char­ac­ter design and the other would be to curate a show of "digi-rigonals" one off dig­i­tal works of art to hype dig­i­tally cre­ated works of art.

What’s next in the pipeline for Michael Slack?

A ton! A solo show at Blue Bottle Gallery this Decem­ber. Also this Decem­ber a group show curated by Heiko Muller at Feinkunst Kruger, in Ham­burg Ger­many. Two more children’s pic­ture books sched­uled for pub­li­ca­tion in Fall 2008. Also, I have just sold my first children’s book that I did both the writ­ing and artwork.

Were­wolves or Vampires?

Def­i­nitely Werewolves.

Garlic or silver?

Silver for sure. How­ever garlic may now be stronger than the U.S dollar.

Fin­gers or toes?

Fin­gers! They pay the bills. GET BACK TO WORK! Lazy fingers.

You can see more of Michael Slack’s work at
www.​slackart.com

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Tags: Ben Walker, Berlin, Blue Bottle Gallery, Bob Staake, Brendan Danielsson, Chicago, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Darren Waterston, DvA Gallery, Eddy Munster, end product, Europe, Germany, Grady McFerrin, Hamburg, Heiko Muller, Henrik Drescher, Interviews, John Hersey, Lane Smith, large abstract oil paintings, Laurie Keller, Mad Kids Magazine, Michael Slack, Nate Williams, New York Public Library, night terrors, Oh so that's how it ends, Richard Powers, Ronald Kurniawan, San Francisco Art Institute, Stockholm, United States, www.slackart.com