It's Onnnnnnnnnn

Day One Downtown Lansing

Thursday 3:56

Today, I am writing to you, not from Million Dollar Garage, but from Downtown Lansing Michigan. The first day of a yet-to-be named Temporary Exhibit. I’ve spent today hanging artwork and determining the best configuration the patron’s experience.

35 paintings. More to come.

At the same time, I’m working with the owner of the building to determine how and when we will present the show to the general public. He already set me up for a cool podcast. There’s a video being edited about me and my work. So many possibilities, so little time.

Yesterday I decided that I am going spend the entire week in the facility. I don’t know why this seems appropriate to me, exactly, but when I used to open restaurants I would spend about 2 continuous weeks there. As if 80 to 100-hour weeks were not enough to get the job done. This exercise allowed me to iron out all the millions of details that come up when opening business. Also, I learned the building and began to feel comfortable with it as an entity. The time allowed the space to become what it was supposed to be, from vacant building to construction site to restaurant. The time I spent overnight allowed it to stop being a restaurant and begin to be an experience for people celebrating their best days. Kinda disney...small ‘d’ intended.

This is different. I have not had a building to show my work in a very long time. Festivals are fun and nice. Group shows in the Hampton’s, also beneficial.

This exhibit is all me, though. I am going to make the best of this opportunity the only way I know how: every egg thrown, not put, in one basket. Chips to the middle…all in.

There’s a big difference seeing my art on a wall in person. I take some good photos, but from iphone to your phone, or camera to your desktop...it’s just never the same. I want you to touch my work. Feel how textured it is. How imperfect. I want you to see a painting that looks so calm and serene, yet has a screw-hole left in it’s composition to show that, yes- human hands were here. A moment in time. An ethereal snapshot. Romans 12:2.

By tomorrow evening, the place will be set up for viewing. Then, I am going to take a few days and think through the events, the marketing and any other tidbits I need to investigate.

If you’d like a private look before the hubbub….reach out. I’ll show it to you anytime you’re available.

I’ve told you, I want to sell art to working folks like you and I. The pricing for this show carries the same strategy: $ 999.00 for paintings up to 42x42.

Here are some ideas I am considering:

• An Open Welcome Art Show

• A music and art series with local musicians.

• A Leeds United Football Club Watch Party

• Rental Space for Business Meetings and Family Events

• Meetings for Local Organizations

• A private dinner with local chef

...during the 7 days and 7 nights

• a live art show for those of you can’t come in person

• Private Viewings and Game Night

• I might wave a painting in the street for a day like the insurance guys do

• Document my 7 days like Tom Hanks in Castaway

• I may write 7 stories about the paintings on those days

• I might make a painting or two, and since I don’t have my tools, it will be wildly different from what I normally do.

• Probably gonna text message everyone I know.

I’m gonna sell all this shit, somehow. There is no other goal. Opportunities have not come to me very often in the past 3 years. Now is the time. Now.

Get on the bandwagon with me. Really. Let’s see if all this shit that I’ve been talking can be put into practice. Let’s see if my ideas actually work when people look at my paintings on the wall?

Be not conformed…do simple commerce…untrap ourselves…..$ 999.00….Million Dollar Garage….Bento Wiz…1,000,000 Garage.

I’m gonna make it happen…come along.

Downtown Lansing.

Now until April 1.

Be not conformed….

New art below for paid subscribers…