Lexington, KY - Named after a Beatle by music-loving parents, one might say Lennon Michalski was destined to cross paths with the auditory arts at some point in his artistic career, which has taken a decidedly more visual route (painting and digital art, to be specific). Though his ever-evolving taste tends to lean toward electronic music, the Lexington native and third-generation Hungarian grew up steeped in music of all kinds - so naturally, he was thrilled when the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington commissioned him to create the "visual icon" for this year's event, which takes place Aug. 17 -
21 (concerts will be held at the Fasig-Tipton Pavilion).
"I'm always excited to be part of any system that has a visual attachment to music," said Michalski, 30, who has a deep-seeded interest in neurology and the way that audio and other systems affect the brain. He added that experiencing the interactive visual art, music and theatrical elements of the Mario Brothers Nintendo games for the first time as a kid made his "mind explode."
Though Michalski now tends to draw most of his inspiration from a more intuitive, internal place - drawing imagery from tarot reading and psychic healing more than from external visual representations of art - he said that most of his work is created as if he's writing a melody or a theatrical piece: something that is being brought up or coming to life. In that sense, the four-by-five-foot oil and resin painting he created for the Chamber Music Festival portrays a timeline, a crescendo and an abstract, yet literal, representation of its title, "A Lesson in Seeing Music." A detail of the image will be used for promotional materials for the festival, including lapel pins worn by festival supporters, water bottle labels created by Highbridge Springs, and giclÈe prints that will be made available to festival patrons.
Now in its fifth year, the festival - which features a different core group of musicians each year, who perform classic works, new original compositions and conduct workshops throughout Lexington - has employed local artists to create a visual representation for the event since its inception.
"Rather than going off and having a logo created, I thought that it would be nice to embrace the visual arts community and pick a new artist each year," said festival president Charles Stone, who formerly served as director for the Lexington Art League. Past artists to have created an icon for the festival include Charlie Jolly, Marjorie Guyon, Frank Close and Arturo Sandoval; Michalski came as a recommendation from Close and Sandoval, with whom he has worked at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches a handful of classes in the Fine Arts Department.
While Stone said the artists tend to consult him throughout their artistic process, he gives them very few parameters to follow - basically, he explains a bit about the festival and allows them to interpret how to visually represent the event on their own terms.
"It's always a great pleasure and bit of a surprise to see the final work," Stone said. "We haven't been disappointed yet."
Michalski, who spent much of his summer filmmaking in New York City, recently took some time to answer a few questions for us.
Did you pursue a specific vision, or did the work speak to you along the way when you were making "A Lesson in Seeing Music"?
It took two months to make the piece. Much longer than most paintings. I made the image in "The Studio" (440 Old Vine, the space he shares with Blake Eames and Claudia Michler). I'm working in numerous layers that I allow to speak back to me during creation, kind of like a Rorschach Test. It is similar to painting with water color, but up to 30 or more transparent layers. In between these glazes I draw the illustrations.
I did listen to the type of music that will be played at the concert to help mold my direction. I would play it at times of painting, but mainly outside the studio atmosphere.
The vision for this was to make an aquatic architectural environment where the structure composes itself through multiple stages of construction, moving rhythmically to build an object from birth showing its life span ending with entropy delivering a crescendo.
What's currently playing on your ipod/tape deck/record player/ boom box?
My music is always changing, but this week it's RJD2 / Soul Posision -
"The Blueprint;" Billy "Crash" Caddock - "I Cheated on a Good Woman's Love;" DJ Shadow; Rufus featuring Chaka Khan -
"Tell Me Something Good," and Patsy Cline -
"Let the Tear Drops Fall."
What can we expect to see next from you?
Conceptually, that is always changing; I can't predict that, unfortunately. Physically, there will be more digital painting, digital installations and filmmaking. And of course, forever and always I'll be working two-dimensionally, on a flat surface with painting and drawing.
Portraits is a new column highlighting the individuals and groups shaping the local arts community: artists, writers, musicians, dancers, actors, organizers and others who make Lexington a more vibrant place to live.