What led you to pursue a career as an artist?

Art is just something I have always been doing. I was constantly drawing and stacking things up from an early age, and never really stopped. My dad would draw with us when we were younger, and would let us build things out of whatever we could find. Mom would check out paintings and prints from the library to hang in our house. So art was just around. I spent many summers building bike and skateboard ramps. And later working construction. When I took my first official sculpture class in college, I was hooked. It brought together all these things I enjoyed doing.

Can you share more about your creative process – from sketches to completion?

I doodle on paper a lot, but when I am working out an idea for a sculpture I use the old computer program- Microsoft paint. I blow the page up 800 percent and draw one pixel at a time. I translate these drawings into a 3D modeling program to figure out all the parts I need to build a sculpture. Those parts are cut out on either a laser or plasma cutting table. I box-form the parts together, weld everything up, and grind my edges smooth. Then it’s just automotive paint and distressing.

LEFT: Microsoft Paint example sketch, courtesy of the artist.
RIGHT: Mike Whiting angle-grinds a sculpture in the studio, image courtesy of thetalkingfly on YouTube.

When your work is publicly installed it often references the surrounding location or culture. Was this always an intentional part of your practice or something that developed over time?

When I am working out ideas for a public project I like to visit the location to get a sense of the space. Public art becomes a part of that specific environment. It can act as an intervention, a way-finder, or simply add to the feeling that already exists in that space. I feel that the past and future use of the space is important when brainstorming for a public project. That history gives me a place to start, and imagine what that space will feel like with a certain sculpture there. As my sculptures reference digital images, I like to think of them as creating a space between the digital and real worlds – pixels that you can walk around. 

Mike Whiting
Cathead, 2012
automotive paint, steel
77 x 77 x 44 in.
$42,000

You have mentioned early video gaming and computer graphics as some of your biggest influences – what else informs your process, directly or indirectly?

My main focus is the area where early pixel-based video games overlapped with reductive/minimalist art. I find the visual similarities of these 2 cultural happenings interesting. There was a moment where video games were so simplified that it took some imagination to see the images as representational. And there were movements in art where artists intentionally reduced image making to color and squares. I am influenced by the work of early modernists that used steel and automotive paint, but this use of squares and reductive imagery is everywhere. I find inspiration from basket weaving, textiles, tile work, architecture, toys, gridded paper, etc. 

What are you currently working on? What is next for you and your work? 

I just installed 2 sculptures - Wave and Sailboat on the rooftop of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California. It is a beautiful rooftop garden space in a really great little beach town. Wave and Sailboat will be there for a year. Just before that, I installed a tiny art show, Glitch, at the Helper Mini in Helper, Utah. I had never been to Helper before. Also a really great project space, in a cool old mining town with lots of great art stuff emerging. 

Mike Whiting playing on an early arcade machine, image courtesy of thetalkingfly on YouTube.

Wave and Sailboat on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, images courtesy of the artist.

In my studio, at any given time, there are several small projects happening. I like having different works to bounce between, and it helps to have a few pieces move through building and painting together. I try to clear my plate for bigger works and just focus on that one large project when those types of projects come up. 

I have a few wall panels in progress and a few small free standing sculptures. I am also just beginning a collaboration with a friend of mine who is a Lego Builder. It is early stages with that project, but I am pretty excited about the possibilities there. I am also constantly working on proposals and RFQs. I send so many of those out that I can’t keep track, and I am often surprised by projects I get. Not sure what the next big project will be, but that is all part of the fun.