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Let’s say we crash land on an alien planet. We have no recollection of how we got there. But eventually we decide to venture out and explore this foreign world...
Maybe it’s a world where punk fliers are high art and expressionist paintings make for good t-shirts. Maybe it’s a world born out of angry letters (with naughty doodles) sent from the subconscious to the frontal lobe. Maybe it’s a world full of revelations and personal epiphanies and eureka moments disguised as soda-pop logos, Seussian houseplants, other people’s dogs, smatterings of spaghetti sauce, and watercolor neon splotches with polka-dotted counterparts. Maybe all of these things are just a wink-wink to what’s really going on here: death, destruction, oppression, oblivion, globalization, commercialism, murder, and the utter hopelessness of humanity. And at the same time? Maybe what’s most powerful about this world are the secrets that it’s whispering to us: keep going, be strong, be happy, be loving, be love, keep growing, be grateful, be glad to be alive.
This is the built-in ping-pong and yin-yang of Mikie Poland’s work. Make no mistake about it: this is nothing short of a human being metaphysically arm wrestling their own existence. The world Poland creates in his work is a place where opposing ideas aren’t separate entities, they’re two sides to the same piece of ripped-out notebook paper... grotesque and hilarious, horrifying and arousing, murderous and miraculous, divinations and dog shit.
Mikie Poland’s body-of-work was born at the corner of Sesame Street and a graveyard. And this newest collection “Dear Diary” features some of his most personal, mature, and revelatory pieces to date. Populated with kinky flora and fauna, smiley-faced people fucking in the bushes, a laundry list of brilliant insights into the human condition, and the built-in duality of themes such as life/death, calm/stress, love/despair, glue/human hair, “Dear Diary” is a visit to the lovely-terrible-gorgeous-
painful-ugly-sexy-doomed- inspired world of Mikie Poland. The rest of us are just lucky that we get to explore it.
-Dakota Loesch (May 2017)
Mikie Poland is a visual artist from the midwest. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago one hundred thousand years ago. He is a maker of zines, drawings, paintings, screen prints, and sculptures. Sometimes he makes videos, websites, or clothes. Mikie makes the majority of the visual art for the semi-annual music festival, Cropped Out in Louisville, Kentucky. He travels with his two bands Giving Up and State Champion on a regular basis. He is also co-founder of a designer button business, Tush Oodles.
Mikie also does design work for bands, including (but not limited to) the tight-knit music community at Sophmore Lounge Records, which is a record label he whole-heartedly invests his time in. His work ranges in subjects such as worrying about the end of the world, being upset at how your hair looks, trying not to feel brain washed, embracing being brain washed, and being overly concerned with people you think are pretty. Other content includes ideas of being really stoked on feeling like you are a positive force in the universe, bad vibes, feeling lazy, feeling frustrated, being bummed, and cracking yourself up in the bathtub.
Mikie is 5'11", 160 lbs, and for all he knows, has a clean bill of health.
Peanut Gallery
