“Working from home this past week found me juggling all kinds of stuff, just as a lot of my friends & colleagues were. And in the midst of that insanity, I did my best to parent my twin 5 year old boys, as my wife's work office hasn't yet closed.”
-Matt Dimmer
Read MoreI’ll be smoking ribs and wings for the big game on Sunday. What are you planning?
Read MoreSuperstar should apply to next level greatness, performances that elevate those around them and transcend the norm. It’s a term that shouldn’t be reserved for entertainers.
Read MoreWhen I went to art school in my quest to be considered a “fine artist,” there was a new world of knowledge and materials at my disposal. I couldn’t afford to go to some of the more esteemed colleges I’d applied to like Cal Arts, Chicago Institute of Arts or even the one in my hometown of Detroit, CCS. I applied for and accepted a small scholarship to Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula. What the university lacked in size, it more than made up for in what it offered its students. In addition to the natural beauty of the region, the class sizes were small and I had my own studio as a freshman, unheard of at most schools. I was given access 24/7 to a space with an easel and a sink. Pure heaven.
After a year of disillusionment chasing the fine art moniker, I drifted into illustration. To me there was just too much pretentiousness in the fine art world. As a kid from a middle class upbringing in a blue collar neighborhood, I felt like I was wearing a costume. My illustration teacher was a rather old school prof named Thomas Cappuccio. He was a mustachioed, diminutive man who had a European approach to just about everything he did. He usually arrived with a thermos of coffee, occasionally spiked with Sambuca on those frigid February mornings. Even his signature was flowery and calligraphic. Tom and I got along well, probably as much for the fact that we were both of Italian descent as anything eles. I don’t know that he made me a better artist but he was an extremely hard working man, and that was something I respected.
We had a philosophical discussion over the airbrush. In the commercial art world, especially in product and automotive, the airbrush was an absolute necessity to create the continuous shapes of seamless gradients that replicated surfaces like sheet metal and chrome. In the right hands the artwork rendered with one was indistinguishable from a photograph. Tom hated the airbrush.
“It’s a cold, heartless gimmick!”
“It’s just a tool like anything else,” I argued. “You use paint brushes. Do you make them yourself?"
“That’s different! An airbrush is a machine-made tool that produces nothing but cold art.”
“A tool is only as good as the user."
He fixed a sideways glance on me before further telling me how off base I was. We went back and forth on this point, never swaying one another to see the opposing point of view.
Tom passed away a couple years ago, so you’ll have to take my word on my recollection of our conversations. I like to think when he was on his Mac though, he drifted back to some of our conversations, reminiscing about the pre-digital era, smiling like I do whenever I think of our exchanges. He probably still disliked the perceived coldness he found in airbrush or later, digital illustrations, but in 2020, I adhere to my same belief as it relates to the tools technology has since afforded us. They’re just tools.
An old artist I used to work with, Jerry Money, whose paintings looked as photographic as anything Chuck Close or Richard Estes’ ever did, once told me when he started out in the 50s, pastels were the weapon of choice for layouts. Then markers came along. “I never picked up another pastel in my life.” Think about it: from the days of the Egyptians until then, pastels had been used to make art. Then they were gone. Markers had a decent run until Corel Painter came along in the 90s. After that, people gave them to their kids to play with. Machines replacing what we do. It’s a complaint as old as the hills, and I heard the same grousing from the photorealistic artists I repped when Photoshop popped up, some 30+ years ago.
“What, are we going to use a stylus and a tablet now to ‘paint’ realistically instead of using an airbrush?”
Yep. Pixels became the new paint. Pixels are the new Paint.I should’ve had t-shirts made.
I remember wondering if there was a way to get the stylus to make the same hissing sound an airbrush made during those times. Some artists were reluctant to give up the compressor and waterbowls in their rooms. Soon everybody had Macs. Finding an airbrush in a commercial studio nowadays (if you can still find a studio), is likely there to serve as an archaic reminder of a bygone era. There used to be flat files with neatly stacked tubes of every color of gouache imaginable for artists to load their airbrush cups and sable brushes with. Now you’re as likely to find those watercolors in a dusty box, relegated to the basement of retired illustrators, like discarded tubes of dried up caulk. Subscribing to Adobe has replaced a trip to the art store.
It happened with typesetting and design, retouching too. Photography finally got touched when CGI broke onto the scene. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the field of AR/VR/MR. Yet even as all these software programs become more affordable, rightly putting what you can do with them into the hands of the everyman to try, it still takes the talent of an artist to get the most out of these tools.
Because that’s all they are. Like a paintbrush, pencil, arc welder, hammer and chisel or potter’s wheel, the computer is only the conduit between the creator and the creation.
I’ve been reading many of those “Reflections of 2019” posts on Facebook and other social media sites. Some were written by good friends and others by casual acquaintances. A few are all loaded with humble brags and dramatic proclamations and predictions. I’m reminded by the content in the more sincere and reflective ones that peaks and valleys are prevalent in every life. I’m no different. There were some real highs and some lows, starting primarily in January with the passing of my beloved mother-in-law, Priscilla. That was tough. I also lost my job, working at a great studio with extremely talented friends and people whose company I really enjoyed.
On the positive side, I started to paint a lot more, rediscovering my passion for traditional techniques and connecting with other artists with a renewed vigor. My four children are all pursuing their dreams and are healthy. My mother turned 91 and I get to see and talk to her often, I especially enjoy our weekly lunches. Certainly these are all peaks to the aforementioned valleys.
But I have to say getting my chest cracked open was definitely the mountaintop of highlights.
You read that correctly, highlights.
Because when I take a step back from the realization that I had open heart surgery this past May and consider what really occurred, all I’m left with is the fact that I am one blessed Mofo!
So many things went my way. From the series of events leading to discovering my undetected aneurysm to the team of professionals who worked diligently so it could be removed and the nurses who took care of me, not to mention my family and friends who loved me, the neighbors who made meals for us, bestowed us with gifts, gave to us their time, the rehab team who put me back on the road to health, all of it was a blur, a pastiche of sobering and humbling activity, a generally surreal feeling that was just super trippy.
It was like God tapped me on the shoulder to say, “Mortality. Look it up.”
So I don’t have any proclamations of what great things I plan on achieving in 2020 or how I’m going to make the New Year “my bitch.” Nope, I have no earthly idea what it holds.
But if I’m blessed enough to see it, I’m going to try to savor every day.
Andy and one of his brewers with pallets of Motor City Joe Coffee Cream Ale.
Read MoreI definitely have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. When I mention, “heart break,” I’m not talking about relationships. You know, the kind where some beautiful woman who you’ve fallen madly in love with rips your beatbox out of your chest and let’s you watch her eat it, simply because you’re Italian-Catholic and she decides it’ll never work.
I mean, not that that’s ever happened to me.
No, I’m talking about your heart literally breaking.
Around my 51st birthday, I had decided that I was not going to live the rest of my life out of shape. I’d been athletic my entire life, and in college and later years I was a certified gym rat. I never used PEDs but was still able to reach some rarified air in fitness milestones. I could run forever, lift heavy and dunk a basketball two-handed from a standstill. As my lifting friends and I used to say, “It’s not how MUCH you lift. It’s how much you LOOK like you can lift.” I figured I’d be fit for life.
Fantasy meet reality.
Add the stress of working for the advertising industry and time needed to raise four kids over nearly 30 years and my once-fit, 250 pound college physique had turned into 250 pounds of blah, sort of just…there. When you’re a big guy like me you can put on 10 pounds like slipping on a sweatshirt. Conversely losing 10 or even 20 lbs is reminiscent of the old adage, "…that’s like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary.” Hardly makes a dent. So I contacted an old workout buddy from college who himself had somehow turned back time and looked exactly the same as he did in our college gym (we both attended NMU in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula). He evaluated my horrible eating practices and set me on my way with a plan. And it worked. I got myself into pretty good shape and stayed that way for a solid 5 years, working out 4 times a week. I’d get to the gym at 5:30 am and put in the time, cut out alcoholic drinks during the week and didn’t eat after dinner. It’s a formula that works. Even with some backsliding, I’d maintained a pretty good routine.
But I had started to snore more than I had before. Deviated septum from breaking my nose twice and a pesky nasal polyp didn’t help. I knew I had apnea so I went to see a sleep specialist and though I had absolutely no heart symptoms, he noticed some swelling on my ankle and ordered an echocardiogram. He was looking for hypertension and blockages. The test came back and I had neither of those issues. I actually read the report myself in my patient portal one day. I very nearly dismissed it but kept reading and the very last line read, “Aortic root is severely engorged, 5.2 CM".
I’m no surgeon, but even I knew there’s only one thing a man wants to be severely engorged, and the aortic root of your heart ain’t it.
Bottom line is I’d been working out with an aneurysm. Maybe for years. The cardiologist said, “I don’t know why you’re here. Gotta be genetic.” The surgeon said, “At 5.8 your chance of dying on the table is only 1%. If it gets past 6 centimeters, that jumps to 35%.” Wow. He then explained the procedure as “valve-sparing,” meaning if my valve was deemed OK, they would remove the aneurysm and graft a Dacron tube in its place (see illustration). It was open heart surgery and you would’ve thought the doctor was scheduling me for a windshield repair. “So how’s your week look? I can get you in next Wednesday.'“
Pretty sure I’m free.
I’ll spare you the particulars but there was a problem where due to bleeding they had to open me up again 8 hours later to find the problem. Good times.
Crazy thing is as I said, I had absolutely zero symptoms. The sleep doctor wasn’t even looking for an aneurism. My blood pressure was 110/60. My pulse around 58, the same as it is now, months post-surgery.
It’s been a rough year. My beloved mother-in-law passed away, I lost a job that I really loved, but I’ve got so much to be grateful for, namely being alive. I was fortunate that I had been in good shape, didn’t smoke and was otherwise pretty healthy. It’s been a harder road to get back into the gym with the same vigor as before but I get there. I’ve had to dial back the amount of weight and go for higher reps, but I’ve reevaluated my goals in the gym and I’m OK with that. The important thing is not only to keep up on those doctor appointments, but be you’re own advocate. Through some snafu, I never recieved a call from the hospital, ordering physician or anybody for that matter. The sleep doctor couldn’t explain why he never saw the results of my test, and that all my other heart architecture was normal. He said with an almost apologetic tone, “Your BP, heart rate, cholesterol is perfect. I wasn’t checking for an aneurysm. I think you’re just very lucky. Be thankful it was discovered.”
You bet I am.
I have myself listed in Linkedin as a Creative Hybrid. I’m currently in between jobs so I really had to wrestle with exactly what I wanted to refer to myself as because I’ve done many different things in the studio space since graduating from Art School. Starting off as an illustrator and needing to support a new family, I sort of stumbled into sales, which involved being a producer, then storyboard artist, copywriting and finally into business development. I’ll write about all that at a later time, but for the purpose of this post I’d like to talk about my brief stint as an author and connect it to that moniker, Creative Hybrid, because it is a major component of the definition.
I went through about a seven year period while trying to raise four kids where I generated a tremendous amount of creative content, everything from large paintings of robots, wildlife and portraits. My wife is a nurse and at the times worked nights. I cranked out 2 paintings a week, mostly oils, cold wax medium and acrylics. I’d get the kids to bed then start at like 10 pm, usually cleaning my brushes and retiring at around 2:30, only to get up at 7:00 am and drive the kids to school then head into my day job at Skidmore Studio. But there was also a yearning to get back to writing. When I was freelancing as an illustrator, I had the opportunity to write a few columns for Detroit Monthly and Michigan Woman, both long defunct magazines. I always loved to write. I think it was borne of devouring books and movies for years, and hearing my father tell jokes and stories. He was amazing at both, the way he seemed to find the ear in dialogue, hit punchlines, his timing. I started with screenplays and short stories. I read books on screenplays, hooked up with a mentor through the WGA and bought Final Draft. The first screenplay I wrote was 185 pages, which if you go by the 1 page=1 minute of screen time, translated to a long ass movie. I dove in and kept writing, finally paring my story down to 101 pages. At the urging of my mentor I entered it into the Nicholl Screenwriting Contest for the Academy, the same one related to the Oscars. I didn’t win, but made it to the top 10%, finishing between 400-800th. That’s all they would tell me, as there were 8,000 submissions. It was enough to give me the confidence that people other than my family and friends thought I could at least write a story. I must’ve written a million words. I churned out 5 screenplays and numerous short stories. Fifteen of those stories comprised my only book (to date), Eight Dogs Named Jack and Fourteen Other Stories from the Detroit Streets and Michigan Wilderness.
Being an unknown author, my publisher decided I should be involved in the design of the book, which included a woodcut-style illustration for every story including the cover art. Sure, who needs sleep? I wanted it to be above all else, beautiful. I had poured my heart and soul into these stories, many of them inspired by my upbringing and marrying into a Sicilian family. I knew little about publishing, but I knew the cover would have to grab people, get their attention, and see if I could convince folks to take a chance on me. In retrospect I wish I’d pushed for a trade paperback (way less money), but I was into the aesthetics and once my publisher showed me the deckled edge, hard cover style he had in mind, I was hooked. The cover art ended up being a vibrant illustration of one of the stories, Measure of a Man, a tale of a Detroit fireman who’s tested agains the elements of the Canadian Wilderness while on a hunting trip. It featured a lone man set against the backdrop of the Aurora Bourealis, with bold yellow type. As for the title, the publisher won out on what we were going to call the book. I suggested, Leaving Copper Corner, which was the nickname of the part of Detroit I grew up in, so named for all the Detroit cops that lived there. But as soon as he saw the title of one of the stories, Eight Dogs Named Jack, he was resolute. That was the title. I argued that people might think the book was filled with stories about dogs. “Don’t be foolish. THIS, this is the title.” (SIDEBAR: Later during an interview with a radio host [who will remain nameless], who had clearly not read the book, he opened with, “So this is a book filled with stories about dogs…” Groan.)
Imagine our delight when a major book blog, whose name escapes me (or I’ve blocked from my memory), wrote a review of my book! Except the title was, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The blogger loved the cover art but was expecting “Jack London” stories. They thought a couple stories were good but panned most of it. Disappointing, but I was published, and that time remains a very fond one in my life.
The book can still be found at Amazon, and I think there’s a few hundred available. Look, you may hate the stories but it’s filled with art work done by yours truly. You can take a look at all the illustration on my website by clicking here.
Renowned photojournalist Linda Solomon reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in creating a painting based on the cover of her new book, The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, An Intimate Portrait. She didn’t have to ask twice! I was thrilled to be given the opportunity. Linda had seen my work on Facebook and Instagram and messaged me. The painting took me through many challenges. I was trying to capture the essence of the photo without necessarily trying to replicate the shot. The photo captured Aretha at one of her infamous costume parties, dressed as an Egyptian Queen, fitting for the Queen of Soul.
The painting was displayed first at the National Book Launch at the Detroit Institute of Arts where it sat onstage alongside such luminaries as former Governor of Michigan James Blanchard, former Mayor of Detroit Dennis Archer, and friends and family of the Aretha herself. It was an amazing event.
This site is a work in progress, so bear with me as there may be a little construction dust. I am a creative hybrid of sorts. I went to art school to pursue a life as a fine artist, a plan that quickly went awry. I didn’t feel fine art let me reach the kind of people I grew up with; lower middle class, working people. It left me cold. I switched to Illustration and was immediately shunned by my painting teacher. Anyway, that’s ancient history. Now after nearly 30 years in the commercial art and design studio space, repping other artists and designers, I have this cyber dumping ground for all the things I love. Painting, writing, humor, cinema, food, libations and the great outdoors, specifically Northern Michigan.
I’ll try to post some of the aforementioned on here. You can also find me on Instagram @motorcityjoe. Thanks for your interest in my work.
