mulberryindigo@gmail.com
Road Myth Radio
Michael will appear in the upcoming AppleTV’s “Nocturne”, premiering October 30th, with Stephen Graham, Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz.
mulberryindigo@gmail.com
Road Myth Radio
Michael will appear in the upcoming AppleTV’s “Nocturne”, premiering October 30th, with Stephen Graham, Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz.
He will appear in the upcoming AppleTV’s “Nocturne”, premiering October 30th, with Stphen Graham, Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz.
After a year of college, Michael moved to NYC and performed a 25 year long stream of new plays.
He created the role of Louis in the 1991 World Premiere of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco.
Film-wise, he's worked with directors such as Robert Altman, Hal Hartley and Frank Darabont. His first film was directed by Joan Micklin Silver, playing Peter Riegert’s brother Mickey in “Crossing Delancey”.
Television, Michael has played all kinds of characters on all the “Law and Order” shows, also roles on “Homicide”, “NCIS; LA”, “Seinfeld" and “Third Watch”. His first television role was on "All My Children", playing a character named Zeno, a punk who carried a white mouse named D'Artagnan.Most recently, The Abandons for Netflix.
Loyd Williamson's Actor's Movement Studio, NYC, 1983
Trattoria Spaghetto, (Bleecker Luncheonette), NYC, 1984
1984 - 2004, I exhibited in cafes, bars, old diners, theaters, dance and acting studios and restaurants in NYC and all around the country. Wherever I was working as an actor in the theatre, I'd find places to exhibit the paintings that I made there.
Gallery in the Woods, Brattleboro, 2002
Downtown Women’s Center, benefitting women living on Skid Row, sponsored by Katey Sagal and Kurt Sutter, 2005
Collaboration with Judi's Lampshades at ABC Carpet and Home, NYC, with hand painted and hand sewn organic silk lamp shades, 2006.
Kips Bay Decorator Show House, NYC, hand painted organic silk ceiling tapestries on bamboo for designer Cheryl Terrace, 2008
In 2006, moved to Cape Cod.
Founded an art gallery at the Wellfleet Harbor Actor's Theatre, opening with a large solo show, while doing a play there, 2007
Cape Cod Museum of Art, Solo Exhibition, 2008
Cahoon Museum, Group Show, 2009
Thomas Henry Fine Art, Nantucket, 2009
Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, ROYGBIV Group Show, 2009
Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Four Solo Exhibitions between 2008 - 2010
In 2010, moved to Los Angeles.
Forgotten Saints, LA, Solo Exhibition with original audio to accompany the paintings, linked through QR codes, 2013
Between 2010 - 2019, lived in Laurel Canyon.
I put a lot of original work out on the street, asking for $25 donations to Downtown Women's Center in exchange for the paintings; I took part in many benefit exhibitions; had open studios showing new work as part of the Culver City Art Walk; and regularly exhibited at shops and cafes that I frequented.
Gave up my Culver City studio to paint in my yard.
I hung a 50 ft. functional Dacron sailboat sail to a tree way up on our hill in Laurel Canyon, painted it on both sides, then pieced it out into individual tapestries.
In my yard in Laurel Canyon, I painted a collection of double sided "Totems" on found wood entitled "How We Survive", along with numerous paintings on metal, canvas and wood. I also began experimenting with mobiles, moving sculptures, incorporating the Dacron tapestries and metal paintings, for indoor and outdoor installation.
At Arts Illiana, Terre Haute, 2015, I exhibited Jail House Ballads, and found 16 local people to perform the text that is written on the painting, as theatre, running 70 minutes.
I only showed a few times in Los Angeles, mainly I was working. Carla Baratta and I did a benefit exhibition called "Puro y Sin Nombre" in Los Angeles shortly before we left.
I’m currtently working with the Monarch Gallery in Key West, at 910 Duval Street.
by Lauren Wolk
Solo Exhinition, Cultural Center of Cape Cod
March, 2008
“I paint for the same reason that I chew my food before swallowing.”
When I try to figure out exactly what artist Michael Marisi Ornstein means by this, my head hurts and I end up eating something myself. But I do get, at a gut level, what he’s talking about. I create things, too, largely because doing so helps me make sense of a confusing, if beautiful, world—helps me to swallow and digest it, to draw nourishment from it without becoming sick. At least I think that’s what he means. But I don’t really care if I’ve got it right. That’s the beauty of art: I get to interpret it, or just appreciate it, any way I see fit.
Being surrounded by Michael’s paintings is, to me, like spending time on Craigville Beach on a Saturday afternoon in July. In one direction is a variegated sea, as alive as anything I’ve ever seen, so beautiful and enormous that it breaks my heart, then makes it well. Its face, its scent, its touch are exotic, unknowable, and completely familiar. So it is with Michael’s enormous impressionistic abstracts, one of which is the first thing I see when I walk into the Cultural Center to work these days. It’s like a window onto the Atlantic.
Just down the beach, in another direction, I see a family from somewhere else. I can tell they’re not from around here by the way they look, speak, are ridiculously intrigued by the seagulls, ordinary as squirrels. Like the sea, these people are exotic. I like to look at them, to eavesdrop, although I have no idea what they’re saying. I wish I could paint them. Happily, Michael Ornstein has arranged on the walls of the Cultural Center equally unusual and captivating people, all of whom tell me things that I am slowly coming to understand, bit by bit, every time they catch my eye, or whenever I overhear what they’re thinking (even though they’re frequently thinking in tongues), or when I stop and stand before them on the bridge that exists between every piece of art and its audience. They always meet me halfway.
Like the conversation of the family from somewhere else, the Sanskrit of seaweed, seashells, sea glass, and sea litter along the Craigville Beach tide line tells a linear story that I cannot decipher except in the most visceral way. So it is with another series of paintings that Michael has positioned in the southwest corner of the Great Hall. They seem to be telling a tale in turns, written in an alphabet with which I am unfamiliar. They’re a lot like music. I can’t read the notes but I can feel them resonate along my ribs, and that’s good enough.
And then there’s the sky above this beach where people are making merry and the sea is patiently waiting for us all to go home. It’s full of light and color but is also, to those who are paying attention, infused with the suggestion that the universe waits, just beyond—that in the dark distance, gorgeous nebulae swirl. Clearly, Michael has seen them. They exist in the stunning colors of a series of abstracts that I am convinced were inspired by the chemical eruptions of outer space. But when I discover that they are actually numbered “Sonograms,” I see no contradiction. If you ask me, the womb is much like deep space, its cargo a lot like the stars and moons.
Although the exhibit that Michael has mounted in the Cultural Center where I work is eclectic, each piece is clearly an Ornstein, partly because of the materials with which he has made and mounted his work. “I make most of my own paint from pigment. I use oil crayons and store-bought tubes, sometimes. I paint mostly with my fingers, with my hands. I sometimes use brushes for wide strokes and surfaces and I always use brushes to apply gesso, but most of my paintings are painted with my bare hands. I sometimes use cotton rags to rub the paint into the paper for the oils on paper, but even with the paper paintings, I have been using my hands more and more. In addition to the painting process and the materials used - the concept of using magnets to mount paper paintings to metal, as far as I know, has never been done before.”
But more than the materials with which they are made, Michael’s images most closely approximate his DNA. “I paint from dreams and memory,” he says, “therefore, my subject matter lives inside of a memory pool. These images are all alive inside of me and they transfer to paintings when they are ready to do so. I close my eyes and visit with an image and then I transfer that image to canvas, paper, wood, silk or whatever else is near me. My paintings are perpetual, in that some of my paintings evolve for periods of some twenty years and, then again, some of my paintings are completed within twenty minutes and I never touch them again.” Either way, they are distinctly his own.
Trainwreck’d Society
January 14, 2015
Much like the rest of the world, I have fallen in love with FX’s Sons of Anarchy. The show has gained so much praise and love over the last few years that it actually as an Anonymous Support Group on Facebook boasting almost 13,000 members (including myself). I’m serious, check it out. I once dubbed this show a “soap opera for men”, but it has obviously evolved in to so much more. And as you may remember, we have interviewed cast members in the past and had to perform background checks too. It is an addicting drama that is so much more than a show about a cutthroat motorcycle club.
But, as we like to do here at Trainwreck’d Society, we need to know more about the folks involved with the series. That is why I was so interested in learning more about Michael Ornstein, the man behind one of the strangest characters of the show known as Chucky. He is a character who’s chronic masturbation led him to be cast aside from the Chinese underground, and led to the ever-embracing arms of the more “caring” SAMCRO (Obviously there is more to the story, but we shall leave it at that for now). Of course, there is more to Michael Ornstein than just this role, and that is exactly what we want to learn.
And through some research, I discovered that Ornstein might very well be one of the finest artists and musicians working today. As a painter, he is far too impressive within the world of abstract and impressions for a simple minded fool and/or blogger such as myself to truly convey. You really have to check out his work for yourself. He is also a wonderful musician with influences that range from Bob Dylan to ragtime. This is a man who personifies the idealism that a character actor does not simply have to remain a character actor. One man’s genius should not be restricted, but highlighted in several variations of genius. This is exactly what Michael Ornstein has done. And with that, I am very excited that Mr. Ornstein has agreed to let us ask him a few questions to share with you fine readers. So here we go!
You are an accomplished actor, painter, writer, musician, and so much more. Tell us if you would, what was your first artistic love, and when did you know you wanted to create art for a living?
My first artistic love was for painting. My parents took me to a lot of museums and gallery shows in NYC when I was a kid and there was something about the paintings that turned me on in a big way. The theater, too, turned me on quite a bit. There is nothing like that moment when the lights go down in the theater and the story begins. I learned real early on, from those moments, that I was an artist, way before I actually performed in front of people or put paint to canvas. So, painting and performance go hand in hand with me, still. I call my work “Hand Painted Radio” and view the paintings as performance and music. Making a living from art is still a struggle and I think it’ll always be that way, but I signed up for that struggle long ago and there’s no turning back on it now. I wouldn’t know what to do outside of that, except maybe be a cook. Open a little place, hang paintings on the wall and serve up some food. I could do that.
What sort of music do you like to perform? Any works we should be, or should have been, looking for?
I like to perform very simple music with a repetitive structure. Real old story songs. I’d say that everybody should explore Alan Lomax’s field recordings and hear as much of that as possible. He collected music for the Library of Congress, recorded people in their living rooms, on their porches from Appalachia to the Delta to the West to Europe. He recorded prisoners working in chain gangs and longshoreman in Genoa singing acapella on the docks. That’s my favorite kind of music to listen to. Story music told by real people. Bob Thiele draws on a lot of that music for SOA, actually. Songs like “John the Revelator”, “House of the Rising Sun”, etc. I also love hunting down new bands and love what Elvis Costello and the Roots just recorded. I listen to a whole lot of everything. I love Flamenco. Folks should also revisit the music that was coming out of NYC and the UK around 1975 for some background on what’s happening now, all those amazing bands. I feel like people ought to be aware of the history of where today’s music and performance came from. Take a look at Little Richard when he first hit the scene. Gene Vincent. Buddy Holly. Blind Willie McTell. Glen Gould. Monk. Miles. Django Reinhardt. I think you can learn a lot about people and the world by traveling through the history of music.
We recently spoke with one of your former castmates, Christopher Douglas Reed, who was sadly killed off this season. Now, your character Chucky has survived a lot during your tenure. But, obviously nobody is safe from the brilliant mind of Kurt Sutter. But no matter if Chucky gets offed or survives through the show’s entire existence, what do you think Chucky’s legacy will be when we look back at the show? What have you wanted to convey to audiences?
I think what Chucky personifies is how a person survives against a whole lot of odds and never complains about it, just finds a way to go on and on, helping those around him as best he can. He’s a totally selfless man who places importance on loyalty, integrity and family in top priority / above himself. The club saved his life. He honors that with how he lives his life. There’s a lot of strength and soul to living like that.
SAMCRO is definitely all about family, friendship, loyalty, etc. Is there the same kind of feeling behind the scenes amongst the cast and crew?
Absolutely. Working together on this level for this number of years, traveling through this particular story is a deep experience for all of us. We’re real tight as people, as a cast & crew. It doesn’t get tighter than this. It’s evident in the work we’re doing and how it’s being communicated to fans all over the world, from our hearts to yours.
What exaclty are your fake fingers made of? Are they easy to function in?
They’re a type of rubber, like thick rubber gloves. They’re made from a mold of my hands, so they’re very comfortable.
You seemed to create quite the buzz with your soon to be legendary kazoo scenes. How was it filming those scenes? Could there be a pretty hilarious blooper reel made from shooting the scenes?
The kazoo is an insane instrument. It’s inherently funny that a person would “play” a thing that makes those sounds. It was a pretty integral instrument in the 20’s, actually, with early ragtime. It’s a home-made instrument, like a jug whistle or a wash bucket bass. I love the spirit of that kind of thing. Plus, even with a harmonica, you have to hold it and manipulate it with your hands, unless you’re wearing a neck holder, like Dylan and Neil Young do. A kazoo, you could just stick it in your mouth and go to town, hands-free, which is a perfect instrument for Chucky to express himself with. So, yeah, we had a lot of fun with that kazoo.
I heard that you displayed some of your art at the wonderful Beat Museum in San Francisco. As a huge Beat fanatic, it behooves me to ask you what you dig about the beats? Did any writer, or writers, have any direct influence in your own writing and acting?
I embrace the writings of those guys the way I embrace music. I grew up to the sounds of Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac. I come from an Italian Jewish household and listening to my family speaking and telling stories was like listening to music, too. The music of language has always had a serious impact on me. I first read On the Road when I was about ten or eleven and it sparked something very large inside of me. Hearing the sounds of just being in New York City, when I was a kid, was like swimming inside of a symphony. Reading Kerouac exposed me to the possibilities of what a writer could do with words on a page. Later on in life, I was fortunate to have hung out with Greg Corso and Alan Ginsberg and Herbert Huncke. Alan grew up in Patterson, NJ, a town very close to my hometown of Passaic. We both come from mill towns. Kerouac also grew up in a mill town. There’s something to living around flowing water, I think. Reading those guys when I was a kid and later spending time with them, I related to them a great deal. The show I did at the Beat Museum was about Kerouac in New York City. I settled on six NYC locations that were important to Jack Kerouac and also important to me, and I wrote six poems about those places and painted six paintings, corresponding. So, at the show, I linked the paintings to audio tracks of me reading the poems, via QR Codes, so that people could stand in front of the paintings and listen to the stories. This show can be mounted anywhere.
What do you consider to be your greatest non-artistic accomplishment?
Having children with Zoe and raising them to be good people. But, even that’s artistic in some way, right?
What else is in the future for Michael Ornstein? Do you have any other projects of any sort in the works we should be looking forward to?
I’m going to keep on writing and painting and performing for as long as I’m around.
What was the last thing that made you smile?
My children, just now. I smile all the time.
The Sound
January, 2009
I heard you’re from New York City, what brought you to the Cape?
It took us over two years to get to the point where we were ready to leave New York City. Actually, it took me over ten years of trying to leave. I lived up in Quebec for a while, but that didn’t stick, I came back. It’s hard to leave you’re home, yknow, especially when your home is New York City, I mean, where do you go from there? The country is the only place to go, cause another city won’t do. So, my wife and I looked all over for a place to live and chose the Cape because it’s the polar opposite of where we come from and that was exactly what we were looking for. We wanted to provide our kids with the sensibility that comes from growing up with the ocean, the forests, our town’s 4th of July Parade and Santa coming to the dock on a boat. All that. Face painting at the Kettle Ho. Down on Loop Beach, I saw that some kid tagged the wall with the words “Love Every Single Day”. I read those words every morning. That’s what we were looking for.
How did you get into painting?
My folks painted in the house when I was a kid. They’re very artistic. I still have an oil painting I did with my father, sitting on his lap, when I was two or so. It’s hanging in my daughter’s room, along with some of my mom’s art. My mom always painted, too. Most weekends, growing up, my folks would take me to NYC to see the museums and the galleries in Soho. Soho was just getting started then, it was pretty much abandoned except for some galleries. Painting has been with me all my life. There was never a time when I wasn’t putting colors together. It’s been an undercurrent, a constant stream, for me. Through all the other creative work I’ve done, I’ve always considered myself a painter.
You’ve had some success with acting, from being in plays to tv and even movies. Tell us a bit about that. Do you have anything coming up, or is there anywhere someone may recognize you from?
I spent my whole adult life working as a professional actor in NYC and was lucky enough to have overlapped one project after another for over twenty years. I’ve done all the Law and Order shows two or three times each. I played a detective on Homicide, way back. A million new plays. I developed and was in the original cast of Angels in America in the role of Louis. I was in films directed by Hal Hartley and Robert Altman. Most currently, Sons of Anarchy on FX, which, I’m happy to say, got picked up for a second season.
You told me that you rarely actually use brushes when you paint, preferring instead to use just your bare hands. Why is that?
It’s just how it always was with me, I like to sculpt the paint with my fingers or rub it into the surface of the paper, steel, wood or canvas. I mix most of my own paint from pigment, so the experience is very tactile right from the start, with the creation of the colors. I’m untrained as a painter, so I don’t have any rules in my head or preconceived notions of how a painting ought to be created. I paint very much like my two year old daughter paints, with my fingers. The image goes right from my imagination to the canvas and a brush adds an element of separation between my hand and the picture that I guess I don’t like. I use brushes here and there, but mostly, it’s my bare hands or cotton rags. I paint with whatever is around, too. If I’m painting in my driveway, I use sticks and rocks, leaves and branches. My wife keeps buying me rubber gloves, but I always forget to use them.
What subject matter inspires you to paint? Do you find yourself with a recurring theme in your work?
People inspire me. What I miss most about the city is the river of faces I used to see flowing by me while walking down the street. The way my brain works, when I see a face floating by, I automatically imagine a story for that person, within a split second, and these faces and stories go into a memory pool and they eventually end up in my paintings. When I work, these stories and faces flow through me onto the canvas. This process isn’t something I think about or try to do, it’s something I just allow myself to be open to. Every face I’ve ever painted has a story I can tell you about them. I tend to paint people the way they are when they’re alone with themselves in deep, solitary, reflective moments. There’s a particular woman who’s been recurring in my paintings since I was a kid. My wife brought to my attention that our daughter is beginning to look a lot like her, which makes beautiful sense.
What has been your favorite project?
That’s hard, because it’s all been enjoyable for me. There’s nothing in the world I enjoy as much as painting, the struggle of painting. Plus, I view everything I’ve done creatively as one long continuous stream of work and really don’t see anything as a separate piece. This includes my films, my writing, all of it, one long stream … like a 45 year long documentary. I say that because I view my work as a documentation of my life. Whatever you want to know about my life, you can see in my paintings and writings. As far as acting goes, Sons of Anarchy is by far the most enjoyable acting project I’ve ever worked on. It was a perfect experience, a total blast. Another project that stands out is a mission-based exhibition I did for the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles to benefit the women on Skid Row. I’d like to do more benefits projects like that. I’m planning one this coming summer for the Children’s Center in Harwich.
So I have to ask, what\'s up with the eyes? You mentioned to me at your studio that you have an unconscious knack for making a painting seem to be engaging you with it\'s eyes, no matter your physical perspective to it. Why do you think that is?
With me, the eyes are technically the focal point that the whole painting revolves around, so they’re the still center in a world of movement. It’s all about the eyes. Anything you need to know about a person, you can find it in their eyes. The people in my paintings offer their eyes in a very unarmored way. They’re wide open with absolutely nothing to hide. They’re not smirking or hiding. They are true. They don’t back down and they don’t let go. They offer an invitational challenge to be true with them. They’re active in that way.
Is there anything you want to accomplish with your painting that you haven't yet?
Painting-wise, there’s a whole world of things I haven’t discovered yet. Exhibition-wise, I’d like to see my large scale work displayed in public spaces. For example, I have a thirty foot long painting on paper that is meant to be backlit and a fifty foot fully functional sail that I painted with mixed media that I’d like to see mounted outside in a public space, so that it is free to revolve 360 degrees with the wind. There is also a writing project that I’ve been dealing with since around 1988. I wrote a collection of monologues and called it “Monkey Language” and my friends and I would perform the piece in cafes, diners and bars that needed the business. Lately, I’ve been joining my paintings to these monologues and I’d like to do an exhibition where the monologues will be recorded, so you can stand in front of the painting and listen on headphones to the story.
You said that most of your work is constantly changing, how so and why?
Whenever I take a step forward, I’m in new territory … so, I enter my studio every day knowing full well that I know much less than I knew the day before. Painting is a perpetual process for me and that’s why every day brings something new. It’s like walking through a pitch-black forest and not knowing where your foot’s going to fall. I’m most comfortable that way. My favorite musicians are Blind Willie McTell and Blind Willie Johnson. They announced their struggle in their names and that was no mistake. I like to bring it all down to zero on a daily basis in order to build it back up again by the end of the day. I’m in it for the struggle. If it’s ever easy or if I ever feel like I know what I’m doing, I’ll quit immediately and get to working on the railroad.
Many of the pieces that I've seen haven't been mounted in a traditional fashion. What causes you to think outside the box like that, per se?
My paintings weren’t painted in a traditional fashion, so there’s no reason for me to mount them in a traditional fashion. I like to keep my paintings in flux and I’m always looking for new ways to present them. For example, I don’t ever like to glue a paper painting to a mount. I either have them sewn at the corners or I use magnets. I design a lot of frames and work with framers on the designs. One night, a long time ago, I found a bunch of old stretchers on the street and for a time, I was framing my paintings with these stretchers. I like for my frames and mounts to be an extension of the work.
What do you try to accomplish through your work? Is there a larger message that you want to convey? Is there a desired effect?
I want the paintings to communicate on an intimate level. I always ask myself how honest the particular piece is. If I don’t believe it, no one else will and then it’ll be useless. I want for my work to be useful to people. There is an ocean of process that no one sees when I’m painting alone in my studio. I have some paintings that I’ve been working on for twenty-five years. That’s what I bring to the piece, the journey of creating it. Ultimately, I want the viewer to make their own journey to the piece, bringing their perspective to meet my perspective and hopefully, we’ll meet at the painting, which I feel is the middle-ground. When it’s a collaboration of experiences like that, the work is active and not passive. You have to spend time with my paintings, they’re not just to hang on a wall and decorate a room with. My paintings require communication. They change moment to moment if you spend the time to look inside them. If I desire anything, it’s that the viewer allows the time and energy to deal with the experience of my paintings.
This is a bit off topic, but I think it plays to gaining a deeper reflection of your work for our readers. Why do you think there is so little community involvment from the young here on Cape, and so few programs catering to them? What do you think can or should be done about it?
In NYC, yeah, everywhere you look there’s a little neighborhood daycare center or a learning program with twenty baby carriages out front of the building. Here, I’m thankful for our town’s local library’s reading program for children. I’m thankful for a lot of programs here in our town. That said, I wish more attention was being paid to children and young families in the year-round community on the Cape. Our town just lost our elementary school, which is a huge drag. And I’m concerned about the HyEast community losing their school and their identity. I’m concerned about schools losing their arts programs. The Cape’s younger community could use a Cape-wide organizational network with an interactive website keeping us informed on issues like what programs are being cut and which schools are closing, as well as what businesses are hiring and how to get a little help with childcare while working, cause the year-round community works real hard. It’s a very difficult place to earn a living. I think it would be beneficial for the younger population to get out of their houses and join together in order to have a healthy voice in the community, because at the moment, we seem to have no voice at all. There are plenty of fantastic organizations working to assist young people and families here on the Cape and it would really help if these organizations were to join together in one place with members of the younger population so we can organize and communicate our way to having a stronger and clearer voice. It’s a matter of communication and there isn't a whole lot of communication here on the Cape, even among artists. If I'm missing anything from from New York City, it's communication.
Not Real Art Podcast
Culture with Artist Michael Ornstein
Michael Ornstein appears on the Not Real Art Podcast today — and we are excited to hear from a true Renaissance man and artist. Michael Ornstein has managed to build an amazing creative life and career through his natural passion and curiosity for expression.
Hear Michael tell us about how he tries to keep himself out of his painting, the lessons he learned in his first acting classes and the big role his parents had on his ideas around art and creativity.
We also discuss moving around the country, raising a family and why he prefers to visit LA for work and focus on one thing at a time.
For Michael, his array of talents and interests means that there is a rotating quality to where he puts his energy at any given time.
Sometimes his painting is leading him, other times he is giving acting most of his energy and he would not have it any other way.
Cape Cod Life
Michael Marisi Ornstein . Painter
by Erika Wastrom
August, 2008
Michael Marisi Ornstein lays his brush to the paper, smudging buttery homemade paint onto its surface. The color seeps in, saturating the paper with linseed oil, making it translucent. His eyes widen as he takes on this new gesture and all the artistic possibility it holds. Ornstein does not focus on a single image. He is not trying to nail down a subject. Instead, he envisions a girl on a train, or his uncle’s face, or leaves in the rain. He mines the deep crevasses of memory and returns to the surface with familiar faces, fluid expanses, and lots of light.
Ornstein brings an uncomplicated intuition to everything he touches. A consummate actor as well as a self-taught painter, Ornstein paints on everything, from canvas and paper, to sheet metal and boat sails. The styles and subjects he explores are just as sweeping, from a wispy boat on a pure blue ocean to a jungle of shapes heavy with impasto. The paintings, he says, are “living organisms,” built layer upon layer, sometimes with his fingers instead of conventional paintbrushes. The paint helps him recall his life’s experiences, from the mundane to the extraordinary, in an honest, intuitive way.
In his expansive West Harwich studio, Ornstein rolls out Move, a 30-foot painting, across the floor. The piece’s aqua blues and pale pinks light up as he holds it against a row of windows, each form emerging from his memory like an ancient language.
A devotion to a life of art resonates in Ornstein’s work, but art in this case is not limited to painting. Besides this lifelong pursuit, he also had a successful career as an actor in film, television, and theatre. Growing up just outside of New York City, he began working with acting coaches like the famous Stella Adler at a young age. His professional career started in 1982, after he dropped out of Mason Gross School of the Arts. For more than 25 years, he went to auditions and casting calls, painting in his spare time. You might have seen him on Seinfeld or Law & Order, or in theatres from Wellfleet to San Francisco.
“Since I was 12 my work has been an emotional exploration, and I have tried to turn that journey into a craft,” Ornstein says. “Stella Adler told me when I was 15 years-old, ‘Don’t lay your head on the pillow until you have done something to change the world that day, even little things, invent something, move someone.’ Ever since, that’s been my work.” He says he left New York City to enjoy Cape Cod’s simple freedoms. He says he is excited to have escaped the routines that come with city life, and direct his focus toward painting.
In his art, Ornstein wants each painting to be a sanctuary in a different sense. In Life, a tribute to his pregnant wife, a bold, cobalt blue silhouette floats within a crowd of shapes. Carefully painted circles and triangles adorn her body. Do these shapes decorate her or is she a window through which we see a blooming universe? Ornstein doesn’t allow the viewer to sit and passively look. Painting is a journey, and one must travel almost instinctively through his works, just as Ornstein did while creating them.
He has had 14 shows since the spring of 2007, most of which were not in traditional gallery spaces. He has exhibited at the Cotuit’s Cahoon Museum, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth, and he was the first to have a show in the new lobby of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. He enjoys showing his works at benefits and festivals, and he is as excited about an upcoming showing at Nantucket’s Thomas Henry Gallery as he is about the possibility of his own studio becoming an alternative exhibition venue for artists. “I’m doing my own shows because that’s where I come from,” he says. “Coming from the theatre, you are always putting your stuff up—bringing your stuff right to the people.”
And instead of laying his head on his pillow, Ornstein has filled his studio with paintings. “Its all been a balance,” he says. “Acting, painting, filmmaking, writing, music, dance…everything feeds the other thing and it makes you whole. That is what an artist ought to be.”
Provincetown Banner
by Sue Harrison
September 24th, 2009
Michael Ornstein probably has the longest commute of anyone on Cape Cod. He lives in Cotuit but flies to Los Angeles where he tapes episodes for TV shows like “Sons of Anarchy.”
“I go there to work and I’ve got a wife and two babies here,” he says after returning from taping several episodes of “Sons.” “We moved here from New York with a plan, to live in a beautiful place, go off to work and then come home. It’s hard sometimes but all in all, a good thing.”
Ornstein may not be a name you instantly recognize, but odds are you will recognize his face. He’s appeared on many of the top shows including multiple roles on all three “Law & Order” series, “Third Watch” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.” He’s been on “Seinfeld” and had roles in several movies including “Crossing Delancey” and “Snow Days.”
His latest roles put him into several episodes of “Sons of Anarchy” and cast him as Frank Davis in the new “NCIS: Los Angeles.” The NCIS role is a one-shot deal for now but his characters do have a way of coming back. “NCIS: Los Angeles” premiered on Sept. 22 and Ornstein can be seen in the third episode airing October 6.
In “Sons” he plays Chuck Marstein, who was in one show the previous year but impressed everyone enough to bring him back for recurring episodes this year.
“Chuck has Compulsive Masturbation Disorder,” Ornstein says. “He’s a great character.”
Over all, Ornstein says, this has been “the best acting experience in my life.” Everyone is great and perfect to work with from the crew to the cast, the writers, the directors.
“I was a fan (of the series) before but this is a whole different ballgame,” he says. “The show has a different kind of energy than has ever been on TV before. It’s like a new musical genre, it’s entirely unique.”
He came to the show through writer Kurt Sutter, a guy he’s friends with from way back.
“He wrote this character and I thought, the world is filled with unique things,” Ornstein says. “Sometimes you read something and say to yourself ‘That can’t happen,’ but you know it can and does. The good artist [meaning Sutter] is willing to try it and sometimes goes way out there.”
That risk-taking, he says, is where a character comes together or falls apart. And he always tries to bolster his characters with the strength of truth, he adds.
“That’s the definition of acting — watch it and it’s real,” he says. “If it’s honest, people connect to it.”
Ornstein got training in live theater and says that shooting film and TV is definitely a different experience.
“I came up doing plays with a beginning, a middle and an end,” he says. “I would map myself through, working with the playwright and the director and then put it up from beginning to end every night. With TV or film it’s shot in short little parts and you don’t really see it until it’s done and screens. In ways I’m really part of the audience seeing it for the first time when they do.”
For now he’s between roles, which is great since it gives him the time to pursue his other passion, oil painting.
“I’ve always gone between painting and acting,” he says.
It was Ornstein who founded the gallery at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater at the Julie Harris Stage. He had been cast in “Love Song” a couple of years back and they used his artwork in the set and turned the upstairs lobby into a gallery that has gone on to feature artwork from a rotating group of galleries and artists.
He has ties to Provincetown as well. His family in New York used to go down to Greenwich Village every weekend and then would vacation in Provincetown in the summer.
“We saw the same people in both places,” he says. “What I really dig about Provincetown is how much art has originated there, from Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams to Hans Hofmann. I’d love to do more things there.”
He’s been thinking about things he’d like to do on the Cape and says, “I’m into producing new stuff, plays, in alternate venues. I’d like to help develop brand new plays. I’d like to teach a class or even have a theater that does all that.”
Provincetown Banner
"Hands-on Artist Shows at Wellfleet Harbor Actor's Theatre"
by Melora B. North
November, 2007
A recent morning spent with actor-artist Michael Ornstein flew by as we chatted in the lobby at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater just outside the Julie Harris Stage. An Equity actor, Ornstein is in WHAT’s current production of “Love Song,” but that’s not his only connection to the theater. He is a prolific artist who paints in oil on canvas. In fact, one of his paintings is on the cover of the playbill for this production, and another was on the front of the playbill for “The Clean House,” which was on the boards earlier in the season, and both are on display in the lobby where an exhibition of 35 of his paintings now hangs.
“That woman is my aunt. I painted it in 1985,” he says of the tired-looking woman wielding a mop on the cover for “The Clean House,” her lips, in contrast to her chore, a burst of crimson red that illuminates her face. Of the couple on the playbill for “Love Song” he says, “I imagine they fell in love the night before and are leaving the apartment in the morning to go off for breakfast or maybe coffee.”
All of Ornstein’s paintings have stories, some not so happy, others joyous explosions of color that blow away convention in a swell of imagination and invention born in the artist’s mind.
“I don’t like to paint what can be photographed,” he says of his work. Which may account for a tribute the artist has created for his young daughter Angelena, now two.
“When she was a baby I would cradle her in my lap and paint while she slept there,” he says. “I did 18 paintings for her, 18 because that’s good luck in the Jewish faith. I stretched and nailed the canvas to the wall. They’re like tapestries, stained glass windows from the temple.” The works are a complicated montage of squiggles, triangles, circles, small eyeball kind of shapes and other unusual doodles rendered on top of more realistic paintings to be picked out between the lines. Some are small works, others quite massive, all sharing secret glimpses into what is underneath. This technique was originally the method Ornstein used to give backgrounds to several of his portraits, but with the advent of his daughter it grew to take on a new dimension. “The background for my portraits became the foreground,” he says.
And all this work is done with the artist’s fingers. “I’m a finger painter,” Ornstein, whose whimsical work contains surprising detail and sensitivity, says with a smile in his eyes.
One particularly haunting painting is “Purple Heart,” a serious portrait, sans doodle background, of a young man whom Ornstein saw in “Alive Bay Memories.” The man had been shot in the head, and the depiction is a ghost-like portrait surrounded by an aura of hazy smoke in faded orange accented by penetrating blue eyes. Another serious subject Ornstein tackles is the 1921 Tulsa race riots, during which, he says, planes sliced through the skies dropping Molotov cocktails over the city. To portray his story Ornstein painted separate portraits of a war-torn family: grandfather, father and son, all grouped together, all clear pictures of downtrodden, wounded people caught up in a senseless war of despair, hurt and anger.
On a lighter note, “Matador” is a large depiction of a Spanish icon standing straight, a bunch of flowers hidden behind his back. “A lot of my paintings are about families and love,” he says. “Sunday Park” presents the image of a man and woman strolling through the grass on a bright day, the world their oyster, and “Clearing” is of a man chopping down a tree in Quebec, where Ornstein lived for several months a few years ago while concentrating on his painting. Another is a portrait of musician Patty Larkin, “Red on Blue,” born of “three or four faces painted beneath hers.”
Over the years Ornstein has traveled to the Southwest where he collected rocks that he grinds down to make his own paint. He also uses more conventional methods. “I make my own paint from pigment much like talcum powder. I mix it with linseed oil. It keeps the paint from yellowing,” he explains. “It’s how people painted a long time ago. I can’t imagine painting with commercial paint.”
Now a resident of Cape Cod for the past year, the artist, who hails from New York with a diversion to Los Angeles, is happy to be a part of the community where he lives with his wife, Zoe, and their daughter in Centerville. In just a year, he has made an impact on the Cape art community. having exhibited in the Cahoon Museum’s “Brush Off” and “ABC’s of Abstract.” He has also shown at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod’s Bloomin’ Art and Celebration of the Arts as well as the Festival of the Arts in Chatham. Rounding out things, he has had a solo show at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
While he is presently concentrating on his art, Ornstein is happy to once again be on stage for this production. “I’ve waited to work here for a really long time,” he says. But no grass has grown under his feet in the interim. When not painting these past years he directed a video project, which he wrote, shot and directed, has done some documentaries and acted in several films and television programs including “Law and Order,” “Seinfeld,” “Homicide” and “New York Undercover.”
By Elinor Balensuela
As Arts Illiana began to plan its grand re-opening in the late summer months of 2015, ideas began to surface about what we could do to make this a night and a reopening to remember. The remodel for Arts Illiana began in early 2015; the gallery closed and the office, along with the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra, moved to where the Family Service Association used to be. Still in the Deming Center, Arts Illiana managed to pull off Tablescapes in March as well as begin a new arts education initiative. All the while, we continued to produce Spectrum and were a granting partner through the Indiana Arts Commission (IAC).
Now, with the space finished, Arts Illiana is proud to announce the grand Re-Opening, slated for October 2nd, which coincides with the October First Friday. With refurbished walls, floors, and office space, Arts Illiana boasts a brand new gallery. This gallery practically doubles in size and has a brand new lighting system as well as room dividers built especially for the gallery.
After the move back into the new space, the questions remained: How do we celebrate the opening of our brand new space? As an art gallery, one goal was clear. It was to celebrate and promote the local artists that we work with every day. The decision was made to have the opening be a juried exhibition. We opened up submissions in early September for artists throughout Indiana and Illinois to submit their work to be judged for the exhibit.
But then, something happened. We were working with the Old Jail Inn in Rockville on a project that begin at the beginning of the year, and it ended up falling through. Suddenly, we found ourselves in contact with a nationally renowned artist, who had a piece of work that was created for the Wabash Valley Area. He had a piece of work about the area; we had a grand reopening approaching. It was then that the idea struck and we found ourselves with a special guest.
Michael Ornstein grew up just outside of New York City, at the height of the Art Revolution. He began painting at a young age, having been influenced by his parents who were also painters. From that young age, Ornstein found inspiration to paint for the rest of his life. He took inspiration from New York City and his friends and family around him; soon, he was not only painting, but writing, playing music, and acting. His creativeness grew as he did and he began acting in plays in New York along with continuing to paint.
One of Ornstein’s most well-known roles is from his time on Sons of Anarchy. As one of the comic relief characters on the dark drama series, Ornstein played Chuck “Chuckie” Marstein. Although he only appeared in 45 of the shows 95 episodes, Ornstein’s character survived from the beginning of the show (his first appearance was in the 2008 Season One episode “Giving Back”) to the very last episode (2014’s “Papa’s Goods”).
Elinor: What came first, the acting or the painting?
Michael: The painting. It started when I was a little boy. My mom painted so there were always paints in the house. My dad painted a little bit too. I still have an oil painting that I did with my father when I was three years old, painted with our fingers. It was just something that was always around my house because both of them painted. I would just sit with them and paint with them, so I always had that. And we always went to museums. I grew up right outside of New York City, so we would go to museums all the time. In the late 60s and early 70s when artists started to move in what was later SoHo, we would go down there a lot. There was one restaurant called “Food” and they had a board that listed artists who were having exhibitions in their lofts and we would go and see those exhibitions. We would go up a freight elevator and into this giant loft space and see people’s art. A lot of those people became famous artists later in life; beautiful work was created there. When I was around 12, I decided to be an actor and start studying. I saw a lot of plays with my parents and it really turned me on to it. That and Rock N’ Roll. My parents took me to Max’s Kansas City to see bands coming over from England, like Eddie and the Hot Rods, and local bands from the neighborhood. Used to go to Bleeker Bob’s records to buy 45’s and I’d see Joey Ramone, Cheetah Chrome, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders, Tom Verlaine, I met my heroes in that record shop. My folks exposed me to a lot of really cool things: music, art, and theatre. Of course, my grandfather really dug old movies. So when I slept over at my grandparents’ house on weekends, we’d stay up all night watch Humphry Bogart, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, and that made me want to be an actor. I never considered myself just an actor. I always have done a lot of things. I’ve always painted and later on I started writing. So I do all of these things. I don’t see any of them as exclusive. Actually, I go out of my way to make them non-exclusive, to make them all flow together.
Elinor: That was my next questions. Doing some research, you act, you paint, but you also write and play music. That’s a lot of creative things do to.
Michael: As far as I’m concerned, it’s all the same thing. I do one thing at a time. When I was in New York and Circle Rep. Lab, we had the opportunity to put up plays, we did a new play every week there. We’d open these plays on Thursdays, run them through Sunday. It wasn’t uncommon for me to write a play and act in it, or have my friends act in it, and then have music in it. That’s writing and acting and dealing with music. None of these things, in my mind, are exclusive. I do one at a time and I take them seriously. I don’t skim the surface with it. And if I feel like I’m skimming the surface, I don’t feel like I’m really doing it, you know? I was in bands as a little kid. We had garage bands; that’s what we did. When we weren’t making fires or blowing things up or playing full contact football in tee shirts and dungarees at the park or riding our bikes and dirt bikes, we had rock n’ roll bands. I really loved that. I miss that. So I always had music with me. When I was on the road with plays, I always had a four track with me and I would improvise music into that four track. I would make up half hour story songs and record them. With music, as far as I’m concerned, there are a lot of people who are more talented than me and I feel it’s almost disrespectful to go up there and call yourself a musician if you ain’t. That’s the only thing I haven’t gotten deep with. But, I could get up there and sing a 200 year old song in front of people, I feel okay with that.
Elinor: I do have to ask one out of the blue question. This question has been on my mind since I started this project and started doing some research: What is “Monkey Language”? It’s the name of your website and your Instagram handle. That’s so out there and so unique. Why did you name your things that?
Michael: I do a lot of things, so I called it all Monkey Language. We are all Monkeys. Exactly what we’re talking about, using music, film, word, images, I call that Monkey Language. Because, look, when you’re an artist, people say to you, like you, say, “Are you a writer?” “Are you a this?” “You’re confusing. What are you?” “What do you call yourself?” And I call it Monkey Language because I just feel like, why should I define myself just as a writer or a painter. I don’t agree with that concept that you have to do that. I find that I came from an old school training where my teacher, Stella Adler, taught at the academy, I was learning from very serious people who taught adults as well as children and you know, they basically said, you gotta know about everything. It’s like a chef only knowing how to cook chicken. What good would that be? You can’t do one thing. Even as an actor, you gotta know about the lights and how to stage manage and how to direct and how to write. That’s why I started writing. I mean, fuck, how can I be in a play if I don’t know how to write. When you do a play, you sit around a table for a long period of time with the writer and with the director and the other actors and you work on the play. A writer brings a play to a group of people who are going to perform it. That play is going to change before it hits the stage. You gotta know what you’re doing. You gotta know the structure, understand what it means, because you’re doing a service for that writer. It’s a big responsibility, doing someone’s play. If you don’t understand the structure of a play, you really don’t belong at that table. You know? So, where I come from, the theatre and from film, new scripts are blueprints. You show up on set and do what’s written and then you say “Let’s do this” “Let’s do that” “Let’s improvise” and from a point of knowing what you’re doing and knowing the script, you’re able to take off and improvise. If you can’t do that…you shouldn’t be in the room. That’s where I come from. You gotta practice and take it seriously and be well rounded to help others around you, from the director, the other actors, and the writers. One should be helping each other and be fully equipped to do what they’re there to do. Which is to create a finished project for an audience, which, in this case, is to communicate a finished project in a meaningful way. Move somebody, you know? What’s the point of doing something if you aren’t going to move somebody?
Elinor: Moving onto your artwork, I’ve been creeping up on your website basically every day to see what you’ve been doing. I’m really drawn to your work. Is the vividness and abstractness intentional?
Michael: What do you mean?
Elinor: I really love one of your pieces that you did. It was on a sail and was a whole cacophony of colors and very, very bright. Do you choose your colors intentionally? I’ve noticed a lot of your portraits, your abstract portraits, have a lot of warm colors, like the reds and oranges in the background, while the cooler greens and blues are for the people themselves.
Michael: Well, I make all of my own paint. It’s a pigment so I mix it and make it myself. So I’m able to make those colors that you can’t go buy in a shop. My colors are all I’m thinking about and if something turns out to look like a person, it just does. I love painting people and I paint a lot of people. The abstract pieces are when I’m literally painting music and I want to hear the painting. And if I don’t hear the painting, I work harder on it until I can hear it. A lot of the designs that I paint are a language to me. I’ve been working those images and designs since I was a little kid. To me they are a language, a music. They’ve always been with me. Sometimes they’re the background, sometimes they’re the foreground, sometimes, they’re the entire painting. You know? But if you see that, it’s music that I’m trying to get at.
Elinor: Could you tell me a little about the piece that you created? How did that come to life?
Michael: I do this thing called “Hand Painted Radio” that I’ve been working in a serious way since, man, since 1982 or so. I join original text to my paintings, because I like to have my paintings tell stories. Sometimes, I write directly onto the paintings themselves. I’ve been doing that since I was a child. I’ve always attached original writing to my stories one way or the other. When QR codes first started happening in 2005 or 2006, I started using QR codes to attach audio to my paintings. I would put them on the walls for exhibitions and on the streets with a little QR code next to them. And then I started doing theater in live exhibitions so that people could stand in front of a painting and hear that painting talk to them. Banksy actually did that in New York. He attached audio and video to his work that was on the street. I think it’s a really cool thing to do. It’s about communication. I love it and I’ve been doing it for a really long time. So I named these shows “Hand Painted Radio”, that’s what I call it. N my mind, it’s a new art form. I absolutely never paint in “series”, as is the convention with gallery artists, but these shows areas close as I get to that. I did one for the Beat museum up in San Francisco. You know, Jack Kerouac, Ginsburg, Cassidy, and all those guys. I used to know some of them. They used to be in the neighborhood. Gregory Corso was always around at the Corner Bistro in the Village. He loved their hamburgers. A friend of mine lived at the Chelsea hotel right down the hall from Herbert Huncke and we hung out with him a bunch. Allan Ginsburg was from the town next to where I grew up. His father was my dad’s baseball coach when he was a kid. Alan was always in the Village back when I first moved to NYC. So what I did was take Kerouac and those guys and I took six locations where they used to hang out, places where I hung out, too, and did six paintings and six poems for these locations. What I created was a painted film. It’s a story made up of words and paintings. “Hand Painted Radio”. I’m doing the same thing for this piece. So what I’m doing is painting people, portraits, and then I’m writing little pieces that go along with it. When I write these things, what they really are, is the way they the people are “thinking”, I’m writing their thoughts, thoughts that would otherwise be silent, kept inside their heads. Like when someone is sitting on a bench and they’re alone with themselves, like on a subway train. You see this a lot in New York. The way people look when they’re going to work, coming home from work, when they’re on the train, with thoughts running through their heads. It’s a kind of meditative state. When you’re in a position like that, when you’re alone and thinking to yourself, feeling something that’s meditative, that’s private. That’s what I paint. And that’s what I’m writing. This one is called “Jailhouse Ballads”.
Elinor: I love that name. I think it’s a great name.
Michael: Thanks! You can go and hashtag that. It’ll take you to all of the paintings on Instagram and things like that. And what I do is, I paint these portraits, take a photograph right as I finished painting. Then I go sit down in my studio and write the piece as soon as I’m finished painting. And I post it to Instagram. So, really, the text is written right there on the spot, un-edited, just as it flowed.
Elinor: That’s awesome. We’ll definitely use #JailhouseBallads when we’re talking about this show. What’s one thing that you really want people to know about the show?
Michael: I want people to know that, when they see a jail or see a person who might have been in jail, or they see someone who is in trouble, just to know that that person was somebody’s baby at one point. Maybe they fell in love at one point. Maybe they don’t want to be there. Maybe they’re hardened criminals, or maybe they’re whatever they are, but they’re human beings. And, that they existed. A lot of people have gone through jails. Some of them were guilty and some were not. Some did whatever they did, but they all have stories. These are imaginary stories, though. I’m not interested in taking historical things and writing about the specific guy who did this or that. I’m interested in imaginary things. I feel, unless it’s purely documentary, “Art” ought to be dreamed up and beyond realistic. Even John Cassavetes realized that. The people I paint, I never paint from models, I’m not interested in my paintings being anatomically correct, I’m chasing the defects, I’m chasing what’s beyond the realism. I think that artists should speak for the people who cannot speak for themselves. I think artists need to speak for people who can’t tell their own stories. Or we’re making up stories that may define people who lived without literally defining themselves. I think that’s important. It’s just about using my imagination to humanize the lives of dreamed up people who went through whatever they went through, and making it into some kind of theatre. Ultimately, all of my work is theatre. You know?
Elinor: You mentioned that you were thinking about doing a piece for “Street Art for Charity” while you’re in the Wabash Valley. I went to the websites that you sent me, and this is a really neat idea. Could you tell me a little bit more about that idea? Where did it come from?
Michael: I like to auction my paintings off for charities. Kurt Sutter and Katey Sagal, a while ago, did a show out in LA. They sponsored a show downtown LA. It was a benefit to help The Downtown Women’s Center, women who are living on Skid Row. Throughout my life, I’ve done street art. I love street art. It’s pretty ancient when you look at Cave paintings that people did 35,000 years ago. I love that concept. I love that people are painting on the street. I love that street art isn’t frowned upon anymore. But, you can’t really take anything with you that’s painted on a brick wall. When I was younger and Keith Herring was painting on poster mounts down in the subway stations, people were cutting them out with razors. That stuck with me that people were taking these Herring paintings with them. That really stuck with me. So what I do is that I take an original painting and walk up to a tree and staple it to a tree. On the back of it I write, “This is street art for charity. If you take this painting, think about making a donation of $25 to St. Judes Children’s Hospital, and email me if you do”. And, 100% of the time, people do email me and say “Cool. I made a donation and thanks for the art.” I met a woman out here in LA at a park and she was with a friend of mine. I was introduced and she said, “Michael Ornstein? That sounds familiar.” “Well I’m an artist and stuff.” She said, “Are you a painter? Did you put a painting up, a painting in a parking lot, stapled to a tree?” and I said, “Yeah, that’s me.” She said, “It’s framed and in my living room” I thought, wow, cool. So, that’s what I do. I asked people to make donations and they get to go home with a painting they found on a tree. I try to do it in places where you don’t see street art, like Beverly Hills. I’ll do it if I’m traveling around somewhere as well. I like to do that wherever I go. Why not.
Elinor: I do have to ask at least one Sons of Anarchy question. I’ve seen the show and a lot of my friends are huge fans. It is tied back into artwork a little bit. What was it like to work on such a graphic show? I’m sure that as an artist, a show like SOA was a perfect medium for an artist to be influenced by your character and by the writing as well.
Michael: Yeah, definitely. It was a really visceral show. People were really throwing down in really serious ways. People were showing up and creating a real, authentic world. Everyone was encouraging each other and supporting each other. We were pushing it and pushing it and pushing it as tightly and as far and deep as we could. It was a very full experience. Really, you could watch all of those episodes with the sound off and really get what’s happening. I’m gonna try that. I think that it could stand on that. What we did there was pretty unique. I’m really proud of it. We all are; we’re really, really proud of that piece of work. It’s so amazing as to how, all over the world, people get it. Which is what I mean by turn the sound off. It goes way beyond the language boundaries and cultural boundaries and all of that stuff. We cut right through that stuff and connected with people all over the world. It’s very unique. Sure, it happens with music, but seldom with a TV show. You know?
Elinor: I feel like it could definitely influence you an artist as well. One of my favorite episodes is the chili episode. It’s so graphic and creative. Have any of the episodes done that? Where you just go home and write a piece or paint a picture?
Michael: I never thought of that. I haven’t really been inspired by the show in that way. I didn’t come home and paint a picture of something literal, but it was a very deep experience for me. Some of my best friends are from that experience. I’m sure it influenced me in a lot of ways. I’m sure of it. Yes. But I can’t say that this specific painting came from this scene, or that scene. It deepened me as a man and as a human being. And, especially, deepened me as an artist. Yes.
Elinor: My final questions, which we danced around in a bit earlier. It’s an age-old question that I’m sure, as an artist, you’re asked this a lot: What are you inspired by? What inspires you?
Michael: I’m influenced by everything that I come in contact with. Everything and everyone that I come into contact with inspires me, even a guy who makes a sandwich for me in a deli. I’m not saying that in a general way. Honestly, everything that I read and everything that I think about inspires me. I’m inspired by my dog who is sitting here, looking at me, right now. I’m inspired by leaves that are all around me that I’m walking on while talking to you. I’m inspired by history and memories. I guess what inspires me is “memory” mainly. I’m very concerned with memories. Like today, it’s Friday. I had some coffee, I ate some breakfast, I had a smoke or two. I kissed my kids and my wife and they left the house and I’m going to work today. The way that I look at my life is that every day I’m gonna go do a day and live a day and go through a day and that’s going to become a memory. Today, whatever I do, I’m going to make it a memory, a good memory, something lush. Something that I can go to sleep tonight and put my head on the pillow and say, “Cool I did something today that was an addition to my life, that I could draw from.” Stella Adler told me as a kid, “Don’t ever put your head on the pillow unless you changed the world that day.” And, I try to do that, in little ways, sometimes, in bigger ways. And I guess that’s what it is. You gotta live fully aware every moment of every day so that you have memories to draw from and, can say, “That I got from this person, and I saw that, or I saw this or I ate that or this.” I think that inspires me a lot. Memories, and mystery, and people. That’s why I paint people. I really love people and their stories inspire me. And I think that’s why I do this. That’s why when I paint somebody, I write a little story about their life, an imaginary thing. Everything inspires me. I don’t walk around shut down. Ever. I’m not constructed that way. I like to stay open and take in whatever is around me at all times. It can be a little maddening. Sometimes it’s like all I want to do is shut it down and chill out and smoke a cigarette and get away from everything. But most of the time, I want to be completely open. I think that’s the way to live. Like my dog! He’s just sitting here, hearing shit, lookin’ at shit, and he’s just a bundle of sensory experiences. And I guess that’s what I am on a good day. I think that’s what artists are: People who were born that way. Deep down, every artist is like that. Real artists, people who were born that way, we have no choice but to be like that. My mother was that way, so was her mother, my grandmother, and my kids are also like that. Does that make any sense?
Elinor: Absolutely. That makes total sense.
Michael: Well, good.
Mr. Ornstein and I continued to talk for another 15 minutes. He asked me to tell him about the area, to tell him my opinion of what it was like and what I saw there. He asked me to tell him about the Covered Bridges and what it was like in the Fall, when he plans on coming down for the show. He asked what the food was like and where my favorite places to eat were. We talked about Indiana State, St. Mary’s of the Woods, and Rose Hulman, about the art programs, the music scene, the local artist, and the Swope. I ended the interview knowing that this would not be the last time that I would speak with him. Over the coming weeks, outside of the article, he and I would be planning a little tour around the area, so he could speak with local artists, college students, and members of the community. We made plans to go to the Swope, to local parks, and other local hot spots. The hour that I spent on the phone with Mr. Ornstein was the beginning of a whole other adventure, one that I couldn’t wait to embark on. And I accept that.
Last Updated 24.10.31