Practical Magic: Mike Nudelman
a bird’s eye view of a work in progress from Mike Nudelman
Practical Magic is an online interview series with early and mid-career creatives. Through a selection of prompts we spotlight each person’s practice and (hopefully) prove art world creatives are the real influencers of today.
interview with: Mike Nudelman
visual artist
For the month of August, each twice-weekly PM interview will be with a selected artist from our 3rd Open Call Exhibition Celestial Opera, Human Cathedrals. Mike’s drawings immediately captured us, his foggy landscape scenes hovering on the eerie and sci-fi. A bit about Mike:
Mike Nudelman was born and raised on Long Island, New York and currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He received a BFA in Printmaking from Cornell University and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for his MFA in Painting & Drawing. He makes enigmatic landscape drawings with ballpoint pen on paper. Much like the dazzling pixels on a screen or the pointillist dots of a print, the ballpoint strokes simultaneously mask and reveal what lies beyond the paper’s facade.
The included drawing from Mike in our 2020 Open Call Show was a first round selection - exemplifying the celestial moonscape and alternate reality take on the sublime. Learning further about his influences and process only made us more invested in the dream-like scenes he depicts.
PP: Who or what are major influences for you right now and why?
MN: I've been particularly appreciating subtlety recently. Everything I hated when I was younger I now love. Over the past couple months, there have been a few Fairfield Porter paintings that really got to me.
PP: What to you was the most successful moment that you’ve had as a creative, and why was it successful or meaningful to you?
MN: In grad school I remember an advisor telling me that a good measure of success is if you're still making work in ten years. At the time I remember thinking that was pretty pessimistic — but now I totally get it. Still feeling committed to your practice even as your priorities and perspective shifts means you're making life-affirming work and you should feel great about it. Focusing on the process rather than the results makes the lows easier to weather.
view of Mike’s workspace
PP: What is a typical day in the life for you as a creative? How do you structure your day/week to manage your practice?
MN: To me, working in the studio is a fairly practical and straightforward endeavor. There's no magic here — just my desk and the rest of the stuff I need to make my work. I come mostly at night, draw, and leave. Most of the inspiration happens elsewhere. My drawings are intensive and slow, and so my practice has evolved to treat the labor like a job.
PP: Current binge-worthy tv/film recommendation?
MN: If you're looking for something sad, Cheers is perfect!
PP: What are you listening to in your studio or when you work?
MN: For the past 20 years since high school I've pretty much just listened to the same music — late 80s and early 90s electronic industrial music released by Wax Trax Records in Chicago. Stuff like Front 242, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Revolting Cocks, KMFDM, and Laibach. I listen to a lot of Billy Joel too! The Stranger is a perfect album.
Mike in the desert
Untitled 3, 2018, ballpoint pen on paper, 11 x 8.5 in, included in our 3rd Annual Open Call Show
PP: What's your favorite article of clothing to wear and why?
MN: Right now, a hat, any hat, because I have not had a haircut since February
PP: What is the next big milestone you've set for yourself? How close to achieving it are you?
MN: I currently have a solo show, And Yet, up at Fortnight Institute in New York, which is a huge milestone for me [editor’s note: the show closed July 31st, but you can view the archive here] . Many of the recent drawings are based on the melancholic UFO photographs created by Swiss contactee Eduard Albert ‘Billy’ Meier. Deconstructing layers of illusion, time, scale, and mediation in sublime landscapes has been a central focus of my work for a while. Somewhat organically, a disorienting sense of deja vu began to permeate these new drawings, as traces of branch geometries, saucer forms, and sloping horizons echo from one to the next. I'm excited to keep pushing this meta-narrative relationship between the drawings and hope to show an expanded body of work next year!
Installation view of And Yet, the solo exhibition from Mike at Fortnight Institute, 2020
Practical Magic interviews post weekly on Thursdays - check back to see who we’re chatting with next.