Mark Todd’s Force Field Fireworks

Fourth of July holiday weekend 2011 kicks off with a bang, as Mark Todd presents his love of comic book abstraction at the La Luz de Jesus gallery July 1. Mark’s latest is entitled, “Force Field” and features a well-constructed array of experimental compositions that pay homage to the Silver Age of Comics and his love of boyhood explosives. The exhibit’s centerpiece, “Power Fury,” is a dimensional fireworks display, complete with artistic firepower.

Mark Todd, originally from Las Vegas, began creating comics in his bedroom at an early age and has never stopped. In fact, you can see many of Mark’s characters reintroduced in his works today. And among the nostalgia, hammering of nails, painting and perfecting the show Mark took time out to answer a couple of questions.

mM : Did you play with fireworks as a kid, growing up in Las Vegas? Any stories?

MarkTodd : Here’s a story for you...The Fourth of July was a really big deal for me and my friends. My best friend's Dad was a Vietnam Vet and would stockpile hundreds of illegal fireworks throughout the year. He would spend thousands of dollars on fireworks each year. He worked for a sand and gravel company and on the 4th we would all convoy out to the middle of the Vegas desert where the gravel company had mountains of sand and dirt. All the kids would take to the sand piles and all hell would break loose. Bottle rockets would be whizzing by, m-80's, jumpingjacks, even stadium explosives would be going off over our heads. By midnight there would be small brush fires cropping up and then this huge explosion from a stick of "dynamite" that someone had brought—lit with a delayed fuse, of course.

We all slept on the dirt hills or in the trucks we drove out. In the morning we would wake, crusty and sore and clean ourselves up by blowing off the dirt with an air compressor hose. You know, the ones that the tractors, trucks and heavy machinery used at the site. Once we all jumped into the scooper of a bulldozer, and were raised up in it while the driver powered over sticker bushes and boulders. Insane…!

mM: What inspired you to create your own fireworks stand “Power Fury”, complimenting your new exhibition happening at La Luz de Jesus July 1?

MarkTodd : Growing up in Vegas, these plywood firework stand would pop up overnight on every other corner. When I grew up there was still a lot of open desert, things in development. You could still ride your bikes around town and find jumps, forts, lizards and snakes. The stands would usually be on a corner of an undeveloped lot, selling overpriced legal fireworks. But if you drove out of town, past the county line you could find the good stuff—bottle rockets, roman candles, things like that. I’ve wanted to build a fireworks stand for along time. It just seemed like a great canvas to be creative with. All the colors, the names, the childhood memories.

The name “Powerfury” came from an Iron Man cover. "The power and the fury". Recently, I had a show in NYand decided to combine the words to create a new word that conjured up something strong and maybe a bit threatening. But like a lot of my work, what you see is not always what you get. There’s humor there. I kind of like the idea of something that takes its self too seriously, appears tough but when you look closer you see more to it, you see the sad ghosts, the pinks and all that.

mM : Please describe your approach to Force Field, your upcoming show at La Luz de Jesus.

Mark Todd : For this show I am continuing the exploration of altered comic book imagery. Mostly from the marvel silver age although some pieces stray from that. There will be new paintings and works on paper ranging in scale from comic book size to large works over 60". A free-standing 6 foot wide fireworks stand will be the ancho. I have never created a 3-d piece this large or with so much detail and feel that it’s probably my strongest work to date.

mM : Did you focus on a specific issue of comic for this show?

Mark Todd : There’s a lot of Spider-Man in this show. I really got into using the web patterns and liked how he has no facial features. For this show, a distorted spider-man face came through in a lot of the pieces. Works seem to be a bit more "melted" —more drips, neon colors in contrast with a stark paint pallette.

mM : Any new books in the works?

Mark Todd: My latest book is called "Superuseless Superpowers." It was a lot of fun to work on. I didn't write it.

And I have a brand new website dedicated to my gallery work— powerfury.com. It’s a collection of all the reinvented comic pieces i have done thus far—over 125 pieces.

Fun interview and thanks to Mark Todd exhibiting “Force Field” at La Luz de Jesus July 1 through July 31 featuring drawings, paintings and a 6’ installation. You can see the entire show in person by heading over to 4633 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles. And you can see a new painting in the “Lucid Dreams” exhibition this summer, as well as check out Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson at booth No. 4833 at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego. Enjoy your holiday weekend.

Mark Todd Juggernaut Review and Art History

“King-Size Special” 33.75" x 51.25" : detail

Mark Todd’s latest painting installation, “Juggernaut,” opened at the Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery on Saturday, January 18, 2010. I arrived early, before the crowd, to quietly take in the exhibition and examine each piece carefully. “Juggernaut” features large-scaled paintings and collage pieces that celebrate Mark’s youthful exercises of collecting, reading and drawing comic books. And after examining each painting close up, nothing much has changed since the early years spent analyzing the Incredible Hulk, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four and all of their related adversaries.

Gate To The Cemetery : 20” x 31”

Mark Todd’s latest effort is a maturation of scale and appropriate placement of characters across the entire painted surface. You can see this in the Fantastic Four cover parody, “Gate To The Cemetery,” 20” x 31” mixed media on wood, which densely displays plenty of detail—featuring typography, comic heroes, villains and frowning ghosts. The piece delivers a graphic punch, (one of most vibrantly colored pieces in the exhibition), featuring loud color that adds to the tension exchanged between characters while paying homage to the Proto-pop art movement of the 1920s.

Proto-pop artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis

Proto-pop was the first American pop art movement to utilize “as found” cultural objects visually articulated by American artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis. Essentially, the idea was to create artworks based on mundane objects found in American commercial products and advertising. The American Pop art scene was officially born, spawning hundreds of critical exhibitions and inspiring US artists by the thousands, and then some…

Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein featured in the first Pop Art museum exhibit in Pasadena

In the fall of 1962, “The New Realists” exhibition opened in a New York gallery organized by Sidney Janis. Later that same year, Walter Hopps in Pasadena curated the “New Painting of Common Objects” at the Pasadena Art Museum, the first Pop Art museum exhibition in the United States. Both of these Pop Art showcases featured Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein who were later joined by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist in the 1963 Guggenheim Museum exhibition, “Six Painters and the Object,” curated by Lawrence Alloway.

Reduction/Revision” and Reduction/Revision 2 : 24” x 43”

Echoing the voice of Pop Art’s past, Mark Todd has painted and collaged a body of work that is furthering the evolution of the visual narrative arts, showcasing a new voice. The collaged pieces, “Reduction/Revision” and Reduction/Revision 2, ” (24” x 43”) features layers of painting, taped pieces and comic book artifacts. Both pieces reflect Mark’s love of developing mini comics, (zines), and offer the viewer a DIY concept that incorporates painting, drawing, printing and construction.

Of course these works deserve your personal attention, and if you can a trip to the Billy Shire Fine Arts you will not be disappointed, Mark is featured alongside San Francisco painter Owen Smith.

“Brawn and Iron” : 36" x 36" and “K.O.” : 24" x 36"

“Long Gone” by Owen Smith features fourteen oil on panel paintings that capture 1930s America’s pulp noire and the golden age of industry. Owen’s painted style features an elongation of the human form with weighted, muscular features similar in style to the American muralists of the Regionalist art movement of the late 1920-1950s.

Regionalist painters : Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton
Notice : Harmonica player is Jackson Pollock who posed for Benton

Regionalist American painters: Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton captured everyday American life, painting its cities, small towns and rural landscapes. Their realistic painting style, (realism), heightened the viewer’s political and social consciousness while conveying a sense of nationalism and romanticism. (If you’re interested in actual accounts that took place in art history, check out the latest book “Tom and Jack/The intertwined lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock” by art historian Henry Adams. Really a wonderful read, as it features the main characters and all of the lives they touched along the way).

Mark Todd and Owen Smith are the second to last show being featured at the BSFA gallery owned by Billy Shire and directed by Matt Kennedy. Billy Shire has been an active patron and promoter of a variety of different art movements featured within the Pop Art. Billy’s gallery shows have promoted thousands of artists in Southern California including: Mark Ryden, Gary Panter, Tony Fitzpatrick, Joe Coleman, Frank Kozik, Elizabeth McGrath, Chris Mars, SHAG and on…Billy is revitalizing the gallery in his original and second location, La Luz de Jesus Gallery and will continue his tireless contribution to the arts as a gallery owner, novelty promoter, publisher, mentor, “shock and awe instigator” and all around connoisseur of counterculture.

“Juggernaut” by Mark Todd and “Long Gone” by Owen Smith are now on display at the Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Culver City through 2/6/10. Stop on by and participate in the historic legacy of Southern California’s Pop Art movement.

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Also, catch Mark Todd online in a USAToday interview written by John Geddes and a great article written in the LA Weekly. (The links will take you to the stories, click and read).