Profile of Artist Michael Murnane

“There’s one week out of the year where you can cover yourself in blood and walk down the street and everyone just laughs.”

A statement that epitomizes the absurd holiday that is Halloween and the cheerful fascinations of artist Michael Murnane. His fifth year being a part of Ghost Ship, Michael is an incredibly talented artist with expertise in drawing, sculpture, and character development.

So it comes as no surprise that his piece is the Monster Graveyard. Constructed of forty gravestones of varying sizes, each one with a portrait of a different monster, the graveyard tucks up against the back wall of the main room.

“I’m kind of obsessed with creatures and monsters and storytelling devices, whether it’s a sculpture or an illustration.”

His installation is a hybrid of it all. Each gravestone is a painting made from donated materials (foam board) sculpted into varying shapes that come together to tell one story — a graveyard.

“I really wanted to see that graveyard. It’s just a bunch of paintings sitting there, but when they look like gravestones it’s such a Halloween icon.”

A lot of the art at Ghost Ship is interactive, and although we may consider that to be pieces that you can move and touch, Michael also considers instillations to be interactive. “Just walking into an installation is interactive,” and that’s the beauty of his piece—that the gravestones can be stand alone paintings and become the scene of a graveyard.

A continuation of last year’s piece in which a pendulum would knock down gravestones, this year the graveyard stands alone. Party-goers ended up turning the pendulum rope into a rope swing and eventually someone just (sadly) cut it off all together. He considered doing yoga-ball bowling this year, with the gravestones as the pins, but decided having a loose ball at a rave was probably not a good idea. So his piece evolved into a stand alone graveyard with more headstones, creating an emphasis on the story of each one and the experience of being in a graveyard as a whole.

“You know how people will gather at a cemetery on Day of the Dead and tell stories about the person and drink and cry and whatever the heck? I thought that would be funny because it’s at a rave. Halloween and Day of the Dead has a history of celebration of the dead. And these monsters are celebrating their dead. It’s all human metaphors. But I’m big on the celebration of death, because that’s life.”

He comes back again and again to this celebratory idea of a graveyard. A refreshing perspective on a place I (and most of society) consider to be cold and mournful. Each stone has a story, a celebration of the life of that creature, not of its death. Or, it’s of both. Each a side of the same coin, each dependent on the other. “America has such a non celebration of death. It’s there but it’s not encouraged.” Halloween being the exception to that rule. A time when meditation on death is accepted.

The entire warehouse is teeming with the creative merry-making of Halloween. Each artist extrapolating on a concept about this holiday and sharing ideas, tips, and materials.

“As you’re painting around a ton of people, little ideas come up and pieces of friendships get incorporated. I painted a heart dripping with all these clouds and then there’s all these characters reaching up for a drip off the heart. I felt like that was kind of like this room. That’s what everybody wants right? Just a little drip off the love.”

Michael, like others, emphasizes that for the artists it’s the environment of the build that’s the most magic. The creation before the commotion.

“The week or two of community coming together is what it is, and the party is the ‘well, maybe you’ll have fun’ and you probably will.”

And like other artists, he stresses that it really is the most fun to participate as an artist.

“That’s the thing they give you at this event. They may not give you a lot of money, but they give you food and they give you this crazy place and they pay for materials. So you should f*ckin come down and work! I see it as they want us to make a ton of shit and make it as kooky and fun as possible. And that’s great.” 

— Originally published in 2014 on the now defunct 1690Post.com

http://1690post.com/the-monster-graveyard-michael-murnane-helps-monsters-celebrate-their-dead/