pictured left<\/em>]\u2014\u201cthis was on the side of a Sears building in Downtown LA. But I tell ya: somebody\u2019ll paint, \u2018Fuck!\u2019 on the building and then you have some place like Sears saying, \u2018Hey Bob, go out there and re-paint over the damn thing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nHe wasn\u2019t kidding: in this particular piece\u2014a massive wall-hung canvas measuring 7 feet wide-ish by 10 feet tall-ish\u2014you can see that a maintenance crew was sent out with a white paint bucket to cover a \u2018Fuck!\u2019 of some sort. You can see the white paint roller starting from the center and then curving right to cover whatever it was that was offensive on the black layer under it. Before the black, a red. Before the red, another white. Before the white, the wall itself.<\/p>\n
The irony, of course, is that the obsession with covering graffiti\u2014even if it means creating an off-putting patch that destroys the building\u2019s character more than any street writer\u2019s spray paint could\u2014creates a new graffiti of sorts; an urban expressionism, if you will. And Mick\u2019s keen eye catches it repeatedly, from the odd images created by the Cover Up Maintenance Crews to the layers created by nature itself.<\/p>\n
![\"Victor06\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Victor06.png\")
\u201cOne of my favorite pieces from Long Beach is this painter\u2019s table,\u201d Mick said while pointing to a beautiful, up-close shot of Long Beach artist Michael Stearns\u2019s table [pictured right]. \u201cI like the way this guy is floating in the air, with his feet being lifted up\u2026 [Stearns\u2019s] assistant posted something on Facebook about cleaning up their studio. She took all the paint off this painting table and then took this wide shot of the table\u2014which I fell in love with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking the table with him for a few days, Mick endlessly photographed shot after shot of the canvas whose fa\u00e7ade took years of accidental paint drips and slips of the wet paintbrush to create. Accidents\u2014like the \u201caccidents\u201d that are weather, time, and the placement of pots on a planter\u2019s bench all coinciding to provide Mick a beautifully monotonous piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had put pots\u2014flower and clay pots\u2014on this bench and they were on there for about ten years and then the rain and everything else just\u2026 Left these spheres all over,\u201d Mick said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want it so I just put it on the side of garage, y\u2019know? And when I was driving home one night, my headlights just shone on it and I immediately had to make sure the image never left me.\u201d<\/p>\n
This piece, along with the others mentioned, were featured in the photographer\u2019s latest exhibit at the Chuck Jones Gallery in Costa Mesa. A total of ten large prints were put on display\u2014a marriage between Mick-as-photographer and Mick-as-painter thanks to his printer, Daniel Friedman in Van Nuys.<\/p>\n
Friedman\u2019s knack for seeing what Mick sees\u2014\u201cThe photographer and printer relationship\u2014it\u2019s everything,\u201d Mick noted\u2014permits Mick to move beyond film and .jpegs and into the physical space of galleries.<\/p>\n
![\"Victor03\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Victor03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
This hand-in-hand becomes tantamount when talking of Mick\u2019s more altered photographs that require Photoshop to show the world what\u2019s going on inside the artist\u2019s head. It can be, for instance, the oil leaks of cars staining the parking lot and, without hesitation, Mick sees a warrior, while you as the viewer might be a tad bit miffed at a monstrous soldier poking out from the oil patterns. To calm our less sophisticated heads, Mick will take photograph after photograph from different angles and then slowly piece them together to make what he deems to be a warrior in a manner that we can actually imagine it. <\/p>\n
Ultimately, despite whether his images are raw and unfiltered through Photoshopping or collages of images neatly edited and pieced together, there is one thing Mick refuses to halt, and that is the urban ballet of large populations. The random interaction of denizens\u2014from the haves and have-nots to the single-family dwellers and the sans papiers<\/em>\u2014create a need for expression and a desire to be heard, even if it means taking to the alleys and hidden walls where a stream of urine stretches under your feet and the stench of brake dust and trash pervade your nostrils.<\/p>\n“It’s not always pretty,” Mick said, “but there’s this potency about it all. There’s a reason that kid felt the need to scream, ‘Fuck!’ on a wall. It goes beyond vandalism, beyond territory marking… And Long Beach is incredible provincial\u2014almost trying to create this Polyanna<\/em>-esque world. Which is great for living with one another but when when it comes to individuality, it’s stifling.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach photographer Mick Victor likes to piece things together\u2014which explains the artist’s largest side project, Art Unexpected. Delving into the alleyways and concrete wind tunnels of Long Beach and Los Angeles, scaling the walls and fa\u00e7ades of the all-too-unexplored spaces and crevices of New York and London, Mick searches for what he calls \u201caccidental images.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":68334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1287,186],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-long-beach-arts-month-2014","tag-photography","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Victor01\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Victor01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen_Shot_2014-10-24_at_1.10.39_PM.png\")
But the obvious things about this sometimes-bespectacled man with erratic-yet-coiffed hair, brightly colored socks, and calm demeanor\u2014more Zen Buddhist than Andy Warhol\u2014are also the least interesting. Mick is a builder as much as he is a photographer, admittedly loving to take separate pieces and put them together to create larger, fantastical entities that help let what is inside his head escape into tangible form.<\/p>\n![\"Victor10\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Victor10.png\")
\u201cThe chaos of everything can be quite beautiful, y\u2019know?\u201d Mick said. \u201cPeople often forget that\u2026 Look at this:\u201c\u2014as the artist quickly gestured to a print that resembled a Rothko more than a random photograph [pictured left<\/em>]\u2014\u201cthis was on the side of a Sears building in Downtown LA. But I tell ya: somebody\u2019ll paint, \u2018Fuck!\u2019 on the building and then you have some place like Sears saying, \u2018Hey Bob, go out there and re-paint over the damn thing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n