Gems With Germon: “They’re going to think it’s about rocks”

Written by Jayne McGinn

Mike Germon is one of my favorite people to talk to; he is articulate, funny and a great story teller. Mike peppers our conversations with some thing I like to call his “Gems”. I sat down with Mike Germon to discuss ThoughtMarker, Lil Wayne, Galaga, collages, and his work as a baby corn activist. Here are some of the “Gems” from that conversation:

“ThoughtMarker doesn’t necessarily critique- it’s more about promotion, and exposure, like finding stuff that I like and showing everyone. I’m trying to make it more visually based: less words, more visual, more photos, images and videos. I want to let the creativity and the Art speak for itself, just get it out there. I think that is more of my function.”

“The blogs I’m more interested in looking at are things like butdoesitfloat; it’s almost entirely image based; [websites that are] almost more curated then than journalistic. It is almost like putting an art show on line. [ThoughtMarker] might eventually go all the way that direction, but mostly I’m just trying to focus on not even promoting specific shows but picking out specific pieces from shows and showing them or photographs that people are taking and putting them up… trying to get photos of street art. I’m just trying to get a platform for people to see those.”

“I grew up playing Galaga all of my life. Older people will come up to me and be like- “How old are you? What do you know about Galaga?” and I’ll be like [unflappably] “Uhhh… I donno… what do you know about it?”

“The reason I started ThoughtMarker at the very beginning was because I didn’t see an online place where there was any kind of promotion collectively for these underground DIY Art shows that I started finding out about. I found out about Youngblood, and I was friends with James and Mark from Beep Beep; they were doing house shows. Through James, I met Joy who was doing L’Avenue (which is where Beep Beep is now), and there was this place Yoyo on Carroll Street. Foundation One opened up right around the same time. There wasn’t a collective spot on-line that was advertising for all of these. [For example,] if you knew about Youngblood you could go on their site and you find out when they have their next show but you wouldn’t find out about anything that was similar. That was the initial goal; it started from promotion. Then, I thought it was more interesting to zero in on specific artists pieces and try to promote those things, that’s the direction its going in now.”

“I didn’t get really really good at Galaga until recently. After I got to level 50 on one quarter it wasn’t long until I could get past 100, but then I had to start keeping track of the score. I realized that when the score reaches a certain number is flops over back to zero. So, if you want the high score on the machine you have to get as closest to a million without reaching it. You have to pay attention and kill off all your guys once you beat the top score. That’s interesting. That’s stuff you learn from the veterans.”

“I don’t know if [ThoughtMarker] has or hasn’t [affected the Atlanta Art scene] I think it was just the logical sort of progression that blogs would end up being more prevalent in the critique, promotion and exposure.”

“If you’re trying to get with Lil Wayne I have no real answers for you.”

“I know I can go out and find these images, and find these photographs, and I’m more interested in doing that than I am talking about them.”

“Baby corns are fantastic; because they are like little corns- you eat the whole thing! I don’t know if they are better for you than regular corn or whatever, but it’s delicious. And they are real corn. You [Jayne] and other people have tried to tell me that they aren’t actually corn, but what they are is real corns harvested before they mature.”

“I really like the process of putting together shows and bringing together different artists. It’s almost like the process of collaging stuff, like finding things from different source material, seeing how they go together if their in juxtaposition, if they are totally different, or if they some how make sense together… if a narrative or a story can be drawn through these images, that’s interesting. That’s the same sort of thing when curating shows, like finding people that maybe work in the same medium, maybe there doesn’t seem like there is similarities but when you put them together it works really well… it’s the same sort of process. I also think about it like making an album rather than making a song. I guess that’s really how shows should be thought of cause your trying to get a body a work. Like curating a show with a body of people is like a mix tape.”

“Basically, even when I’m not working on stuff, I’ll check out thrift stores. History books are my favorite ones. I like old weird imagery like diagrams and illustrations. Also Art history stuff. I look at these books and when I have time cut stuff out of them, copy stuff out of them, and eventually I’ll have all these things. I’ll photo copy things together and treat those like sketches. I have a book full of weird photocopies cut out. And then eventually [I’ll] have a show coming up; I got to put these things together. I go through the sketches and find what works and what I want to do.”

“The next ThoughtMarker shirt is going to be at least 100 percent baby corn fabric, and baby corn byproducts.”

“I will be eating baby corn and the corn community will know that I care for their young.”

“Source“, an exposition of collage by Mike Germon and Truett Dietz, opens this Saturday, Sept. 11 from 8pm-11pm at Beep Beep Gallery.

Read Mike Germon’s brain-child blog, ThoughtMarker here.

Mike is also gallery manager for MINT Gallery.

Photo Credit: Jason Travis

AT

That baby corn statement is the kinda stuff that makes a girl fall in lurrrrrve.
Reve

I like to call them his “Germs”