Curios – A new book by Mike Perry Studio

How amazing is it that we live in a time where it is so easy to make a beautiful book? When Blurb reached out to me, I had made a few books with them but it had been a few years since the last project. So I was stoked to see what we could do. Using the InDesign plug-in to create and upload my book Curios blew my mind. I started making books when typically I would have had to do hours or even days of pre-press. Now, just like that, you have the book, you print it, you share it, and it lives as an object traveling through our lives.

The act of transforming things is so central to the art I make. Even just a collection of lines can become something sublime if you arrange them in the right way. Through everything I do, I want to remind people to look at the world around them and perceive magic. This way of making and seeing is evident in these still lifes that we create. In these pieces, we are experimenting with different techniques and materials. Simple combinations like resin and Styrofoam result in objects of singular beauty. Latex gloves used when spray-painting become abstract canvases themselves if you stop to see them. I love the idea that we can find art in everything that touches the art-making process because so much surrounds it.

We use these ready-mades in the same way that I use the small notebook I carry around with me—to play with ideas that later translate into more fully formed compositions. Because some of these pieces have gone through many iterations, they remind me that art emerges from the dance of time and intuition. Sometimes a piece doesn’t feel quite right. You step away from it, and when you return, you add something, and it finally gets that feeling of completeness. The object has realized its purpose for that moment of expression in the universe.

Special thanks to Blurb for making this book, Curios, and for helping to keep books alive, and for evolving in this ever-changing modern world.

Mike Perry is a designer and artist working in numerous media: books, magazines, films, newspapers. Perry is originally from Kansas City, Missouri. His creative adventure began at age 13 when his grandfather a painter himself gave him a tackle box full of paint.  From then on, it has been one canvas, silkscreen, notebook page, paper, and poster print after another.  Perry went to Minneapolis College of Art and Design for a degree in graphic design, and his first job was designing for Urban Outfitters where he worked for 3 years.

Photo of Mike Perry taken by Emiliano Granado.