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Artist Michael Green: Mopping up the muse (and having big fun in the process)

MORGANTOWN - Michael Green wasn't exactly putting his best face forward that afternoon two years ago, but the thing was ... the effort was still pretty good.

Well, check that.

It was quite good, in fact.

Especially since the artist (and teacher) was offering up an art lesson - on the fly - right in the middle of an interview with this newspaper.

It came after the guy with the notebook, for the record, confessed he can't even render stick figures the same way twice.

Said guy, with the notebook, who had just asked about the deceptively tricky art of drawing faces.

You know: ones complete with eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth.

Sure, it looks easy.

Heck, you discovered way back in first grade that it most definitely isn't - when you tried to make that fingerprint portrait of your mom for Mother's Day.

Uh, the gentle lady looked a lot like a Picasso outtake. A lot.

So, the guy with the notebook (and failed stick figure artist and Mother's Day portrait maker) ventured ... is there some kind of magic mind-hack attached to the creative enterprise?

Green, who taught art in Monongalia County Schools for 37 years and has been a practicing artist even longer, then proceeded to, well ... make it look easy.

"Lemme borrow your pen for a second," he said.

On a page from that notebook - the one with all his quotes, and maybe an arthritic stick figure in the margin - Green made it happen.

The face, that is.

"OK, you start out with an oval," he began.

"And then you want to make a couple of crosses to get your scale," he continued.

Call it an organic grid, if you like. Those intersecting lines.

The nose goes in the center.

The eyes are right above.

Two more lines below the nose, to suggest a mouth.

All proportioned, all somewhat symmetrical.

"Somewhat," he said, because no face is perfectly balanced.

Not even the ones attached to supermodels.

"And there you go," Green said of the rendering that was cartoon-y, and realistic, at the same time.

"See how it all flows? It's natural."

THE MUSE WIELDS A MOP (SOMETIMES)

So is the wellspring of creativity for the artist, who has a show and sale going on through Sunday at The Co-Op, the communal art gallery on Pleasant Street that is one of his favorite venues.

When Lisa Guiliani, who owns The Co-Op, said Green mopped up his muse with this latest outing, she isn't just engaging in alliterative wordplay.

He really did.

“Mopscapes from Hastings Farm” is the name of the show.

Green, who makes art with everything from coffee grounds to paper towels, used mops for his paintbrush, for this one.

Yes, mops, Giuliani said - the same implements you use to clean up spills in the kitchen.

"Pretty amazing," she said of the installations. "You're just gonna have to come down and see them."

Green isn't afraid to go big with his art. Or whimsical. Or genre-busting.

After all, this is the artist who once described his style as, "Andy Warhol meets Picasso at South Beach."

Big colors, he said. Bold lines. Cubist forms.

His friend Scott Frederick did the framing for the show.

GETTING DRAWN IN

In the meantime, you can visit the Co-op page on Facebook, and the Artwork by Michael Green page, also found at FB, for first glances.

Growing up a townie in Morgantown, Green had a natural talent for art, though he wasn't sure what to do with it at first.

At Morgantown High School, his favorite class turned out to be art.

Ann Linger, who held court in the studio that masqueraded as a classroom, was his favorite teacher.

Ms. Linger, he said, may have even subconsciously drawn him in to what would become his bill-paying vocation.

Right up until freshman orientation at West Virginia University, he had painted a future picture of himself as a social studies teacher.

Then, the lady on the other side of the table asked, "What do you want to do, young man? What's your major?"

As Green remembers, the smile on his face was permanently etched.

"I just kind of blurted it out. I said, 'I'm gonna be an art teacher.' And I never regretted it. Not once.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE AN ARTIST - TO BE AN ARTIST

There is one thing, though, that Green, who was on the inaugural faculty of North Elementary School and retired from his alma mater of MHS, doesn't like.

He's talking, as he said, about conventional (and incorrect) wisdom attached to anyone who pursues education as a career.

The one that goes, "Those who can't - teach."

"That one really gets on my nerves," he allowed.

Any art teacher he ever knew was an artist, period, he said.

Someone compelled to create.

"Everybody's an artist," he said.

"You, me, toddlers. Think about that. The first thing you ever drew was in Crayon on the kitchen wall."

Or, maybe on the linoleum floor.

Which might have required a mop.

Hey, wait a second ...