Mike Weston In Class!

On Thursday, Room 24 was graced with the appearance of Mike Weston, a famous New Zealand artist! Mike Weston was kind enough to come into Room 24 on Thursday to teach us about how he became such a successful artist!

 His career as an artist began mainly with photography and photo-shop as he worked to create posters for his music gigs. Unfortunately, he found that most of the time, all of his work would go to waste after his show, as he had to scrap the posters afterwards.

 He decided to do full time art, but his real career began when he started to work with his friend, Otis Frizzell, and acted as a sort of 'Art Producer' like how a music producer might work.He would tell Otis what to paint, how to paint it, and when. Otis used to be mainly a street artist, but with this new setup, he could paint on canvas's instead of walls, and so, get paid.

Later, Mike Weston became famous for his 'Behave' piece of Artwork. He drew the original draft on a napkin at a dinner party, and later made a rough draft on the computer. The piece of artwork consisted of the Beehive matchboxes logo, with the Beehive company brand below changed to 'Behave' in stencil writing. The original black and red stripes were changed to have four white koru's in-between them to add some Maori cultural influence. The piece was made during a time where the country was trying to figure out how to be multi-cultural, the art piece saying that the solution is to 'Behave'.

However, when he presented it to his wife, she said that it was dumb and wouldn't sell. After many iterations he abandoned the idea and let it sit for awhile. A few years later he re-visited the idea, and he decided to dump his box of sharp metal pieces, nails, bolts, screws, rocks and sandpaper all over the piece of art. Surprisingly, it made it look much better, the scratched and bruised 'Behave' looking much better than the clean and non-damaged one.

He brought it to an art exhibition where it quickly sold for $1500 to the Labor party leader at the time, who quickly displayed it in her office within the Beehive (House of Parliament). It sold quickly after that first time as the price was set, and many copies were sold, even requiring them to find a printing press so that they could mass-produce copies. Eventually it even managed to become a sponsoring brand, going on to win an award at a wine awards ceremony.

The 'Behave' brand was Mike Weston's crowning achievement, making him $1.5 Million  over the ten years since it was first launched in 2004. However, Mike Weston has worked on other projects despite the fact that 'Behave' is still making him money today. Some of his other more interesting projects include artwork on Woolworth's recycle-able and a large mural depicting Auckland's most famous landmarks.

Because we were so inspired by him, Room 24 will be making a 'Behave' mural on our bland breeze block wall, which is quite fitting for a school! Room 24 gives many thanks to Mike Weston for spending some of his time to come to our class and teach us about himself and his art.

- Joshua Toomath, (Half-dead) Class Blogger.