We recently connected with Mike Racanelli and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mike, thanks for joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I don’t think that being happy as an artist is achievable. Being an artist or a creative is an itch you can never quite scratch. It’s perpetually solving ethereal problems. It’s feeling everything too deeply and having to translate that in a way that the world can maybe, just maybe, understand. I’m not saying I’m miserable by any stretch, I’m perfectly content when I get to create.

I’ve always viewed creating as a compulsion. It’s a constant flow of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, that incessantly nag at me until I birth them. Once I do that, it’s out of my system. The world can hate it, love it, ignore it, or connect with it, and all of that is fine with me. I’m not an artist who feels the need to strangle my work. I said what I had to say, and if you don’t get it, someone else will.

Does that mean that I don’t care at all about what I do? No. It’s one of the greatest gifts when someone can experience a piece I created and connect on some level. Something that can speak for them when they can’t. People have shared with me some incredibly deep feelings that came from work I’ve created. Anytime you can connect with someone on that level, do something positive for someone to help them feel understood, that’s a reason to keep doing it.

I’ve worked many “regular” jobs over the years, in what feels like 20 different lifetimes. Though the lure of predictability is a respite for my ADHD brain, and honestly I’ve probably fantasized a dozen times about moving to a small town in Maine or Vermont and becoming a life insurance salesman, sooner or later I swell with ideas, and give in to the animal.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

It’s been quite a long journey, with a ton of twists and turns. I can say that I was always an artistic child, and curious to a fault. I have definitely gotten in trouble as a kid trying to take things apart and put them back together just to see what makes them work. In fact, if you ask my mom, she’ll tell you a story of the gift she got me for my eighth birthday, my Armatron. It was an elaborate robotic arm from Radio Shack for $40 –– almost $100 in 2023 money. This was the 80s, mind you, so it was pretty cutting edge. You could use two joysticks to turn it every which way, and pick up objects with its little pincer claws. I really wanted to know what made it work, so I nabbed my dad’s screwdriver and started to dissect it. Low and behold, there were about 90 plastic gears in there. I never got it back together, and my mom still brings it up to this day.

I would draw and sketch, entering art fairs as a kid, then in my teens, became obsessed with the idea of being in a band. Grunge was just blowing up, and I idolized Kurt Cobain. My mom bought me a guitar, and I taught myself to play by listening to songs on the radio. The first song I ever learned was “Violet” by Hole. This was pre-internet, so the only way you could learn how to play was by taking expensive lessons, or figuring it out. We didn’t have much money, so figuring it out was the only way to rock stardom. Really it was just another medium to free the ideas haunting my brain. I went on to teach myself piano, drums, and bass guitar. It was easier to convey ideas to other people I was playing with, if I just knew how to do it myself.

Oddly, I also got deeply into computer programming in the same time period. I was teaching myself C++ on a UNIX SysV system and hanging out in the computer lab in my high school. I thought for a minute I wanted to go that route, and I’d probably be a billionaire right now, but the call of rock bands was far too tempting.

After a stint playing in bands, doing some regional touring, recording a few EPs, I ended up in a lot of random jobs. The financial industry on the trading floors of the CBOT and CME in Chicago, retail, a law clerk, and finally started doing freelance web and graphic design. I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator solely to do album art for my friends, but one morning, living in a house with two friends, and no job, I decided to go to college. I enrolled that fall at Columbia College Chicago, in their graphic design program.

I eventually got a job at a mid-sized marketing company on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. Midway through my degree, I switched to an arts management focus, and started an artist management company. I signed and developed a handful of bands, who did some really great things, but all of the years in music started to wear on me. I had some filmmaker friends, and at 30 years old, I decided to sell all of my things, move to Los Angeles, and become an actor.

I started in scene study classes for two years, did a round at Upright Citizens Brigade, student films and short films, and finally thought I’d be better suited creating opportunities than chasing them. I began writing, directing, and producing. That led to editing my own projects, sometimes jumping behind the camera to shoot projects for friends. In 2016, I won an Emmy® for producing an ad for an anti-hate campaign. Then, right before COVID hit, I had landed an hour sci-fi pilot with a production company. Right around the time they began shopping it, the world shut down, and it all disappeared.

It had been quite a taxing few years, and I decided to reevaluate life. Through some more twists and turns, which I won’t go into here, I ended up getting into creative direction and began painting to deal with anxiety. Painting was the one thing I never really tackled, and somehow it felt like the right time.

I’d finally hit a place in my life where I stopped trying to be something I thought I was supposed to be, and let the years of experience lead me. Even though a lot of people try to tell you to be “laser focused,” I found my strength was the opposite. I’m great at solving problems on every level, and creativity is just that, solving a perceived problem. I threw my weight behind my creative agency, Brighton Park Media, and have managed to wear every hat imaginable on one project or another. Some of my graphic design work became ALIVE Los Angeles, a streetwear company, and I had my first gallery pop-up and started selling some of my paintings in 2022. This is where I feel most at home, using every facet of creativity I’ve developed over the years, to solve problems and put interesting things into the world.

Really, I just want to build community through creativity. At the end of the day, we all want to feel understood. If something I do can strike that match, I can go to bed knowing I’ve shifted the universe, just a bit.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I think the marketing of NFTs rolled out in a terrible way. It was coopted by loads of people trying to scam. The underlying technology will stick around, but will be rebranded. It’s a really great way to attach digital providence and contrary to what people want to think, you’re going to have digital property in the future. I think the technology was far too early, as often happens. I got tired of people saying “It’s just a JPEG” and having to explain what NFT actually is. Do I think the Bored Apes were cool? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

One of the greatest things America ever did to help artists was “the Section” which was part of the New Deal in 1933. So much great public art and architecture was created using federal money that still exists today. So, almost 100 years ago, the federal government made a huge push to employ artists for the benefit of society. Today, the arts are always the first thing on the chopping block.

The arts are one of the most integral parts of a society, because it’s literally a historical record of society, from the people who are experiencing it. There’s real value to that, as another human being. At any time in history, if someone was trying to eradicate a people, they tried to eradicate their art and expression. I don’t think we talk enough about that and how important it is.

The Internet, the double edged sword that it is, also absolutely saturated the marketplace with people who want to be professional creatives. Everyone has “a friend who knows Photoshop” or only wants something done for copy or credit. Most people haven’t developed their taste, so they’d rather pay someone on Fiverr $5 for a logo, which is probably just Papyrus, than actually invest in their brand.

In the capitalist race to the bottom, it’s going to take a massive societal shift to value and appreciate quality work. Social media and tech companies have been incredibly exploitative of artists, and I’m looking forward to the day that Web 2.0 dies.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mikeracanelli.com
• Instagram: @mikeracanelliart
• Facebook: facebook.com/mikeracanelliart
• Youtube: youtube.com/@mikeracanelliart

Image Credits
Chris Mullins