In the vibrant world of New York City’s art scene, Michael Alan, better known as Michael Alan Alien, stands out not just for his prolific output but for the intriguing layers of his work and life. Born during the dramatic blackout of 1977, Alan’s entry into the world was marked by a moment of darkness, followed by light.
A Bushwick-born artist, Alan has deep roots in the city’s creative landscape, working tirelessly to keep the essence of old New York alive. Together with his wife, the magical performer Jadda Cat, Michael has been transforming humans into living sculptures for over two decades through their ongoing project, “The Living Installation.” This dynamic fusion of art forms has pushed the boundaries of performance art, including a notable 2018 collaboration with renowned New Yorker Matthew Silver. As chronicled in Bushwick Daily, the performance blended colored lights, puppets, and even fart machines into an unforgettable Bushwick experience.
Alan’s unique artistic vision has garnered widespread recognition, attracting the attention of celebrities such as Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Norman Reedus, as highlighted in a recent feature by People Magazine. His works have graced the homes of numerous stars, securing his reputation among the upper echelons of contemporary art. Bushwick Daily has also exclusively learned that even renowned filmmaker and coffee enthusiast David Lynch is a collector. Despite the allure of celebrity patronage, Alan’s true passion lies in the deeper, more personal dimensions of his craft—explorations that transcend surface appeal and delve into the essence of human experience.
In this deeper conversation, Michael Alan Alien delves into the current trajectory of his work, discussing how personal struggles, including a series of surgeries, have shaped his artistic journey. This interview offers an intimate look at the mind of an artist who, despite the challenges, remains committed to pushing the boundaries of art, challenging the viewer, and ultimately seeking to create connections that transcend the ordinary. What follows is an exploration of the man behind the mask, revealing the engine and heart of a creator who is constantly reinventing both himself and the world around him.
“I’ve had a lot of surgeries that slowed me down physically, but through all of it, I stayed productive. Making art in the hospital, during recovery—art is always the constant.”
Alec Meeker: Michael, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you. Before we dive into everything art and the work you’ve been making recently, I’ve got to ask—how are you doing these days? With all that you’ve been through, both physically and creatively, how are you holding up?
Michael Alan Alien: Yeah, doing pretty good. Got myself to join the gym finally.
Alec Meeker: Could you maybe start from the beginning and give a quick overview of the health issues and the battle you’ve had on your journey?
Michael Alan Alien: I’ve had several surgeries from 2013 to now, and they all had complications. They took much longer to recover from than anyone told me. They said, “Oh yeah, you’ll be better in a month,” but that definitely wasn’t the case. It was taking years to get better. I’ve had so many surgeries, honestly. I guess six overall, and I’ll go back to different stuff. I don’t want to get too into it, but I’ve had a lot of complications. One time, I had clotting from it that was really hard to get back from. I had a big DVT, and then I found out I had Factor V, which is a genetic predisposition to clotting. It was really hard to deal with the surgery and the clotting together. It was just a real battle to get it all together. Then, when you have another surgery and another, it’s just really hard to feel like you can ever do anything.
Alec Meeker: It’s not surprising to hear that, given everything you’ve been through physically. But from what I’ve seen in our relationship and in your work, you’re one of the most productive and consistent artists I know. How do you manage to maintain such a high level of output despite these challenges
Michael Alan Alien: Thank you. Yeah, I managed to stay really productive through all that, like making art in the hospital and during recovery. It was always a big struggle for me, but I still did it. I was able to manage to make a lot of stuff during the last several years. It’s definitely challenging, man. Maybe other people enjoy it, like they get to look at the finished result, but by the time I show it, I’m kind of exhausted. I’ve put a lot of time, like five months, into making sure my physical recovery and health are better so I can finally get to a better standpoint. I just want to have more energy. I want to enjoy the creative process better and for it to last longer. Combining the gym with these recoveries sometimes feels impossible because you’re in a lot of pain. You go through this process of all these tests and doctors, and it’s very easy to become extremely limited. No one’s telling you to get back into the gym, so it’s almost super necessary to find a way to just start. You have to push past it. It’s not easy, and you’re not going to win, but at some point, you just have to accept the pain and feel more strength. It’s the only way to really recover.
Alec Meeker: That makes sense.
Michael Alan Alien: It’s just uncomfortable, and maybe that’s it. It’s been a battle, man, a struggle. I’ve been limited on a lot of stuff and haven’t been able to deliver some things. I’m not at that level yet, but everything has been very limited, honestly. I think I’m finally at the point where I can start again.
“We’re headed into a very weird stage. The future of art should help us see clearly and give us some hope.”
Alec Meeker: I’m glad to hear you’re doing better. What current projects are you most excited about, and what are you working on right now?
Michael Alan Alien: Well, I’m sitting here drawing as we speak. I wish I had a great definition of the new pieces, but I don’t have all the information yet. They’re so detailed, multi-layered, and multifaceted pieces, it’s almost like words fail them because there are multiple dimensions in them. They’re designed for people to spend a lot of time staring at them and looking deeply into themselves. They function as anti-television or anti-internet pieces because they don’t function well on the internet since they’re too detailed. And the details are so small that there’s no way to really look at them except to see them in person. So, it forces people to take a break from all the clutter. There’s so much clutter right now. Since COVID, everyone’s on the internet while they’re walking around, live-streaming, taking selfies, and posting their personal stories, which is cool, but it takes away from living in the present moment. These new pieces definitely force people to be like, “Alright, hold up, I gotta get off the internet, take a break, and look at them.” They’re captivating. They’re highly focused.
Alec Meeker: With the shift brought on by COVID, much of the art world has moved online and with it art has become more flat and rectangular because it’s easier to sell in that format on the internet. What are your thoughts on this change?
Michael Alan Alien: Exactly. I feel like people have made worse art because they want to get more likes. If I post something extremely detailed [on the internet], no one can see it or understand it. I’ve even challenged myself to make popular pieces during COVID to see how the reaction was. The reaction was so different. If I do something more readable and clear, it’s almost easier, people go crazy for it, and it goes viral. It’s fascinating, but it’s only momentary joy. It’s good to have some people react to your work online, it’s promo, you need it. But at the same time, we have to push the visual language forward because we’re headed into a very weird stage. I don’t know if humanity is meant for what we’re doing right now. It’s very confusing, but at the same time, it’s successful. It’s detached, and I don’t think it makes a lot of people happy, to be making bad stuff to get a lot of likes. The future of art should help us see clearly and give us some hope. I firmly believe that the language of art needs to be worked on.
“When people look at my work, they’re seeing a reflection of themselves. That’s the real power of art.”
Alec Meeker: You mentioned that art needs to bring humanity forward. Do you have any ideas on how art could do that in a positive way?
Michael Alan Alien: I think it requires more understanding, more time to understand. Art should cause people to slow down and work together. The art takes more time, and the viewer takes more time with the work, these two things work together. The work needs to be more spiritual for lack of a better word, or scientific. It does require us to slow down and take more time with the work. It’s not just a quick, “Give me, give me, how much, how big?” If the artwork doesn’t stick to that realm, it forces people to change their attitude. The first step is for the artist to find a new vision and a new language. We haven’t had a new movement in ages. The last big movement was Pop art/graffiti art in New York, and then what? Where has it gone? Then came NFTs, which were another quick, quick, quick thing. It’s time for a new movement and a new vision because, without it, people are definitely perishing and not going inward.
When people start seeing a part of themselves that they can’t necessarily see, that’s what brings out the best in humanity. The right art does that. It just does that, it’s happened to all of us. You know, the first time you saw a Dali or Picasso, you got triggered like, “Oh, wait, now what does that mean?” That’s the first step, a spiritual wake-up to what’s important. It triggers questioning instead of just moving on to the next thing. I think right now, it’s a lot of “I saw that, next.” In New York, at least, it’s “What’s the next quick thing?” Eventually, that crumbles. We’ve had a lot of sensations in the past that came to a bad ending. I feel like we’re right there again. People aren’t really feeling anything when they go to it. They’re half there, or maybe socially there, enjoying the vibe, but they’re not like “Holy [expletive], this is really moving.” Or, “I need to get involved.” We haven’t had another movement like the ’80s in New York. Nothing has really gelled since then where there’s a movement like the punk movement, the hip-hop movement, the b-boy movement.
People are waiting for something. You also asked how art can help bring betterment. If art really pushes past what the status quo is, people will start noticing that and demand something more genuine, then I do think people start noticing, and they’ll start saying, “Well, you know what about TomShmigly, but he could do this, this way.” It’s almost like a bunch of Tom Shmigly‘s need to step up and push it forward. Because when other people start catching a grasp of it, they will say, “I’m not interested in this nonsense. I want the real deal.”
I had a guy come up to me saying he loved my art but didn’t know how to find other real-deal art. He asked me, “How would I know?” And it’s an interesting question, and I think the consumers are a bit lost because there’s so much content out there, they can’t tell what’s going on anymore. It’s unclear. Museums aren’t being clear either. There’s a lot of noise, and nothing’s clear anymore.
Alec Meeker: You say real-deal art demands attention and requires time to think. It brings people together. And you also said it was scientific. Could you talk about those thoughts more?
Michael Alan Alien: Yeah, I think my work can bring all types of different people together. Because everyone has, I hope everyone has, some of the same abilities to look beyond. I get all types of fans, not just one specific audience. Some of the art world stuff is for a specific audience, constantly, which is dangerous. Art should be for everyone, like anyone could look at Keith Haring’s work and appreciate it. We’ve gotten to a dangerous point where these white cubes are for a few super-rich white guys, and that’s all the news you hear about.
And I do feel like everyone, you know, people should be smart enough where they’re looking at something and it’s bringing in different types of people. And then all of a sudden, the community becomes stronger and you’re like, “Wait, I never really thought I liked the guy at the pizza store.”
I fear that art has become classist, and I hope art that hits everyone in a deeper space can break that class structure. There’s always been that problem in art, we all know it exists. You go to a gallery, and it’s like the same type of person, and there’s no other economic situation in that room. And I feel like that’s such a problem. That’s the great divide. I hope art can be more spiritually broad or more inner.
I see that a lot with my work, and I’m not saying I’m the person that does it, but the one thing I can say is that everyone that I meet is someone different, but they’re all the same because they really want to be present. When people look at my work, they’re not looking at me, you know, they’re looking at something in themselves. That’s in all my paintings, they have to put it together. Everything I’m doing has to be deciphered. You have to code it in your head. It’s like a math equation that you have to figure out, just to see the bigger picture. It’s about the person looking at it. You can’t just look at a Michael Alan and say, “Oh, I get it,” unless it’s one of the pop ones, but for the most part, you’ve gotta spend like five minutes just to, like, see the picture. It’s so blurry and so confused. It all comes together like a dot in a matrix. But you really gotta sit there and take the time, literally, to put all the disjointed angles and dots together. It’s like a math equation that isn’t figured out. It’s about the person looking at it.
Alec Meeker: That’s great.
Michael Alan Alien: What I feel I can offer is to get people to spend time with themselves. I’m making signals that reflect them, reflect the universe, and partially reflect me. But at the end of the day, the real vision comes when people put it together. The newer pieces are open-ended. When I make them, I create maybe a thousand ways each painting could be completed within the frame. So when I’m making it, I’m making several different ways that the picture could be viewed at once. I haven’t really talked about that much, but a lot of them, a lot of the newer ones, specifically in the last year, don’t have just one way to look at it. It’s created several ways, and several ways it can be viewed from left to right and up and down and back and forth. You can just kind of take it in as so many different visuals. That process is very interesting to me. It’s a process that’s changed dramatically in the last year.
Alec Meeker: I love that about your work. It’s surprising to hear that it’s changed dramatically in the last year because your work, for me, has always required systematic viewing and time. Are you saying that in the last year you’ve increased that focus?
Michael Alan Alien: It’s always been part of what I’m doing, but it’s gotten more hyper-focused, especially if you look at the newer works on painting on paper on my website. More of the newer pieces are extremely that way, where some before were like, “This is a figure, figures abstracted in different ways.” A lot of the change comes from me spending time in the city, investigating patterns of people, which is so fascinating. I do a lot of people-watching, observing their behavioral patterns, and I do it for a few hours. I’m drawing all the time with two hands, just getting, like, little dots and motions of, like, which way they’re going and which way their foot lands. And what’s the time and schedule? And little snippets of what they say, and it’s extremely far out. I’ve always done it, but not in this way. Not in a way where I’m just like, “Let me just kind of glance straight at the path of where they’re walking.” I used to look more down at the paper, or stand at an easel.
It’s really interesting, the way people are. There are so many systems out there, and people really follow along with it. And then you throw in the cellular culture and patterns of groupings of people, and it’s just very far out the way people fall into almost like a scientific rhythm.
It’s a scientific mapping along with an overall structure, capturing the rhythm of life. It’s almost like street photography, but in a different form. Sometimes it feels not even really like painting. It’s more observational. It’s very cool. And it’s transcending. That would be the keyword for me.
I’m still doing other things like the Shelley Duvall tribute, but my main work is these new pieces that require people to spend time with them. These pieces are hard to see fully on the internet. I mean, you can see them, but what’s good about them can only be seen in person. There are different materials, and they stack differently with the other different components. So, it’s very hard to see them online the way they really are because it all has to do with how the materials line up. So it’s like, “Well, this is the material I want to be underneath, and this one I want to come forward.” It does require people to spend time with it, which can be peaceful, like yoga (laughs).
Alec Meeker: Is there a show coming up or a way for people to see your art?
Michael Alan Alien: We’re definitely doing something on October 12th, but I don’t want to say too much because sometimes galleries change the date. We’re also doing little tours for friends, and I’m always doing free stuff outside, like Living Installation. I don’t really post about it because it beats the point of it. Some of the art of it is the spontaneity of it. There are exhibitions planned with galleries, but I feel like the galleries should promote it. I’ve had galleries screw things up before, so I just don’t promote it too much when someone else is taking the money.
Alec Meeker: That sounds like a fair policy.
Michael Alan Alien: Yeah, it’s a good policy for artists. Galleries should promote it if they’re taking a lot. I’ve made over 7,000 pieces now. I’m excited about making stuff and doing live videos on TikTok. It’s weird, kind of the opposite of what I have been saying, but during the videos, we all talk about being present. It’s a cool way to connect with people, and it’s been very successful. I’m doing a lot of live streaming, and people are really reacting well to it. We get a lot of people in a short period of time, and they’re collecting art and loving it. It’s an extreme opposite of an art show in a gallery, but it’s very cool. I would recommend streaming to any artist. It’s better than posting because you can connect with people, have deeper conversations, and share some truth. It’s like a Christian Slater “Pump Up the Volume” vibe. It’s a whole other demographic of people from all over the world, and they’re very nice for the most part.
Alec Meeker: How many people are watching the live videos, and how often are you doing them?
Michael Alan Alien: Sometimes I’ll do one every day, sometimes more than once a day. I’m just turning the camera on when I’m working. It’s hard to read the screen while drawing, but if you get into a rhythm, it actually becomes an art form. We get 900 to 1,200 people in an hour. It’s overwhelming, but people are really engaged. Streaming is very good for artists. You can definitely connect with people and have deeper conversations. I try to put positive vibes out there, give people some love, some goals, and share information they’re not going to get from the Whitney. It’s been a cool experience.
Alec Meeker: That’s amazing.
Michael Alan Alien: Yeah, it’s an interesting way to connect with people. I’ve got a lot of people coming on, and it’s been crazy. But it’s overwhelming too, with so many people in a short period of time. It’s very different from an art show or gallery, where galleries struggle to get people to go. Streaming is very effective for connecting with people. We start talking about positive stuff and have deeper conversations. I try to mold the internet into something positive. You’ve got to take it, mold it, and hold that wave. You have to keep it focused, and then people will follow along. It’s a positive attribute. I’m also working on a new music album called “Box Head,” but we haven’t finished it yet. It’s a touchy subject because it’s with my dad, and he’s not here anymore. We’ve been working on it, but I want someone to help me with it. Jadda and I have been doing performance art almost every day, if we’re up for it. We’re wearing more masks, more costumes, and people are starting to recognize it. It’s definitely become a staple thing in New York.
Alec Meeker: That’s amazing.
Michael Alan Alien: People are starting to say, “Look, it’s Michael Alan,” when I walk around. It’s becoming more recognized in New York on a big level. We’re always doing some type of performance along with the paintings. There’s always something going on.
Alec Meeker: I appreciate you taking the time to talk, we’re running out of time. Is there anything else you want to say to the readers of Bushwick Daily?
Michael Alan Alien: I think Bushwick Daily readers and people in general should consider supporting local art in their cities. Museums are not in tune with their job to consider local art, and there’s not enough funding or grants. There’s so much empty real estate in the city after COVID, and I would love to see some people take the challenge of preserving art, not just my own work, but any artists out there doing good work. Art is important; it’s what builds our culture. If you don’t see anything around you, it just becomes, “What is it?” Very few artists are still out there hustling. I wish museums and institutions spent more time on that, instead of the same things over and over again. We’ve lost a lot of great stuff in New York, and I always think, “Why didn’t I do anything about it?” I want to see New York become New York again. It’s time for these institutions to grasp the situation and help keep some of the culture alive.
Alec Meeker: Yeah, that’s a good place to leave it.
Michael Alan Alien: I want to see New York become New York again.
