Michael Bilotta : Expressive Reality

Mr. Bilotta has done many things in life and still has many more things to do. He balances the day job with his creative design, constantly allowing those artistic creative juices to flow, in spite of momentary distractions of life.

Starting from the sketchings of a child to the music of his youth, to the creative genius that he has become, Mr. Bilotta is finished yet... so stay tuned... But, in the meantime, come read his own words describing his life of art.

I came out of the womb with a need to create. I was drawing since I can remember. My earliest memories include pads of paper and and markers or crayon. The label "class artist" was attached to me pretty early on in grade school.

The first medium was drawing/sketching, and later it became music and songwriting, and then photography. Since starting so early, and with the self-critical mind of an adult now, it is hard for me to call those early six year old drawings artistic creations, but I do remember one picture I did at six that, in retrospect, speaks a lot to how I do things now. It was a drawing of Clark Kent/Superman changing into his costume and dashing out his office window. It was very detailed for a six year old and I remember it took a long time to do. It showed the discarded suit, the glasses flung off, papers scattering in the rush of air of Superman taking flight. There was even a comb to change his hairstyle. It was fully colored. In other words, no white paper remained. Everything was filled in, wall color, and there was even an attempt to show the transparency of the glass of the windows. It lacked a good anatomical understanding of the human figure, like you would expect from a six year old, but the detail makes me laugh now when I think of it.

After getting bit by the pop music bug in the 80s, and following that fever all the way to music college, I emerged from that experience very differently than I expected. Music college is all about structure, and rules of harmony, and analyzing music on the molecular level, and it can really strip away passion and your original desire. It isn't always a bad thing, but I learned in college that it was not satisfying enough to "be in a band" or play guitar. I wanted to still be the artist, and that meant writing songs, and finding my singing voice. I came out of those four years a little confused as to what my voice was, what it was I wanted to say, but the songs did come, and in 1994, I finished my first full length album, 10 songs, that, while hard for me to listen to now, was nevertheless a thought-out, honest songwriting attempt. It was called "The Weather Prophet" and I played a lot of instruments on it, and sang it all, and wrote every note of it, so I was pretty proud of it.

One of the difficult things in my life is that my art never became my career, and so I always had to have the "day job" to sustain me. That takes its toll on art, on energy, and even hope, when you are spending so much time doing something you do not like. So for me, my creative process needs to be compartmentalized. I work full time Monday through Friday, and that leaves very little left when you get home to pour good energy and time into an artistic process. So, weekends are the time for DOING - for getting things shot, and assembled in Photoshop. The rest of the week I look for ways to get my work out there online, and look for props or models or even ideas for the weekends when I have time to devote to it. So the week is not lost time, I just learned to work on the necessary things that require less effort in time during the Monday through Friday period. I spend a lot of time thinking of what I want to do, and come the weekend, I have some concrete things lined up in my head. I don't think I take breaks from the creative process, and as I get older, I do not want to take breaks. I am creating, on some level, all the time and feel restless when I am not creating.

I wanted to try to take whatever skill I have behind the camera and turn it into my small business, and quit the day job at last, Two things became evident: the photography market is totally saturated with both the talented and the novices all advertising themselves as photographers, so making a living doing it means a lot of hustling and low bidding, and doing, GASP, weddings, or as I call them, dreadings. I just didn't have an interest in it. So, I am focusing more on fine art photography these days, about once again "saying something" or expressing something and not just taking someone's photo. I try to get it out there as much as I can on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, my own website, and on social media, as well as an online, curated gallery called 1x.com. I submit to photo contests, and this is all leading up to, hopefully, doing the art gallery showings circuit.  Please see any link(s) in the "Connecting" section at the bottom of this interview; located adjacent to the relevant link reference(s).

"My entire life has been an experiment with a variety of creative outlets and media. However, I think I am at heart a frustrated wanna-be painter! My first love was film and fantasy, and I used to draw/sketch and thought I would go into art/design." -Michael Bilotta

I plan on honing my voice in fine art photography, and tackle subjects and imagery that is important to me. I plan on amassing a body of work that I am proud enough to stand behind and that I will be able to brave rejections as I submit to galleries for showings. I would LOVE to do artwork for CDs and Book covers and movie posters.

Please visit Mr. Bilotta, at his links below. Mr. Bilotta has expressed that he welcomes friends requests. Note: Social media links have been removed because they are currently invalid but possibly may be updated on Mr. Bilotta's website in the future.  Please see any link(s) in the "Connecting" section at the bottom of this interview; located adjacent to the relevant link reference(s).

In the words of Michael Bilotta, from his website, "My entire life has been an experiment with a variety of creative outlets and media. However, I think I am at heart a frustrated wanna-be painter! I used to draw/sketch and thought I would go into art/design."
Connecting with Michael Bilotta :
	Artist Site :	www.michaelbilotta.com
	Online Store :	store.1x.com/artists/michael-bilotta
	Blog :	www.michaelbilotta.com/blog