Artist Interviews 2025

Michael Deyermond  
By Laura Siebold



Michael Deyermond’s art is a testimony to life. Books and words are the poet’s fuel, and his art is his way of communicating. By engaging the different senses and allowing the life of an object to become a part of his work, the artist fuses past, present and future. In the following lines written by Michael, he recalls the achievement he is most proud of and imagines the ultimate last piece in his artistic legacy.



Your work exhibits stories of pain, hope, resilience. What ignited your passion in art and Language?


Everything begins with books for me. Books gave me both a way of navigating and enduring the world as an outsider, as well as a vocation.

Reading was my shelter, my second skin. But I had to get good at it. I learned to read in the syllabus form - I gather groups of books to be read together hoping to get a full picture of a subject; a novel, a book of poems, a monograph, a photographic text all relating to the same subject.

Books have shown me what is honest speech in storytelling, and what is not; how to listen to the experience, note the feeling, and center it in one ripe moment.



When did you start experimenting with materials ? how have you found your unique style in combining words with images?


I set out to be a poet. I sat at my typewriter every morning and evening with a bottle of beer, listening to Coltrane or Bach. Poem after poem after poem, for about 7 years. I loved living in that world where all I had to defend myself with were words on a page. But ultimately, something was missing–in the work and in my own release. Through the work of William Blake, Kenneth Patchen and Wallace Berman I came to see there was another way. That I could be a poet on my own terms. With words + pictures + physicality.



Where do you find inspiration for your work ? do you have to be in a specific mindset to create?


Directly from my life and relationships. Every moment. Every time I break something while trying to make coffee, or fail at finding peace. Living with a broken body in a confounding world and carving a 4 ft high wood champion’s cup to mock that - this is where the inspiration is for me. The raucous and humiliating folly of my life.

I make work to survive. To convince myself I am here for a reason. To contribute to the ongoing and infinite continuum of man’s expression of how and why we live. I make work to save myself from giving up.



Where do art and reality unite in your work ? how do you get your message across to your audience?


The first part of this question confuses the shit out of me. I almost don’t know how to answer it. I want to say: art and reality don’t unite in my work anywhere. Fuck reality. But I’m sure that’s not true.

I work hard to show what it feels like to be me. I have stayed where it hurts and burrowed into the uncomfortable to give an honest portrayal of my landscape and composition.

I once heard an incredibly articulate, street beaten dude in harvard square, standing on a broken milk crate with a radio shack megaphone, talk about his life on the streets, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the movies of John Cassavetes and how hard it was to kick heroin, all in the same the breath. At the end of this sermon, he asked for donations in order to purchase a larger milk crate and a louder megaphone to more effectively reach the people of the streets.

I’ve used that as a model for how I want to get my message across. That and maybe a little Rudolf Steiner, too. Simultaneously stimulate as many senses as possible to make the audience most open and attuned to receiving the message. And then use the profits to do it again, but this time with a louder megaphone.



You use various media like wood, and book covers as a surface for your art. how do you decide on the objects you use or build your art on?


I like materials that have had their own lives before meeting me. I like wood that's been a windmill in the desert for a hundred years and wood that’s been worshiped over in church. I like books that have been given to lovers who lose their love, who then sell it to some dude in a bookstore who then sells it to me. In this manner, all that human experience– the joy, wisdom and pain–accumulated in the existence of the object becomes a part of my work. Everybody wins. Unless you’d rather be a windmill than a piece of my work.



Did you grow up in the los angeles area ? How has the art community influenced you in your artistic development?


I moved to Los Angeles when I was 22. It's as far as you can go from the east coast and stay in the country. It's the edge of our culture where artists and writers go to invent new ways of expressing themselves. Los Angeles thrives on people being exactly who they are and taking it as far as they possibly can.

There are hundreds of artists in Los Angeles who have inspired me to be true to the voice and be fucking cool about it– from Chris Burden to the artists of the ‘graffiti towers’ in dtla.



You are criticizing society with your art. What is your vision for a better future for artists and society?


My main beef with society is that people don’t question things. They do them because the other guy is doing them. Literature has taught me how to question beyond enculturation which is what I try to express in my work.

In this country, artists are extraneous–as if the work itself is some kind of leisure sport or decoration. But art is a vital part of man’s life, it keeps him somewhere in between being an animal and a robot. It should be integral to our lives. Essential. Food shelter clothing art. Art is the human spirit and should be everywhere.



You have been personally impacted by the recent fires in Los Angeles. How have you and any fellow artists you met found hope ? in your opinion - how can the community benefit from those tragic events in the long run?


Yeah, I lost quite a bit of work in the fires. A house that was holding an archive of work dating back to 2002 burned down on the alphabet streets. There were a lot of wood sculpture[s] and odd pieces that the gallery wasn’t able to store.

In response, Craig Krull and Douglas Marshall put together a show of 40 artists impacted with pieces made before, during and after the fires. At the reception for Out of the Ashes, it felt as if hundreds of friends, family, and art lovers witnessed, listened and held the moment in grief with all of those who lost something. I don't think I’ve ever experienced an environment of love and support quite like that. Not in the art world, not anywhere.

I think we are all using that as a starting point now. Community and support–it’s what gets things built and rebuilt.

For artists, many are used to making things from nothing– pain, a point of tragedy, no audience, or zero financial benefit. So, in a lot of ways the community is ready to respond. Art always is.




What is the most meaningful project you’ve worked on in your career?


I’m very proud of the two bookstores I helped create in Venice and Santa Monica, equator books and deyermond art + books. These spaces brought culture, hilarity and so much wild experience to all of our lives from 2002 - 2012.

But the project that has the most meaning, is the body of work I made after I died in Rome. Returning to California, I didn’t want to live and thought I’d never make another piece of art again. I was in bed for a year before Craig Krull and I decided, if we put a show on the books, I might have a reason to keep going. Still recovering from sepsis, my body didn’t work, and I didn’t have any money. I went to stay with an old friend in the Bay Area, knowing that I was going to have to find a way to heal and work at the same time.

My friend was a retired cook and one of the elders in town. Along with his parrot, Bird, we lived in his one-room cottage on the mesa in Bolinas, the windblown edge of Marin County. He cooked for me and took care of me, as I made paintings in a converted potting shed. I worked in half-hour increments: painting and lying down, painting and lying down. For 10 months.

This body of work comprised the show leaky palms, titled after the nickname St Francis had given himself for letting all the great things in his life fall through his hands. My big comeback show opened March 7, 2020 –four days later the world shut down for Covid-19, as would leaky palms. Shattering as it was, this project continues to mean the most to me in all its grief and love.



If you could only create one more piece of art in your life, What would you choose?


Easy. It’s a site-specific, public sculpture I’ve been trying to make happen for 15 years. Standing at 25 ft tall and 500 ft long, this sculpture will be made up of 28 laser cut steel letters that read: i thought california could save me. Viewable from the 101 freeway amidst rolling hillsides and the kind of landscape that screams, god, it’s so good to be in California.

If I can make that, I’m good to go.
bye bye

xomd