The emotion in Mike Lyon’s artwork is inspired by old Japanese prints. The shapes are determined by the contours of the faces of his closest friends, friendly strangers, and the outcome hinges on the mechanics of his latest digital tools.

“Figuring it out: Prints and drawings by Mike Lyon” is on display until July 18 at the Beach Museum of Art.

Bill North, senior curator at the museum, said though Lyon has always had an artist’s touch and studied art in college, he got his start when he went to work in Kansas City, Mo., for his family’s cattle hide processing business in 1976. While working there, Lyon invented a computerized system that made it faster and easier for the workers grading cattle hides. His idea was wildly successful, and Lyon was able to sell his new machine and go to work as an artist full time.

This type of automation and machinery play a large role in Lyon’s work, along with a taste for Japanese print work, North said. Lyon has a collection of nearly 2,000 Japanese prints.

“One thing that really attracted me to his work is that few artists are using digital technology in a responsible and judicious way,” North said. “This marriage of Western and Eastern traditions and ways is so fascinating.”

At the entrance to Lyon’s gallery at the Beach Museum, five oversized faces stare out, full of ambiguous emotion, each wrinkle and hair clearly defined in a maze of ink squiggles and geometric shapes.

Lyon said he starts his process by having the model for each piece come in to his Kansas City studio, where he takes hundreds of photos of their face. He then spends several weeks painstakingly selecting the perfect photo to turn into a print piece.

“Most people don’t look like art,” he said. “But the right image — I know it when I see it, it’s just the aesthetics, I can’t explain it.”

He then programs a machine called the ShopBot with data converted from the digital photographic files to trace the image with a simple ink pen. The files tell the machine how far to move the pen along X, Y and Z axes for each bit of the piece. Lyon said this process is long and tedious and requires him to watch the machine to replace the pens when they run out and make sure the thick paper he prints on stays in place.

Lyon said he has been criticized for using technology so prominently in his work, but he feels that it takes just as much artistry to create his own computer programs and machines to make his pieces come to life.

“My ideas and my blocks and my shapes and my designs are not done by a computer,” Lyon said. “That comes from me, from my mind, and then I just make it happen, whether it’s my hand on the pen or my machine — just another tool.”

“Linda,” a featured piece in the gallery, is one Lyon printed of his wife, Linda Lyon. According to research compiled by North, this piece is 77-by-46 inches and took more than 12 million lines of code and 11 days of continuous drawing on the ShopBot.

Linda said she enjoyed posing for Mike because it gave her a chance to see him work.

“I never know how he is going to do something!” Linda said, laughing. “Every piece just turns out to be his own blend of the thoughts in his head.”

Video walk-through of exhibition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB5Mn9A0eeE

Linda, Sandy Kemper, Mary Feigenbaum, Christine Kemper, Frank Wewers, Helen Wewers -- the champagne begins!

The group arrives at the Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas

Group photo at the Beach (standing l-r): Bill North, Helen Wewers, Christine Kemper, Sandy Kemper, Frank Wewers, Mary Feigenbaum, Linda Lyon, Hanna Blick (reporter), Mike Lyon lying down on the job (photo: Thomas Park)

Bill North explains something or other to Sandy Kemper

Frank Wewers is blown away by a large pastel drawing

Helen and Frank Wewers with Christine Kemper

Mary Feigenbaum and Linda Lyon

Frank Wewers speeds by 'Jessica Paper Dolls' drawing (or print?)

Thomas Park (right) is happy to see us

Bill North begins a tour of the curatorial, storage, and framing areas under the museum

Christine, Mary, and Frank in one of the works on paper rooms

Sandy and Christine Kemper relax outside the Manhattan Courthouse after our visit to the Beach Museum and a quick tour of the Strecker Nelson Gallery

We arrive at Cafe Beautiful in Lawrence, Kansas

Linda and Mary at Cafe Beautiful

Interesting 'stuff' including this 16mm projector decorate the dining room (across from a hookah parlor) at Cafe Beautiful

The first of eight courses at Cafe Beautiful - egg and shrimp custard baked in a squash shell

Mmmm-mmm good! Sandy LIKES it!

Linda and Mary during first course

Christine and Helen, too!

Sandy and Frank deep in conversation

Hashi on green ceramic platters

Beautiful and delicious fruit are being served by Cafe Beautiful owner, waiter, dish-washer, Chef Ken Sukan

Chef Ken Sukan was our very gracious host

The fruit course was (temporary) sculpture and VERY edible!

the group enjoys a moment of conversation between courses

Chef Ken Sukan puts the finishing touches on a 'salad' of veggies in a cucumber roll bowl -- DELICIOUS!

A snapper shashimi was served

hamachi wrapped california rolls with grilled unagi (OMG)!

Check out that sculpted cherry tomato!

STILL having a LOT of fun halfway through the two hour service! WHAT a day! What a wonderful evening! What a great time with the best of friends!

Senior Curator of the Beach, Bill North, met us and guided the group through a tour of the permanent collection.  I THINK everyone got to see the exhibition rooms with my work, but I’m really not sure because a reporter for the K-State newspaper, Hanna Blick was waiting to interview me…  I think I talk WAY too much — she had LOTS of questions and I enjoyed looking at the work with her and describing my various processes and techniques and what interested me about each…  When we finished, Bill gave us a tour of the museum’s extensive storage for works on paper, paintings, his office which was FULL of books and articles and lots of stuff organized in piles on his desk and bookshelves and floor and everywhere — lots to look at in there!  And in one of the file drawers he showed the large 10-drawing proof sheet I’d made over several months with different approaches to “Jessica Paper Doll” — it was a thrill to see that again after some months and I appreciated it much more.  I realized that I’ve been missing it!

I was pretty tired as we boarded the van for a 90 minute drive to Lawrence, Kansas for a special dinner at Chef Ken Sukan’s ‘secret’ Cafe Beautiful.  Sandy and Christine had been raving about the Cafe for months.  Reservations must be made at least six weeks in advance.  Even though Cafe Beautiful does no advertising and doesn’t even have a sign out front, it seats only six (seven for us) and is very populer.  Now I understand ‘why’!  WOW!  Chef Sukan was born in Korea and trained there, in Japan, in China, Taiwan, France, and decided to move to Lawrence, Kansas after folding a map of the United States in half both ways and Lawrence, home to the University of Kansas, was exactly at the center.  He spends eight or nine months a year serving two to six guests in two seatings daily and the rest of the time he travels and teaches cooking and his special ‘Midwest’ sushi technique.

Cafe Beautiful shares the second floor of a downtown Lawrence storefront at 728 1/2 Massachusetts Street (785-84307423).  The other tenant is a very smokey bar aptly named Hookah House where (duh) people sit and smoke tobacco from hookah pipes, drink, and chat away.

Dinner was relaxed and elegant in eight beautifully designed courses.  Although I was exhausted when we entered, when the first course arrived I woke right up!  It was all delicious and gorgeously plated!  Really wonderful dining in an unusual setting and the best company. Chef Sukan made it all look easy and this was the perfect finish to a long and wonderful day.  Two minutes after we arrived home, I was sound asleep and felt just great in the morning (which is truly amazing given the mass quantities of champagne, wine, and sake I consumed throughout the day)!!!

THANKS so much Sandy and Christine for organizing this — you were GREAT hosts!

“I was most impressed with Anthony‘s boldness and directness — the content itself — its scale, its lack of sentiment, the graphic beauty of the contrasts. the immediacy, I guess, of the image, married to a technique which seemed to my uneducated eyes to perfectly support that image. It is so monumental as well, which stood out among works that had to be limited to a certain dimension. Most people make small or medium sized works when the dimensions are medium-scaled. Yours was monumental in a really satisfying way.” Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Curator of American and Contemporary Art Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art The University of Texas at Austin