Concrete and Waterproofing
Omaha, NE
2017

FLOOD is an exhibition in partnership with Mike Nesbit Studio, AIA Omaha, Enterprise Precast Concrete, Dicon Corporation, Tremco & Stetson Building Products, at the historic Omaha Standard Oil Building. 

FLOOD utilizes the existing urban fabric to create an exhibition out of the infrastructure that already exists, an exhibition that becomes interdependent through partnerships with local industry and small businesses.

Concrete
Ames, IA
2018

THE BLUES is a community-involved architectural and art installation situated amongst the ruins of structures of a defunct 1979 seed-drying facility in Ames, Iowa. The installation initiates a dialogue between art, the landscape, and the post-industrial environment.

THE BLUES is a literal approach to representing the transcendental high skies of the Midwest by pushing artistic techniques with precast concrete through the introduction of color as a means to produce abstract work that contextually captures the sublime scale of the region’s skies while situated within an underutilized site.

In total, there are four (10’-0” W x 12’-0” H) architectural precast panels in this installation. Each panel is a unique combination of a custom blue concrete pigment and white concrete.  The precast panels for THE BLUES were produced in Omaha, Nebraska and transported to the site in Ames, Iowa. With the help of a local farmer and his equipment, the panels were hoisted from the truck and strategically placed on steel A-frames amongst the ruins of structures of the defunct seed-drying facility. The placement of the panels allows visitors to the site the opportunity to wander through the agrarian facility of industrial and machine-like structures and confront these mysterious blue and white concrete objects

Concrete
McCook, NE
2021

the Midwest not forgotten, but found

the Midwest not left over, but discovered

the Midwest not gray, but vibrant with a soul-searching blue

I find myself in the Midwest Landscape

walking above the fresh snow

while standing under the sublime of the Blue Sky

an alley that sits between history

the landscape of the Midwest positions itself for a moment

as a static presentation of her beauty

Senator George W. Norris lived the art of innovation. He imagined new uses for existing materials, bringing electricity to rural areas and harnessing the power of water to create energy. His legacy lives today in rural placemaking efforts that bring longstanding communities into bright, prosperous, creative futures.

Central to placemaking in many rural areas are new presence and support for the arts. Art is fundamentally about bringing something into existence that wasn’t there before: the courage to create; the ability to fill space in new expressive ways.

McCook has a historical corridor like no other. The train depot – McCook Station – is well-placed between urban centers Omaha and Denver. From there, McCook’s Bricks run up Norris Avenue with unique small businesses, beautiful architecture, and significant locations such as MNB Bank, the Morrison Building, Sehnert’s Bakery, the old Post Office, the Keystone Hotel, the Carnegie Library, the High Plains Museum, the Sutton House (Frank Lloyd Wright), the Nelson Home, the Norris Home, Norris Park, and McCook Public Library. This stretch of downtown excites the mind, eyes, and heart every step of the way.

To create a focal point for a new downtown plaza – Norris Alley – in McCook’s historical corridor was no small undertaking. True to Senator Norris’s legacy, it was a task best left to artists, those who see and speak beyond what’s known to bring about something new. For Norris Alley, this creative task was completed with the vision of Alley Poyner Macchietto Architects and artist Mike Nesbit.

In 2004, Mike Nesbit flew into Burbank airport after finishing his first professional baseball season with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. As he got off the plane and made his way through the airport, he greeted the first person who walked past him with a friendly hello. Instead of a kind reply, he received a look of doubt and mistrust. He wasn’t in the Midwest anymore, but back in his hometown of Los Angeles. Although that simple greeting, or lack thereof, was brief and minor, it stuck with him. As his baseball career ended, and Mike pursued art and architecture, the Midwest called him back. Senator Norris wrote of “what hope a simple cloud along the horizon could stir,” and Midwestern clouds forever moved the direction of Mike’s creative practice. In 2017 he returned to the Midwest and began having conversations with Nebraska artist Thomas Prinz, a good friend and partner launching Maple St. Construct. Their conversations gained momentum, created a bridge between artists from Nebraska and California, and gave birth to a growing collection of work that captures and celebrates the sublime landscape of the Midwest. Senator Norris knew the beautiful relationship between landscape, individual, and community. Mike’s sculptural work ‘The Blues’ pays tribute to Senator Norris’s insights on interdependence of the Midwestern Landscape and its inhabitants. Rural community members watch the sky closely for promises of rain, and The Blues is a water feature for the 21st Century.

Found Shed Cut and Sprayed with Marble Dust and Acrylic
Omaha, NE
2019

“Non-referential buildings are entities that are themselves meaningful and sense-making and, as such, no less the embodiment of society than buildings were in the past when they were the bearers of common social ideals.”

- Valerio Olgiati, Non Referential Architecture

You are walking this line in the landscape, to your right resides a nurtured plot with manicured turf and wildflowers confined by mulch and brick. To your left the grass grows high and unkept, wildflowers land in the breeze. To your right a house of nostalgic symmetry and painted shingles. To your left a collage of planes, maybe a wall, maybe nothing. To your right the landscape is objectified with comfort and acceptance, to your left uncertainty and vulnerability. A few steps ahead one finds a shed that only the landscape remembers.

might mean nothing

might mean everything

invisible until found

abstract until objectified

a moment of utility

confined by the landscape

revealed through wonder

a path was made

no longer a shed

Concrete
Omaha, NE
2021

20 November 2020:  The first part of Dig is complete, the concrete has been planted. It will sit in the ground through the winter and grow from the melting snow. Harvest will come during the spring when we pull the 20-ton earth cast from the landscape it represents.

05 December 2020:  An area of gray between sculpture and landscape, process and representation, ownership and meaning, scale and value.

14 December 2020:  The first snowfall for ‘Dig’ and it appears that the four steel embeds that will be used to pull the 20-ton earth cast from the ground in spring have become a watering hole for the deer in Little Italy.

01 March 2021:  A cut through the landscape, a generational process, about time, about the seasons, about patience, appreciate delayed gratification.

24 March 2021:  Spring approaches as Dig prepares for harvest, a 20-ton earth cast recording an intimate dialogue with the Midwestern Landscape and its seasons.

20 May 2021:  Awaiting the harvest of Dig.

07 August 2021:  Two weeks away from the harvest of Dig.

12 August 2021:  As we prepare to harvest Dig next Saturday the 21st, it’s been quite powerful to understand what it means to produce a sculptural representation of the Midwestern Landscape, as it’s not just a 20-ton earth cast. It’s something much greater. It’s a recording of the seasons, it’s a final resting place, it’s a watering hole for the local wildlife that includes, dear, wild turkeys, and feral cats. Dig has become an earth sculpture that has integrated itself into the landscape and yet we still don’t even know what it looks like. That’s the beauty, as its physical representation is a byproduct of its context and embedded story.  Although I am anxious to excavate it from the earth, it will be bittersweet. Going to have to provide a few more watering holes in the meantime.

21 August 2021:  After nine months and all the seasons the Midwest could offer, we were able to harvest a piece of its Landscape. Working at this scale, nothing ever goes according to plan but with the right team and trust, you get there. Thanks to Maple St. Construct and Jonathan Schall for the jazz like moves when our cable broke and we had to lift up this 20-ton earth cast like the ancients, beyond grateful.


Art as a communal act, to produce something that is larger than one individual.  Art as the sum of parts, art as the sum of context, art as time, art as reflection, art as grief, art as birth, art as the sum of fears, art as the sum of risk, art as the sum of vulnerability, art as the sum of strength and teamwork, art as the sum of delayed gratification, art as the sum of a slow emerging process that is gray and impossible to objectify and at times justify.  At a certain point art becomes a sensibility and a way of being that works through a mystical atmosphere.  We can feel that through the excitement of process, the rush of taking something on that is larger than ourselves, a scale that forces all of us to question the values we set, to construct only to deconstruct.

Found Steel Excavator Bucket and Concrete
Omaha, NE
2023

After a few years of letting the Dig sculpture settle into the landscape it was time to bring back the watering hole that was taken away from its excavation. The excavator bucket, quite the utilitarian tool, is turned upside down and painted with concrete. No longer will the bucket dig out the earth below, but instead it will catch the rain from the sky above. A sculpture for reflection, but more importantly a fountain for the wildlife that consists of deer, wild turkeys, feral cats, and one Miniature Australian Shepherd. It took Little Italy, it took a ‘Shed’, and it took a 20 ton 'Dig'. Although 'Bucket' might be the smallest sculpture within this landscape it's the keystone that holds it all together.

Concrete and Waterproofing
Clarinda, IA
2024

Exhibited in partnership with the Clarinda Regional Health Center and Clarinda Carneqie Art Museum

Concrete, Steel, and Acrylic
Los Angeles
2014

SWIPE was a series of concrete paintings produced on site and meant to be both location-less yet site-specific, where the first intention is for the spectator to engage in the scale and materiality of the autonomous art pieces. Each six 8 x 12 foot concrete canvas, framed with steel, flanked and floated between the building's colonnade in order to create a wall of what seems like continuous SWIPES. The harmony between concrete canvas and site context was defined by the SWIPES of colored acrylic paint. The large concrete canvases hung gracefully as if they were floating in air, capturing striking swift swipes of radiant colors. The work was intentionally made in the space at a scale that would require the demolition of the work in order for them leave.

Mixed Media
Los Angeles, CA
2022

navigating the streets of LA with a Thomas Guide

watching Sergio Leone

traversing the endless cornfields of Iowa in an old team bus

home and memory seem to be interdependent

an accumulation of moments

Los Angeles

walking barefoot through Westchester

a landscape that has nurtured

neither and both

like a ‘Man with No Name’

somewhere in between

more prose, less narrative

an LA rooftop

a morning walk through Little Italy

gathering wild flowers under a cobalt sky

somewhere between ‘Flamingo Sketches’ and ‘So What’

a means of representation

the haze of possible routes

not that straightforward

more collage

jazz-like precision

abstraction as the mediator of search

not a single place

not a single period of time

an approach to look for something that quite possibly can’t be found

In relation to American geography, Nesbit takes the term “west” as a starting point, or rather, as a concept to theorize what it means and may represent. “West” could refer to Western Europe, the Western Hemisphere, European Expansionism, American westward expansion, or even as a midpoint - the Midwest.

As part of his artistic identity, Nesbit lives within, and between, L.A. and Omaha, Nebraska. The former is a major metropolitan area with centuries of history, whereas the latter is a fairly small city with a suburban American attitude.

Geography and time converge, referring to Highland Park in L.A. at the very specific time of 12:00 p.m., giving context in relation to light, shadow, and human activity. Matrices on the artwork’s surface look like ruled lines, but are in fact satellite-views of Los Angeles and Omaha.

In stark contrast, Omaha’s positioning is almost at the very center of the continental United States, with masses upon masses of greenery and cornfields mixed within its city limits (with fewer roads, of course). The oppositions and similarities between these two cities are what undergirds these paintings.

Here, Nesbit is a formalist.

Most apparent are the works' reliance on action painting and primarily colors, using CYMK and RYB, two distinct color systems used to reproduce and mimic reality. Instead of blending, pure Red, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta are brushed on, unmixed or unblended.

Flatness, rather than depth, is the focus. A brush stroke here or there lays large swathes of color, with an occasional flick of the wrist for a gestural line that guides the eye from one point to another.

Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art are at once combined and reduced, with serial imagery printed through silk screens. But rather than depict a celebrity, floral print, or chair, the almost invisible and intangible subject here is Los Angeles and Omaha in the 21st century.

Text by Mike Nesbit and Jonathan Orozco

Mixed Media
Santa Monica, CA
2024

‘The Meier St. Series’, was made in response to visiting a Gregory Ain house recently acquired by Architect Takashi Yanai. The historical house located on Meier St in Mar Vista is one of more than a few dozen Ain houses located within the surrounding blocks. Takashi had purchased the house with no intent of domesticating it, on the contrary he was in the process of slowly stripping away the recent cosmetic Home Depot addition done by the children of the previous owner. For Takashi the house/space offers an opportunity for something more than just domestic living to take place. A ‘hang out spot' for artists and architects, a salon/gallery, a performance space. I think one important aspect to add is that the space never sat idle since Takashi acquired it. This seems to allow for a continuous jazz-like composition of space, dialogue, and making that promotes the type of momentum for creating something that seems unforced and uninterrupted.

The Meier St Series takes its cue from an interior wall that Takashi had removed, exposing a once exterior wall. For myself, this provided a much-needed starting point to pick up on some drywall paintings that I had been wanting to revisit but didn’t exactly have the appropriate conceptual jumping off point. The studio work began, in direct response to that wall, and after a 4-week studio charrette ‘The Meier St. Series’ was brought back to the house where it’s housed currently.

Los Angeles, CA
2020

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It began as a slice, a deconstruction, a surgical demolition as a means to recognize value within the building, and also as a means to open the building to its surrounding landscape.  The idea of letting the landscape in became even more apparent once the cuts were made and the light and shadows entered the space.  At 12:38pm, on 10/16/2020, the light and shadows were in line with the cuts, as if the things that have no physical materiality (the light and shadows) did the cutting and produced the void.  There is a special moment between absence and presence, void and solid, dark and light.  The light and shadows coax the viewer in, whereas the sky and surrounding context draw the viewer out.

12:38 the moment when

light and shadow

become physical

12:38 the moment

when absence is present

12:38 the moment

when the void is cut

12:38 a waiting,

a stillness, patience

endures and delayed

gratification enters the

light cut by the shadow

12:38 a moment of

recognition, a presence

of value on an

object discarded

12:38 a moment for

individual presence

12:38 a time out

of context

12:38 a moment that

is the context

12:38 take your time

question the

sky, allow the

landscape to enter

12:38 a moment to

sit within the

absence and yet

be fully present

12:38 a moment to itself

that will disappear

12:38 a time that will

continue through

memory

Los Angeles, CA
2021

An object, somewhat neglected and a bit undervalued, sits in the landscape around 7th and 57th.  A moment of recognition comes into play and an action is taken, a slice of confirmation.   And through this confirmation something emerges, at 12:38 on October 16th, 2020, the light comes in and slices the void.  To bring the landscape in, to recognize an object lying dormant and yet not forgotten.    And from the light comes thoughts and ideas that travel back into the landscape searching for another moment of recognition towards an object neglected.  Another action performed and once again a dormant object springs back to life and the idea is no longer a thought but something real.  The object makes its way back to the void, idling at a pace of cruise control between light and shadow, void and solid, still and fast, forgotten and recognized.

Mixed Media
Tulsa, OK
2024

In collaboration with Robin Donaldson, Thomas Prinz, Gabriel Delponte, The Tulsa Artist Fellowship Program, and 'T-Town Roofing'

I left Oklahoma, drivin' in a Pontiac, Just about to lose my mind, I was goin' to Arizona, Maybe on to California, Where the people all live so fine, My baby said I was crazy, My mama called me lazy, I was gonna show 'em all this time, 'Cause you know I ain't no foolin', And I don't need no more schoolin', I, was born to just walk the line, Livin' on Tulsa time, Livin' on Tulsa time, Well, you know I've been, through it, When I set my watch back to it, Livin' on Tulsa time, Well, there I was in Hollywood, Wishin', I was doin' good, Talkin' on the telephone line, But they don't need me in the movies, And nobody sings my songs, Guess I'm just a wastin' time, Well, then I got to thinkin', Man, I'm really, sinkin', And I really had a flash this time, I had no business leavin', And nobody would be grievin', If I, went on back to Tulsa time, Livin' on Tulsa time, Livin' on Tulsa time, Gonna set my watch back to it, 'Cause you know I've been through it, Livin' on Tulsa time, Livin' on Tulsa time, Livin' on Tulsa time, Gonna set my watch back to it, 'Cause you know I've been through, Livin' on Tulsa time.

-        Eric Clapton

Show up

Go to work

Just Another day

Clock in

Clock out

If you’re lucky

Go to Lunch Early

The plan, there is no plan. The rules, there are no rules.  Better be there 15 minutes early. 

Probably best to bring your shovel, a tape measure for approximates, although the eye is better.  Don’t forget your boots, jeans might be a good idea for this line of work.  Just remember you’re going to make a mess, it’s probably dusty, and gloves could be required, although callused hands are more appropriate.  Not even sure what the job is, move some stuff there, bring things over here, maybe a stack and more often some piles over there.  Those concrete bags aren’t going to move themselves, best to grab the wheel barrel and make sure the hose is long enough.

let the paint breath over the pavement

None of this is precious

By noon we should be somewhere

Take a break for lunch

Talk about what was done

Get back to work

Enough with the chit chat

Those 2x4’s have been sitting around all day

Cut em down at random

Throw them in the corner

A splinter in your palm

Seems like you’re getting the idea

when I was your age, we used to call that a ‘Tulsa Tornado’

only thing you forgot was the duct tape and a few roofing nails

Is that a Little Italy Sky Scraper or an Anacapa Pipeline

Whose Giotto anyways, heard he was friends with that Fra Angelico fella

Enough standing around

Get back to work

Silkscreen Ink on Paper
Highland Park, CA
2023

The monastic complex of Gandzasar is situated on the heights above and to the south-west of the village Vank’ in the Mardakert district of autonomous region of Artsakh…The monastery lies in the western part of the Khatchen Valley, which it completely dominates.  It can be seen from a great distance not only on account of its lofty position but also because of its color.  The monastery is built in the local reddish tufa which with time has become brownish in tone, contrasting it with the dull green background of the mountain forest lying behind it…Uninterrupted cultural activity, aimed mainly at conserving and spreading the national identity, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, led to the creation of a nation conscience that fostered the establishment of freedom movements and later helped the region attain full independence.

Detail – Symbol of Universe

- GANDZASAR ‘Documents of Armenian Architecture’, Milan State University and the Arts Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian S.S.R., Milan, 1987.

The exhibition is comprised of two bodies of work.  The first focuses on the Historic Highland Park Branch Security Trust and Savings Bank where Raffi Shirinian commissioned artist Mike Nesbit to create a series of site-specific monoprints.  Nesbit began with a visual survey of the existing site by photographing various ornaments embedded throughout the building’s facade.  By collaging the photographs with the original architectural blueprints Nesbit pays homage to the historical context of Highland Park and at the same time represents the building through his own contemporary lens.  The final representation takes on a character of its own through his playful choreography of large-scale screen-printing.

It’s from this initial working relationship where Shirinian as collector/developer and Nesbit as artist/architect embrace their appreciation for one another’s vision of initial concept to artistic completion and all the dynamic nuance in-between.  And it’s through Shirinian’s concerns for the atrocities occurring in Artsakh and Armenia along with his own personal connection to his heritage where Nesbit’s artistic sensibility comes into play by producing a series of work that speaks to the powerful conversations of history, culture, community, and the importance of how a single monastery built in the 13th century near the village of Vank in the Martakert Province can become the center for a devout study and representation of artistic work that speaks directly to the Armenian community.

Armenian art and culture are identity-forming factors for the self-concept of the Armenian people and it is interwoven within the language/script as well as the Christian religion. Art within the Armenian culture has played a central role as it branches to preserve their sense of belonging despite all adversities. This idea translates through the circular ornamental detail (a symbol of the universe) taken from the west elevation of the Gandzasar monastery and used as a central ornamental figure throughout the exhibitions work.

Mixed Media
Omaha, NE
2024

In an ongoing conversation between Thomas Prinz (Omaha) and Mike Nesbit (Los Angeles) the MidWestern Abstract represents a series of singular and collaborative works produced over the past six years.  To both artists, the MidWestern Abstract has become a subject discussed in relationship to nature and the sublime within the context of the region’s landscape.  This dialogue brings to mind feelings of comfort, calmness, and at the same time unpredictability, creating a collection of objects that playfully work between the calm and the storm.

Mixed Media
Little Italy, NE
2020

An exhibition with Thomas Prinz

"One Thursday the robins flooded my morning.  American, orange breasted on bare branches, aiming for the light behind thin clouds.
I find out philodendrons need indirect sun.  I move this living thing closer to shadow."
- Khadijah Queen, "False Dawn." Harper's Magazine, August 2020.
​

an orange sun glows through white curtains
soft and warm bare feet on whitewashed plywood
the train makes its presence
a view out the window towards a sliced shed
jeans and boots with no socks
a studio shirt worn many times
a brush of the teeth
a swirl of mouthwash
a twist of the back
mask in the back pocket
imitation Purell in the front
sunglasses hooked to the shirt
the door opens
humidity present
on a deck and in the landscape
a few steps towards a deconstructed box
revealed studs
horizontal and vertical cuts of landscape
the orange morning light
a family of ten wild turkeys meander and peck
fall in line from tall to short
short to tall
in the distance wild berries
burgundy with a bit of pollen
boots press upon gray limestone
white wildflowers collaged with berry stems
green leaves and dried wheat
perched upon EIFS sprayed block
the orange sun rises
the Little Italy canopy more apparent
a colonnade of branches cathedral like
the landscape magnetically placed
a Toyota truck cruises towards a morning stop

Mixed Media
Los Angeles, CA
2020

A series of work inspired by Nesbit's growing relationship between Los Angeles and the Midwest, a color palette from the wild flowers of Little Italy, Omaha, combined with the cool and casual landscape of a gridded and collaged Los Angeles.

evening haze of gray

effortless dry heat

a socal coast

opens to the midwest

i rode in with the

ocean breeze to my

back while chasing

my shadow east

as i reached the flat

expanse of nebraska

the reflection of the

landscape behind me

followed