Mike Hinge - 81st Birthday Anniversary - Alex Jay

Thanks again to Alex Jay for another priceless contribution. Here we have a postcard to Alex from Mike when he returned to stay in his native New Zealand between 1983-1984 (Mike would have been age 53 when he wrote this postcard). I have copied and pasted Alex's email as he explains the contents and context of Mike's message.

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Hi Ivan,

I was cleaning out a box of papers and found this New Zealand postcard from Mike. Here's what he wrote:

Hi! Alex, that Star Wars book [Return of the Jedi] you designed finaley [sic] turned up in a city bookshop.

Found no interesting &'s [ampersands] yet. Its still raining off & on here so must be one of the wetest [sic]

summers ever which makes me curious about N.Y.C. if it had that severe winter as predicted. NZ as a

country goes into a total stop/siesta/holiday period around Xmas, so been slow…I'll bet your as busy as

ever. Have designed one logo, painted a Romantic Illus, for a sml [small] poster (ice cream) & two storyboard

for household cleanser. Hearing the standard pop music on the radio nothing outrageous & the color tube has

so many bad British soaps, or chuckle-alongs it makes me cringe. The "Police" played here so Rock Riot

written up in paper.

Regards Mike

I designed two Star Wars: Return of the Jedi books, the novelization and a sketchbook; I don't know which

book Mike referred to. I have a small collection of wood type ampersands, which Mike saw, and recently I

posted them on my blog, alphabettenthletter.blogspot.com/2012/04/wood-type-ampersand.html

He found work in NZ but he didn't bring printed samples when he returned to NYC. I'm sure he was desperate

to hear new music; things were too quiet in NZ. He grew restless and returned to NYC.

...

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I wonder if anyone has, remembers or knows of the painted romantic ice cream illustration? 

I have looked at one of Mike's later resumes and during Mike's time back in New Zealand between 1983 - 1984 he worked at Campbell Advertising in Auckland as an Advertising Designer.

Mike Hinge - 81st Birthday Anniversary - Darren Shroeder

Darren Shroeder webmaster and editor of Small Press Printed Matters emailed me some early illustrations of Mike's in the form of two publicity flyers from when Mike was still living in New Zealand before emigrating to the USA. I'm guessing it probably dates from sometime around about 1954. The same year which Mike illustrated "Time Fanzine" with Monica Naughton which they wrote and published together. It might be that Mike was age 23 when he made these illustrations? It would be great if anyone could date these flyers.

The first flyer is for Alien9+ and the second is for Auckland Science Fiction Club.

Bottom Flyer: Auckland Science Fiction Club: Size - 14.5 x  13.7

Mike Hinge - Good Times - Hard Times

The Good Times - Mike Emigrated in 1958 from New Zealand and Arrived in Los Angeles USA to study at The Art Centre School of Design, Mike's artistic career was about to go from one strength to another with an intriguing variety of employment at some major US companies around about their peak of success. Starting with his first employment in the US in 1959 as a designer for the May Company department store, followed by another designer job at a newspaper The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. It seems that there were no shortage of opportunities for Mike in these early days some albeit brief as an example in 1962 a four-month employment at Reprise Records (the record company founded by Frank Sinatra). In 1966 Mike moved to New York and got employment as an art director at Young & Rubicam and afterwards at BBDO (in 1967 gaining a prize at the 13th Annual Type Director's Club Show TDC XIII). Then perhaps the most exciting years to follow as Mike also working in experimental fine art and exhibiting; in 1969 he did the front cover for Witzend issue 6 and in the same year came Mike's big break into SF from Ted White who commissioned  interior and front cover illustrations for Fantastic Stories and Amazing. The work from then on continued to flow steadily with more magazines and book illustrations up until around about 1985/1988 where the opportunities were becoming harder to find. 

The Hard Times - It is 1989 and Mike has no money he can't afford to eat let alone pay his rent and as Mike puts it in the letter he wrote (below) he's, "Running around like the proverbial Dutch boy stopping leaks in the dike". The letter tells of Mike's desperate situation and gratefulness to his friend that has just sent him some money. It is a wet and blustery day.

At the very bottom of the letter Mike is referring to two copies of the Mike Hinge Experience.

The S.F Encyclopedia U.K Publication that Mike mentions is The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Pan Books 1977 (page from the Encyclopedia with Face (1972) below)

Shorty Rogers & his Giants on Reprise Records and the record cover 

by Mike Hinge (below)

The front cover has a Mike Hinge Credit bottom left, this is the first Record cover I have found by Mike. If it had not been for Mike mentioning his trip to the second hand record store in this letter I am not sure how long it would have been until this one would have come to light, such an amazing find both letter and record cover.

In one of Mike's resume's he wrote, "Record cover design ideas and comps.. Pick and buy type, use old engravings, lay down coloured zip on photoprints for wraparounds with bleed. (Reprise Records)".

Mike Hinge - and ONYX

What is Onyx? I remember when I first read about Onyx it was in a book "The New Visions A Collection Of Modern Science Fiction Art" published by Doubleday 1982. There was a short biography for Mike which I later found the full version here. In the biography it said  "Onyx display, Wittenborn bookstore" brief but intriguing. I concluded at the time that it was perhaps to do with Mike's set of 8 posters that I had started to collect and had seen advertised in Algol Magazine Summer 1975, one of the posters being called, Onyx Cube seen here in the original Algol advert . 

Over the next few months I would come across another references to Onyx and then one day Alex Jay sent me a scan of a magazine  "Design Quarterly 78/79: A Special Double Issue on 'Conceptual Architecture'", seen here and  it was then that I began to understand, Onyx was an artist collaboration. In that magazine it cited four members Ron Williams, Mike Hinge, Charles Albatross and Tom Simpson. With this lead, I searched on the internet and found an article in French entitled Mutations v.0.8 providing a tantalising description of Onyx. Below is a Google translation of that description: 

"ONYX group was born in New York in the late sixties. It was founded by architects that we know by the pseudonym they used at the time: Charles Albatross, Mr. & Mrs.. Harvey And The Grapefruit Orange, Patrick Redson, Okra Plantz, Tom Fulrey, Lili Piuschin, Mike Hinge, A'Lloyd. ONYX expressed their theories on architecture outside professional boundaries and conventional, through audiovisual performances and what we call a mail art. The posters of ONYX are perhaps the best examples of their operation shock, desecration of the concept of art and architecture at the time of their realization. Mail architecture was one of the instruments used to invent new ways of "doing" of architecture. Each poster was designed in every detail with great care, from graphic design to choice of colors (mostly two-color), passing through the text, often deliberately ironic and encrypted. The posters were produced in a limited number still. An advertisement stated that they were sold by mail ..."- see source: 

In October last year, Alex Jay sent me another set of exciting scans from a publication called Arthropods, published by Praeger 1972. This was a double bonus as it mentioned EAT (another art collaboration Mike had been involved with) and Onyx... However there were no Mike Hinge pictures, that didn't matter as the images were fantastic, mind blowing and I knew that this was a group that deserved much more attention. Here from the magazine are the images and text. Enjoy.

Daily Earth Chronicle by Ron Williams

The Rule by Woodson Rainey

The Rule by Woodson Rainey

The World Map by Woodson Rainey

The World Map by Woodson Rainey

??

It is all beginning to make sense now. Discovering Onyx group has shed a new light onto Mike Hinge's work. 

See more Onyx at the "Frac Centre" website.

Next week, stayed tuned, there will be a written article by Ron Williams of Onyx. With his first hand account of his involvement with the Onyx and memories of Mike Hinge.  

Mike Hinge - Witzend Cover 1969

Mike Hinge - front and back cover for Witzend magazine 1969. 

Below we have a rare treat of seeing the original cover artwork, sent in by a private collector, which they are happy to share, thank you very much. The artwork is the photostats that were pasted onto a board which is called the mechanical. The printer photographs themechanical as a film negative. The negative is then used to burn the printing plates.

01: Yellow plate mechanical (photostat of circuit diagram pasted on illustration board; the photostats shrank a bit)

 02: Red plate mechanical (photostat of cranks, shafts and gears pasted on illustration board)

03 and 04: Tissue overlay with instructions to the printer ("Drop two figures out of this plate" means the red robots are not printed over the yellow sphere; or one could say, the robots are in the foreground and the sphere is in the background.)

05: Robots artwork (ink drawing on Strathmore bristol board)

Mike Hinge - Happy Chinese New Year

It's Chinese New Year! Thanks very much to Alex Jay for sharing his 1989 postcard from Mike

Here is a postcard from Mike to Alex Jay wishing him a happy new year. Nice clear handwriting and an intriguing message which I shall let Alex explain what Mike is referring to in a moment. A short message but clearly shows Mike's appreciation for his friends phone call and the goodies that he had sent... but who is Mary (M&M's)?

Alex says "This Chinese New year or Lunar New Year arrives January 23. As you know, it's the year of the dragon. Back in 1989 Mike sent this postcard with the year of the snake. This Chinese zodiac animal follows the dragon, so 2013 will be its year.

In his message, Mike referred to "ABCD"; this was a music catalog of unauthorized concert

recordings on CDs. Mike was listing some of his favorite groups and musicians he found in the

catalog. And the recordings were expensive.

And then he referred to the astrology information on the face of the card, "Well look[s] like yours made

it for this year." The snake is my zodiac animal, but I do not believe in astrology, Chinese or Western."

Travel back in time to 1989 and I would have been in my late teens and I was a massive fan of The Sisters of Mercy and Xmal Deutschland they were and still are amongst my top favourite bands! As well I also liked  and still like Joy Division, New Order, Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, Durutti Column, Ultravox, OMD, Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and also aware of Japan, Roxy Music, Brian Eno and Mike Oldfield . However at that time and until now I hadn't really heard much of Tangarine Dream or Penguin Cafe and not at all of Edgar Froese, Klaus Schulze or Seventh Wave. 

I wish Mike could have designed some of the groups record sleeves or posters but as far as I am aware he didn't but perhaps there is something that is waiting to be discovered. I don't think I have or know of any of Mike's work from 1989.

Going further back in time Mike did work for a record company - Reprise Records, Los Angeles, for a short time (between Nov 1962 - Feb 1963)  with Art Director Merle Shore and according to Mike's CV he designed record covers, which ones these might be would be a nice discovery as well.

Front of Postcard from Mike to Alex.

Mike Hinge - a christmas card

It's nearly Christmas! Thanks very much to Alex Jay for sharing his 1981 Christmas card from Mike

Alex wrote "Mike's 1981 holiday greeting card measures 14 x 17 inches / 35.56 x 43.18 centimeters". 

and "Photocopy colored with markers. The card was scanned in four sections and stitched

together; the alignment is a bit off. Back in Christmas 1980, I visited my parents who lived

in Arizona; we spent a few days in San Francisco with my father's sister. That's what Mike

was referring to in his note".

Mike Hinge - a biography

Mike Hinge in his own words, a short biography circa 1980. This glimpse into Mike's life tells about the exciting era and of the interesting places where Mike lived and worked and his ideas. Thanks very much to Sanford Meschkow and Matt Howarth for sharing this. The front cover is a Mike Hinge ASCII art portrait.

Mike Hinge and his participation with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)

At last, I can say we have something on Onyxcube about Mike's sculptural work! It is known (through these pages) that after Mike's death most, if not all of his sculptures were junked and up until now I have not been able to track down any documented work. That is until recently when Alex Jay sent me a selection of scans from the exhibition catalogue  "Some More Beginnings" organised by  "Experiments in Art and Technology" (E.A.T.). The exhibition took place at the Brooklyn Museum in 1968, with the public viewing from November the 26th to January the 5th 1969. Mike exhibited a kinetic light sculpture titled, "2000 Light years from home". The title is borrowed from The Rolling Stones, 1967 song of the same name. A cool indicator of Mike's appreciation for music and this particular Space Rock classic! The exhibition catalogue's original size is 27 x 42 cm.

The photograph of Mike's work looks incredible and the following descriptions from catalogue are intriguing "Mike Hinge New Zealander: Born 0000. 2,000 Light years from home 1968. Aluminium, synchronous motors, cam timers, wood, electric lights, 24"x24"x14" Category: C:1.2".  

And "The piece consists of a number of perforated discs rotated by synchronous motors. The major discs are 13 1/2" in diameter spaced 1 1/2" apart and are powered by 10 different motors of various slow speeds. The second set of discs is mounted below as a reflector for the first set. The discs are illuminated from below by coloured thermal flashing D-26 bulbs mounted on a 2" square with holes punched for wiring and ventilation: 20 surrounding discs are rotated by 20 motors and are sequentially illuminated by colored bulbs on a 12-hour cycle". 

Once again, thank you very much to Alex for his contributions. 

Front Cover

Further information about E.A.T. can be found on these web pages:

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=237

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/doc.php?NumEnregDoc=d00001940

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_Art_and_Technology

Mike Hinge and The Mars One Crew Manual

Thanks to Alex Jay we have another bumper post of Mike Hinge wonders. This time we are revisiting The Mars One Crew Manual, 1985, Ballantine Books NY, for another extraordinary journey of creativity and an amazing amount of rare unseen roughs. You might like to compare this post with the earlier post that featured The Mars One Crew Manual that Alex Jay also provided the scans for, click "here" to see both posts together.

Alex wrote in his email "I was down in the basement and uncovered another batch of Mars One designs by Mike.These photocopies show preliminary designs; you can see he explored many more designs than what was presented in August. He divided the designs into three groups: Graphics,Lettering and Pictorial".

Graphics  

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Lettering

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 Pictorial