Michael W. Hallberg is an artist from Covington, Georgia in the USA In this interview he talks about his passion for tarot, his t-shirt project and Psychobilly Tarot.
You have been interested in tarot for a long time. How did it all start? Do you have a favorite deck?
I’ve got a pretty monolithic relationship with tarot, I had a friend give me, “The Mythic Tarot’, deck in about 88’, he’d never used it and he was on the run from the law so he showed up at my place in Tampa for a nights sleep and said I could have anything in the trunk of his car since he was likely going to prison, there was the deck and that was that, never had another deck, I’ve studied a few others, The Thoth deck, etc.
It was really ironic since I’ve got a huge thing for Greek mythology and lore and that’s the whole thing with that deck, I knew all the stories from my own obsessive reading of Greek mythology, I always felt that helped in giving greater depth to readings, the other irony is that I’m kind of a rationalist, atheist who doesn’t really believe in much but for what ever reason, I found a certain degree of accuracy in doing readings and it seemed to help even if for only planting the idea of things being a certain way and helping manifest them through positive visualization.
I’m a huge Alejandro Jodorowsky fan so I got, ‘The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards’, and a few other texts, more historical and artistic reasons than spiritual, I kind of like moving in a, ‘not knowing’ direction, kind of like my design ethos, it keeps life interesting.
Are you a psychobilly music fan? What do you like about it?
I am but it’s like everything else, it’s a facet, I love the music, I was always into The Cramps, The Flat Duo Jets, Link Wray, tiki drinks and outsider art before Juxtapose coined the term so it’s always been a forward and present element in my life, The Butthole Surfers, King Missile, even GWAR, I think all swirled around in the flying eyeball soup that was late 80’s, early 90’s proto-Psychobilly, certainly The Rev.
I’ve got an old wind up Victrola record player and a bunch of crazy Country & Western 78’s, a bunch of Hawaiian music and Delta Blues, put all that together and you’ve got the mixings for what becomes Psychobilly, some of that stuff from the 40’s you could play now and no one’d bat an eye.
Surf music and cars as well, I’m a huge car freak and I grew up with the beach right next door and got into old skool surf music super early, I’ve always had to have a cool car, if you have a cool car you have to have cool music and Psychobilly’s the coolest car music there is!
When did you start doing tee shirt designs?
83; maybe? Still in high school, my friends had a band called, ‘Dick Blakes Army’ (he was our principle.) and I did a couple of t-shirts for them, then a few more over the next 20 years for local bands and such but I really didn’t start doing it hard core till about 2003, I was tired of everything else I’d been doing, I’d blown through all the money I made with a dotcom startup in the 90’s and fucking hated technology at that point so I went super low-fi, t-shirts to save the soul.
What kind of themes do you favour?
None really, I kind of like whatever I have to make, it’s always a puzzle and I get bored way too easily. I like cars, music, space, shit with a lot of detail, I LOVE crazy family reunion shirts and the stuff that ends up either waxing a car or in a thrift shop a few weeks later, wearable art doesn’t have all the high brow trappings of regular art & design so I kind of favor the practical nature of it, a cool thing to wear, maybe someones favorite shirt (or waxing rag.)
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Wandering around, looking at people and what they wear, music, I love going out to malls, bars, shows, events, Target, WalMart, Hot Topic, just seeing what else is going on and getting challenged by it, thinking I can make something cooler or seeing something and going, “DAMN! I wish I’d thought of that!” and trying to make something better, I like the competitive part of being an artist, I sucked at sports so I’m having to fit it in somewhere!
What’s the concepts behind this project?
The making sense of a lot of nonsense concepts, Kurt’s like a mad, sadistic genius as far as the basic idea, Psychobilly, monster, 60’s sci-fi, b-movie tarot t-shirts. It’s like a design version of Country & Western Hip Hop Speed Metal with a shake of Polka and it somehow has to be an awesome sellable art piece/product, not as simple as it seems.
Which of your artwork pieces is your favorite?
Tough, I’m pretty fond of them all, (as in I’m going to go broke getting the whole set of shirts myself!) but I’d have to say The Star, it feels like a bar I’ve been to, a bartender I’ve known, a thing I’ve touched and it’s the most musical in some ways but I’m also a Bukowski level barfly so I may be biased…
What is the best thing about being an artist? What is the worst?
Best thing, the lifestyle, worst thing, the lifestyle. To clarify, absolute freedom is an intolerable burden as some super smart literary sort once said.
