Artist Statement: My name is Michael E. Long and welcome to my Insides. These dioramas are depictions of interiors from my nightmares and dreams. I refer to them as dream boxes. Reoccurring dreams influenced my art in powerful ways and I found the creation of these interiors turned out to be cathartic and helpful in ridding myself of these made up architectural places I found myself in over and over again. The dreams stopped for a long time. These dreams came back during the COVID quarantine. I found myself in mazes of places I had only seen in my head and felt compelled to recreate what I experienced.  Over the years my series changed and morphed, I found myself recreating real places for commission work. I was reconstructing interiors as well as exteriors of building, bars and local haunts. The commissions tend to lean toward reality but I keep returning to my dreams for real inspiration. The boxes tell a story, but the clues are hidden which leads the viewer to different conclusions. I love that the narrative isn’t the same for everyone and the story turns out to be unique to each person.  The goal isn’t photorealistic or to create perfect miniatures, the idea is to sketch from dreams which can be fuzzy and imperfect as well as impossible to recreate. The feeling of a dream like set design of a place where you have never been sometimes creates a sort of Deja Vu experience for those that feel a connection to these places. Enjoy the experience and unique narrative of these dream boxes. This is an introduction to my Insides and my dream life.

Born in Santa Barbara in 1973, Michael Long has been interested in creating art from found objects for the past 30 years. His reuse of discarded, recycled and unwanted things has been a focal point of his overall work. Collage and assemblage have been mediums that allow him a platform to re-create images and objects from his dreams and imagination. In Michael’s latest series, working with vintage paper and hand-built wooden boxes, he re-examines reoccurring dreams and nightmares by re-creating these scenes that have been with him since childhood. These “dream boxes” represent a time and place that only exists in the mind; they are psychological movie sets drawn from a beautiful and sometimes dark place.