Mark J. Herrick
USA (United States)
www.mjherrickstudio.com
Kunstart: Druckgrafik
Technik: Lithographie
Stil: Klassik
Statement:
Mark J. Herrick
Custom paintings ...
Original oil painting in any style or any period of art.
Historic Paintings in color from black and white antique photos.
Free estimates. www.mjherrickstudio.com
Vita / Lebenslauf:
Mark Herrick was born in Lansing, Michigan (1950 ).
He has a long family heritage in the fine arts.
His early influences include his grandfather, Ralph W. Herrick,
who was a prominent architect in the state of Michigan.
His grandfather designed many churches and public schools in Lansing.
He was the architect for several State Parks in Michigan including the original M.D.N.R. -
Michigan Department of Natural Resources - Hartwick Pines State Park.
His grandfather designed the early C.C.C. Camps at Higgins Lake in northern lower Michigan.
Mark’s grandmother on his mother side of the family was a wildlife artist and ...
his mother is a portrait artist, who loves to play the piano as well as paint.
Mark’s father; James W. Herrick was a senior vice president and
commercial loan officer at American Bank & Trust in downtown Lansing.
His dad played the trumpet in the Sexton high school marching band.
His grandfather on his mother's side of the family was an engineer
who had an interest in higher mathematics.
He would frequently edit high level math books for publishers.
Mark excelled in art and music during his high school years.
Shortly after high school Mark worked for Glass and Foresberg Design;
a commercial art firm in Lansing that subcontracted work from the General Motors Corporation.
This was Mark's first apprentice job where he learned the basics about commercial art and advertising.
On evenings and weekends, Mark played music in a rock band and continued to paint oil paintings.
In 1974, Mark was hired to worked as the technical illustrator for the Chemistry Department
at Michigan State University. He made drawings and charts for the chemistry professors there.
One day while working in the chemistry department Mark ask himself ...
Why isn't there a music chart like the Periodic Table of Elements used in Chemistry?
From that day Forward, Mark had a desire to learn music and see how it all organized in applied theory.
The curator of the Chemistry Department at that time was Dr. Jack Kinsinger.
Dr. Kinsinger was into Jazz B3 Organ and he introduced Mark to two music professors at the college;
Professors Bea Mangino and Owen Jorgensen.
Professor Mangino taught English as well as music.
Owen was a well known author who wrote books on sound tuning throughout history.
He was also an international known pianist. ( In fond memory of Owen who passed on in 2009. )
These Professors encouraged Mark to continue working on applied music theory.
Owen did a collaborative study with Mark on the frequencies of light and musical pitches.
They discovered that the colors in the light spectrum perfectly matched the pitches on the piano.
He called this study an inverse proportionate scaling of sound to light.
Here is kind of an interesting analogy about sound and light that Owen made ...
If you took fourteen pianos and placed them end to end and tuned them all up in sequential adjusted pitch
on the fourteenth piano and on twenty eighth octave is where light would occur.
This analogy made the world of sound physics seem a lot smaller than most people would imagine!
A lot of time pasted in between working at Michigan State until now.
In 1984, Mark moved to Sarasota, Florida.
In Florida, Mark did oil paintings and continued to work on his applied music chart.
At the time there were no home computers to speak of so ... all his illustration work
had to be done by hand including hand lettering ... an enormous job to perform.
After a few years in Florida Mark returned to Michigan and
began creating a cartoon character called; Buck Wilder®.
Mark spent a year working on this new outdoor sportsman character.
His goal was to produce a book that would teach kids all about the common freshwater fish in Michigan lakes.
He called his very first book ... Buck Wilder's - Small Fry Fishing Guide!
After the first year of working on the book, Mark met Tim Smith a former store owner in northern Michigan.
He and Smith partnered up to do the book as paperback. In four months they sold over
a hundred and twenty thousand books out of a small garage in Traverse City, Michigan.
The book became the state's number one best selling paperback book in 1995.
Due to the popularity of the Small Fry Fishing Guide, Mark and Tim created a second book;
Buck Wilder's - The Small Twig Camping and Hiking Guide.
This book won the 1997 Ben Franklin Gold Book Award for outdoor writing and illustration.
This is the second highest book award given in the nation.
The Buck Wilder books eventually drew the attention from the State of Michigan Conservation Department.
The state licensed the character to represent a man made lake at the state fair ... Buck Wilder's Fishing Hole!
This small lake was shaped like the state of Michigan and was stocked with bluegills for the kids.
During this time Mark and Tim made friends with some retired teachers who wanted to
make a difference in the world and the Buck Wilder team became even bigger.
The head of the DNR was director; K. Cool! Cool was formally a fourth grade teacher.
He hit it off with the Wilder bunch especially one teacher; Edna Stephens.
The fame of Buck Wilder started to leave the state of Michigan. Books were being sold all over the country
in State and National Parks. Some how through the school presentations NASA got interested in Buck
and asked Mark to draw a picture of Buck and his sidekick Rascal Raccoon in spacesuits.
Mark drew a shuttle in the background with a giant fishing poll coming out of the bay doors.
The funny Buck and Rascal characters were floating in space like alien bait off the fishing poll line!
Jerry Linnenger, took the artwork with him up to the space station MIR.
Mark actually had an art show in space that lasted for four months which was viewed by the Russians.
When the artwork came back it had traveled over fifty million miles around the earth.
At school presentations Mark would tell kids to believe that anything can happen if they try hard and don't give up!
Later that year, Mark became the cartoonist for the DNR and began working for Edna Stephens -
She was one of the retired teachers in the original Buck Wilder team.
Edna formed her own publishing company called EDCO in order to contract work from the state of Michigan.
She built a new company and employed almost her entire family.
Together, Mark and Edna produced a state wide newsletter to over fifty thousand kids called;
The Outdoor Explores Club which was sponsored by the state of Michigan - DNR.
Mark worked for the EDCO Publishing Company for ten years. During the the millennial year 2000
EDCO hired a team of over twenty five teachers and built a fourth grade curriculum on Michigan History
starring Buck Wilder and a some new state cartoons ...
Forrest Trails - Sandy Dunes - The Great Lakes Kids and ... the famous LAP's Ants!
The program was called the L.A.P.'s program. Learn from the past - Appreciate the present and Preserve our natural heritage. 85% of the public schools in Michigan are still using the program. The teachers and kids love it!
Due to the popularity of the Buck books and the L.A.P.'s program Mark made Buck Wilder® presentations in
over 600 schools in Michigan ... A school gym would be packed with little kids all dressing in their fishing outfits.
They all would wear a head bandanna with a funny raccoon face on it. Mark presentation would teach the kids
how to draw a funny Wilder Fish and he would pop off a bunch of corny fish jokes during his presentation,too.
It was great Fun for all!
At home during the evenings and weekends, Mark would continue to work on his music chart.
After thirty five years of drawing music charts, he finally invented the Harmony Matrix® ...
This is an advanced music chart that shows the complete system of integrated functional harmony.
It simplified the music data by using colors and simple box patterns to represent all the music formulas.
His invention actually created a new symbol language for music which will advance music learning greatly.
To make his new Visual Harmony™ theory fun for kids, Mark added cartoon characters
and spent the next several years developing animations for a new music course called ...
Major Harmony® - Supersonic Music Course 1
FREE ONLINE ANIMATED CARTOON MUSIC LESSONS!
For kids of all ages.
( See Links on the last site page on www.mjherrickstudio.com. )
There is also a link to free cartoon drawing lessons for kids on
that page.
Aktivitäten / Ausstellungen:
Music and Art!
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The Love Letter
Druckgrafik
Lithographie
70 x 60 cm
1972
verkäuflich (Preis auf Anfrage)
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