Mike Geiger is an artist by day, and art is his side gig. He’s supervising director of Nickelodeon’s animated series “Rock Paper Scissors,” and makes public art in his spare time. He has two light sculptures in “Winteractive,” Downtown Boston Alliance’s public art extravaganza up through March 30.
“I love my day job. It’s the best to be able to be a part of a team to produce something,” Geiger said. “But it also leaves me with a yearning to make something personal.”
He wanted to focus on the environment, but not in a preachy way. “I found a lot of the nature-themed art was pretty heavy-handed,” Geiger said. “I think it’s an important subject, but I wanted to do something a little bit more light and approachable.”
His 6-foot-tall luminous structures made from recycled plastic, “Nature’s Glow” (at 2 Avery St.) and “Nature’s Solace” (outside New England Aquarium), shelter beds of flowers and foliage.
“I definitely see them as characters,” Geiger said. “I feel like I know their personalities.”
With each work in the series, “the idea is it’s like a spirit guardian that’s taking care of their foliage,” he said.
He sees more of these benign protectors of nature in his future. “Ideally,” he said, “we have families of characters.”
Where to find him: www.instagram.com/mike.geiger.art/
Age: 49
Originally from: White Rock, British Columbia
Lives in: Toronto
Studio: Geiger works on the sculptures nights and weekends “wherever I can find space in my home,” he said.
The “biggest thing” for him as an artist: “The animation industry in America is super struggling right now,” he said. “I don’t know that people outside of the art world understand how intrusive AI is.”
AI sources what it generates from pre-existing images, texts, and so on. Animation, Geiger said, is “the most clear place to put AI. Like, ‘Oh, we don’t need artists, or writers for scripts, [or] artists to come up with storyboards.’”
How he started: Geiger’s design sensibility was shaped by skateboarding in the 1980s and ’90s. When he was ready for college, his local art school rejected him. “Then my mother called me and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I signed you up for an animation class on the weekends.’” Geiger said. “I fell in love within the first week.”
That experience got him into Vancouver Film School.
How he works: Developing his sculptures, the artist starts with sketches to see what sort of character springs up. Then he imports the drawings into Blender, an open-source software for 3-D graphics. Once he has the design down, he sends it to a fabricator who works with recycled plastics.
Advice for artists: “This is a really tricky question because I have a 9-year-old son who wants to be an artist, and it’s like, well, what’s the future with AI?,” Geiger said.
But he still believes: “If you’re passionate about what you do, no matter what the situation, there will be a road for you.”
Cate McQuaid can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @cate.mcquaid.