The home of Canadian pen and ink artist Michael Keirstead has echoed a rhythmic ratta-at-tat for most of the past two decades; the delicate tapping succumbing to the occasional chrome four-stroke roar from the garage. Naturally, the neighbors appreciated the substantial musical accompaniment and the constant murmur of conversations and laughter from the ever-present family and friends!
In this house, everyone is drawn to the ratta-tat-tat of the Art Studio, and the driveway serves a continuous stream of two-wheeler traffic. The Art Studio is where it all went. You see, while the rest of us were messing with our motor cycles and doing that 9 to 5 thing, Mike was busy studying with an additional passion: points. Ratta-tat-tat.
This madman came up with the idea of designing a drawing that would bring together the faces of more than a hundred of the most influential contemporary musicians and narrate the evolution of rock music. However, it wasn’t just going to be a drawing, “The Jam” would be a HUGE drawing: four feet tall and two feet wide. Big enough to shake a piece of plywood in your boots. Mike had to spend months selecting which musicians to include and where to place them against each other for a story to be told.
“The Jam” followed Buddy Holly and Elvis through Motown, Folk, the British Invasion, Heavy Metal, and Punk, including classics like The Stones, Doors, and Beatles. Mike soon discovered that a task of this scope would not be completed in a single summer, especially since the gigantic masterpiece he envisioned would not be a sketch, but a stippling – a pointillism, made up of tiny dots made with a black ink pen.
Ratta-tat-tat is the sound your pen made when touching the canvas. Ratta-tat-tat is the sound that melodies muffled when played. Ratta-tat-tat was the only sound that could be heard late into the afternoon when Mike worked alone, hoping that one day his vision would be complete. Each little dot worked together to create the shading and shape that tricks the eye into seeing an image. The further apart the points are, the lighter the shades will be; the closer together the dots are, the darker the tones will be. The project, started in 1979, took him eight years and would have driven him crazy if it weren’t for his motorcycle.
Mike was working on another project; rebuild a 1973 Triumph Daytona 500 to have a custom tank, six foot forks, dazzling chrome, and a delicious Springer front end. The Triumph also made a ratta-tat-tat (Oops!) Sound, but he was expecting a purr, a buzz, and was willing to put in the effort and grab his elbow and learn more about bikes in the process. Speaking to Mike about it now, he says the detail in rebuilding and customizing his Triumph paralleled the attention to detail that was required to complete the faces in “The Jam.”
As each bolt was chrome-plated, the bike was slowly attached in the same way that each full face was attached to the artwork. In the moments when the artwork seemed too slow, it was refreshing to do something physical with your body: welding, lifting, sweating, getting dirty, using your mind for something 3D, instead of standing still, having a hand cramp , be ultra clean and does not stain, and working in two dimensions. Mike would go out for a while and then build his Triumph for a while, then score points and then take a ride on his 1978 Shovelhead rigid.
Towards the end of that eight-year span, after numerous screws had been taken down the road to re-chrome, the finished Triumph was given kidneys and Mike was finally able to take it on those much-needed revitalizing rides. The theory was, if you could finish the helicopter, you could also “The Jam”: Mike was spurred on, but there was a nagging thought in his head, is your custom classic bike ever really finished? Aren’t there always more touch-ups to do?
This same conflict is what Mike also faced with his artwork. There were too many talented musicians to recognize who could fit in on “The Jam.” The rock music hadn’t stopped and exciting bands were springing up all over the place. The canvas was full, but the history of rock was incomplete. There was only one solution: “The Jam” would have to become part of a series of artworks, its full name would be “The Jam Part I – A History” and Michael would eventually have to pluck a “Part II”.
In 1986, “The Jam Part I – A History” was completed and Mike sold many thousands of poster-size versions and 300 original-size limited-edition 4 x 8-foot silkscreens to people at rock festivals and his fellow bike enthusiasts. Every self-respecting music fan seemed to want one or have one hanging on their walls. Sales of these prints brought the “hungry” out of the “hungry artist.” As a reward for his artistic endeavors, Mike soon acquired a 1985 Heritage Softail and headed to BC to spend his time sailing the Coquahalla. In BC he puts his boss, a colleague who is fond of bicycles.
His sponsor’s first commission was for a “Jam” motorcycle – a custom paint job based on Keirstead’s copyrighted artwork, “The Jam Part I”, airbrushed on a framed 108 cubic inch SS Kenny Boyce. Permission was granted and Todd Goggal superbly sprayed the airbrush on the tank and fenders. Sweet! The bike was on display at the former The Dayton Boot Co. Ltd. location on Granville Street in Vancouver.
Once settled in BC and with the help of his Medici-style patron, he began the intense work on the second full-time “Jam” artwork. While sprinkling the second “Jam,” Mike acquired the custom 1982 Harley FXR (which he rides today) and also began to rekindle his childhood love of motocross. He began collecting Honda CT70 and Honda Enduros. When he was 9 years old, Mike was bombing his family’s farm in Uxbridge, Ontario, in a Honda CT70, and now he was teaching his two sons and his girlfriend how to ride. It seems that some things are simply passed down from generation to generation. His girlfriend Lola has mastered the CT70 and now she has moved on to Enduro. Now she is teaching her friends to walk the trails at home.
History repeated itself again when Mike was plucking his second piece “The Jam Part II – Long Live Rock & Roll”, as he again spent many years doing the splashed ratta-tat-tat with a bicycle. But this time, it was walking the dirt trails near her home in the Okanagan Valley that provided her much-needed release from her painstaking art. “The Jam Part II” began in the mid-1990s and was completed in 2002. It continues to tell the history of rock music and again depicts more than 140 faces of musicians as well as elements of the rock lifestyle. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kurt Cobain, Tom Cochrane, and many others adorn this masterpiece.
For those in the know, “The Jam” has become a legacy, and now that the second in the series has been completed, a bridge has been built for generations of music lovers. Plans are underway to launch another “Jam” motorcycle; Mike is thinking that maybe “The Jam Part II” will be touched up on a Road King this time. Or maybe it will airbrush him on his first love, his old Triumph?
