About Porkchop

About the Artist: Porkchop (aka Michael LaVallee)

Porkchop is a multi-disciplinary artist from New Jersey. He has an MFA in Sculpture from VCU and a BFA in Fine Arts from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Porkchop has established a great presence through his magnificently-scaled murals, including the extensively documented scenes he composed along the Asbury Park Boardwalk in conversation with the sea. Narrative is a prevalent theme in his work. Porkchop’s mixed-media paintings and sculptures combine vintage images with darker scenarios and twisted iconography. He creates these situations by combining paint, illustration and text. He has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and is published in “The Greatest Erotic Art of Today” Volume 2, “Eye Candy” and “I Want your Skull”.

 Artist statement

Denizens and visitors to Monmouth County have been enjoying Porkchop’s vibrant and colorful artwork and murals for years, but in most recent manifestation, the artist strips his works of his normally vivid palette and instead employs intentionally ritualistic and graphic monochromatic designs and symbols accented with Gold. Influenced by ancient history, mythology, religion and literature, the artist Porkchop sources out, manipulates, and casts familiar objects. He then painstakingly recreates their surfaces giving them a new existence into a dark and curious storyline. The application of paint into his intentional ritualistic designs followed by flawless coats of glossy resin is an act of pure precision and care, like the work of a surgeon or mortician.There are often unexpected but pleasant marriages of imagery and object. By stripping these pieces of his usual vibrant palette, Porkchop's choice of black & white emphasizes the narrative in the works, which becomes difficult to ignore. Presenting these pieces in symmetry creates an alter that pulls the stories altogether.