Remember film? Well, here’s how you load 35mm film in a film camera
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photojournalist Mike De Sisti explains how to load a roll of film in a traditional 35mm Pentax K1000 film camera.
Here’s a Journal Sentinel secret: Reporters love being on assignment with photojournalist Mike De Sisti. They know his photographs and videos will bring many readers into their stories.
Since 2008, De Sisti has documented Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the world for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel readers with exceptional technical skill and creative image making. But in 2023, De Sisti surprised even colleagues accustomed to his visual productivity when he began making abstract paintings in his spare time.
Some of De Sisti’s paintings are on view in a lobby level space of 330 E. Kilbourn Ave., where the Journal Sentinel has its offices.
Born in Bolingbrook, Illinois, De Sisti earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts photography from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
He’s always been attracted to abstract art, which draws him like a magnet whenever he walks into a museum. Circa 2002 he began painting a little. But back then he was also building his photojournalism career at a time when video was becoming important, and that fascinated him, too. So the canvases were stashed in the closet for a couple decades.
Fast forward to 2023: The De Sisti family had just finished covering the cinder block wall in their unfinished basement with white paint. His daughters Izzy and Katherine wanted art for its walls. So they and Mike painted some little canvases he had left over and hung them up.
“Something reignited in me,” De Sisti said. “I really enjoy doing this.” He kept going, and when he discovered he could buy larger canvases at affordable prices, his visual scale got bigger.
Painting is like meditation
“I am really not very good at meditating or yoga or anything like that, and I know how important it is to do that kind of stuff,” he said.
“When I’m painting … I’m not thinking about the past or I’m not thinking about the future, I’m just right in the present.”
Why abstract painting instead of realism?
He suggests several overlapping reasons. “I can’t paint realistic paintings,” he said. When he has tried to paint a wolf or other animals, “the paint kind of laughs at me, you know. It says, ‘What are you trying to do?'”
In describing his relation with the medium, De Sisti all but anthropomorphizes paint. “I have respect for the paint,” he said. “It’s a pretty powerful medium … if you try to do something with it that it doesn’t want to do, it’ll tell you.”
Also, painting is a change and respite from the critical professionalism of his work as a photojournalist. He can find something wrong with every photo he’s taken, he said. But as an untutored painter, he’s not nearly as self-critical. “There’s a part of my brain that I don’t get to exercise as much with photojournalism that I can with abstract painting.”
How does he work? How does he get started?
De Sisti works primarily on 3-foot-square, 4-foot-square or 4-foot-by-5-foot canvases. While he will sometimes use a brush to put down a first layer, his main tools are a palette knife and a scraper.
He works with acrylic paint. “It just washes up really easily,” De Sisti said. He often paints in small blocks of time: 10 morning minutes while putting in laundry, an hour after work. So ease of clean-up helps.
Many of his paintings, like his recent “Purple Haze,” simply begin with his desire to use a certain color. He’ll start with an urge to use blue or bluish purple, for example. While he has occasionally prodded himself to use earth tones, he confesses being drawn to brighter, lighter, “funner” colors.
“I just think of a tone or a color, and I just start from there, and I just start pouring paint on the canvas,” he said.
He rarely has a plan for a painting. “I let the paint kind of do the talking.”
Who decides which side is up?
These are abstract paintings, so their orientation is not necessarily obvious. De Sisti does not sign a painting before it’s purchased. “Because then that restricts somebody from hanging it a certain way,” he said. Once the buyer has hung the work up the way they like it, if they’re local he’ll come over and sign it.
How does he know when a painting is finished?
“That’s a good question,” De Sisti said. Sometimes he can look at his painting and know, “I better stop before I ruin it.”
But often he’ll ask the opinion of his daughter Katherine, 12, whose eye and artistic judgment he trusts. She’s not afraid to tell him a painting needs more yellow, or less.
He’ll also ask his wife, Carol, or an artist friend to take a look.
The co-star of his painting videos
It takes De Sisti 10-15 hours of labor to make a painting. He’s made several time-lapse videos documenting his creation of a painting from blank canvas to final product. Sections of those videos usually star the De Sisti family cat, Emily, who likes to be as close to the action as possible.
Yes, Emily has gotten paint on herself, he said. But happily, acrylic paint washes up easily.
Selling paintings
He’s made 50 paintings so far, and sold 30. (You can see his paintings at www.mikedesisti.com). Some were sold during his Gallery Night and Day exhibit in April at the Journeyman Hotel, 310 E. Chicago St., to out-of-town buyers, including one from the Cayman Islands. He’s still floored by that.
Will De Sisti leave the Journal Sentinel to paint full time?
“No,” he said emphatically. “I love my job as a photojournalist. … I’m not going anywhere.” He has immense respect for artists that attempt to make a full-time living from their art.
Even after 25 years, he loves every assignment he goes on as a photojournalist. “This is crazy that I’m getting paid to take pictures,” he said.
De Sisti quoted a phrase he’s often heard from fellow photojournalist Mark Hoffman. “It’s like we’re on field trips,” he said. “We go on a field trip every day.”
Contact Mike at mike.desisti@jrn.com.
