Remnants

It is Thursday, August 13, 2026, almost ten months after the arduous and costly fight to save my business and proof of the attempted theft by people closely linked to Gage Academy of Art is still online.

Mapquest shows that my business is operated by Andrew Cornu and his foundation (below)

That is my business location on the map

This is the general search result (below) with a photo I took of my students (L. to R. Tabitha Brown, Jennifer Small) next to it.

At one time all the search engine results went to them. 

Something I built alone and still run alone was stolen from me by an non-profit-operating oligarch with very strong ties to White Nationalism and his supporters at the non-profit Gage Academy of Art and the LLC Figure Ground Art Advisors. 

When I announced my plans to open a small painting school I was contacted by many art centers in the area who wanted to partner with me. They had heard nothing but good things about me and were eager  to do all the promotions and office work for it.

They all went silent after they were contacted by the then manager at Gage who told them that doing so would “jeopardize the nature of the relationship between the two institutions”. 

There were also many regular enrolled students and other instructors with whom I had worked who expressed their willingness to get involved and they were all told the same thing (or perhaps worse).

This was based on greed alone and I was vilified because I was taking some of their business away.

When I was a popular instructor at Gage they had a policy whereby they told the registrars that if it was a students’ first class at Gage to make sure they took a course taught by Michael Lane. That is because they would continue to take my classes after having taken one. I also made a lot of recommendations to my repeat-students to take other courses (especially sculpture) both of which made the school a lot of money.

After I opened my own small classroom the policy changed. From then on all promotional materials for my small business were to be discarded if any were left or posted in their building and no one was allowed to openly discuss what I was doing. 

I started writing them asking what was wrong and if they could do something about this situation. I wrote many times.

They gathered those emails and used them by handing them over to a now former independent contractor at Gage who applied for an order of protection against me with only my inquiring emails (which I sent to this non-profit) to make a claim of “harassment”. They shared those internal documents with an independent contractor who attempted to drag me into court just so they could say that it had been necessary. They did it just to have a story and to then spread the story. I saw that, was very dismayed, and never showed up.

The next time I heard from them was after an old yahoo email account had been hacked by a jewelry company in Hong Kong which sent offers to all my contacts. It spammed an old forgotten contact list which Gage was on.

They, Gage Academy of Art, said that was a violation and tried to drag me back into court. 

I never showed up.

I never had any money then and had only 5 days to prepare and I faltered. If I had it to do over again I would have gone in and fought them. I gave in and kept working hard, hoping for the best.

When a full investigation was conducted which involved the Seattle police, that independent contractor and that now former school manager were asked to move on.

. 

TIMELINE:

October 2014- School for Perceptual Painting is founded at 1426 Jackson Street, Seattle.

December 2016- Invited by Israel Hershberg to participate in the prestigious summer art residency program, the JSS in Civita in Civita Castellana Italy.

December 2016- Gage provides internal documents to an independent contractor to use for a claim of harassment.

December 2017- Invited again to participate in the prestigious summer residency program JSS in Civita.

December 2017- Spam from a jewelry company used to claim further harassment.

(December 2018- I continue working hard despite all of this and am invited a third time to the JSS)

April 2023- An amateur art advisor in Seattle who has never met me and who handles the art of current and former Gage independent contractors and students leaves a review of my business on Facebook claiming that I have been prank calling him and warns people to “keep their distance” from me. 

February 2025- That same amateur art advisor, who works with all the friends of the people dismissed, participates in the creation of a new “Seattle Atelier” less than one mile from my location, on the same street. An entire building is renovated for its home. (All of the participants from Gage are friends of the now dismissed people.) I fight them and they change their name.

November 2025- The same amateur art advisor posts that I am a paranoid schizophrenic to whom no one should listen.

Despite all of this I am very glad and proud to have created a school for perceptual painting in Seattle.

My loyal following has sustained me over the years and I am eternally grateful to them.