Mila May Brings Cosmic Creations to Life With Green Morning Art
Creating out-of-this-world art, local Las Vegas artist Mila May finds inspiration in exploring the unknown. Using concepts from nature, science fiction books and movies, and cartoons, she expresses this exploration through whimsical designs.
“Inspiration is everywhere, I’m alive, so I’m always inspired,” she said. May also shared how she especially leans into science fiction concepts. “I like solitary explorations of unknown places, and exploring the self.”
And as a lifelong artist, she’s explored this concept for as long as she’s created art.
“I’ve always been making art, ever since I could hold a pencil,” May shared. “It’s always been there.”
In early 2020, she started working as a professional artist, turning her passion into a business: Green Morning Art.
“It was around the same time I started doing First Friday. So, about six years now, since the beginning of the pandemic,” she said. “The artist journey is wild. It’s hard to understand sometimes. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it.”
One Small Step for Mila, One Giant Leap for Artistkind
Seeing the big picture of possibility, Mila May got her professional start doing mural work during the early pandemic.
“I have this thing on my resume blurb about how in the beginning of my art career during the pandemic, [local artist] Gem Jaxx reached out to me to paint on the boarded up businesses on Main Street,” she said. “It was one of my first public murals. I also did some at my house and a friend’s house.”
Stepping into the business side of her artist journey, May picked a name for her body of work from a favorite book of hers.
“The name comes from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, an anthology about the colonization of Mars. Each story is separate but related,” she explained. “One of the stories is called Green Morning 2032. It’s about a man who really wants to go on a spaceship to Mars and have another chance to do something positive for humanity. He ends up planting trees on Mars and helps his fellow colonizers terraform the planet like Johnny Appleseed.”
From here, May created fun alien characters, fanciful invertebrates, and trippy mushrooms, often with whimsical and inspirational sayings and pop culture references.
“I have some recurring characters that keep coming up in my work, like at Meow Wolf,” she added. “Painting about the same things is nice to get comfortable with. I’m trying to imagine stories and narratives for those characters. I originally started out thinking I’d do comic books, which didn’t happen, but there’s always time.”
While her work leans towards an illustrative style, she said that “fine art might come out a bit in her work” too. And May also has some children’s book ideas that she hopes she will have time to write in the near future.
Happy Mediums
Mila May works with several different mediums to bring her art to life. Primarily using acrylics, she paints on a range of materials, from canvas to wood panels.
“I have a preference for hard surfaces,” she shared. Many of her art pieces are then printed on merchandise, including prints, stickers, pins, shirts, bags, and more. She also accepts commissions.
“There are two sides [to the business],” May explained. At First Friday, I sell the merch, and outside of that, I am exploring more imaginative things in my art, like with murals and art installations.”
For those interested in her work, Mila May’s entire portfolio is available on Behance. She also shared that she is interested in exploring more creative mediums for her art.
“It’s fun trying out new mediums. I want to try more 3D work and add 3D elements to my work.
I’ve done some before, where I painted a mural at Life is Beautiful, and there were my cut-out characters as part of it,” she said. “I also want to try out clay and learn how to spray paint better. And I’m trying to warm up to oils.”
Shooting for the Stars
Starting her own business took some work, overcoming various challenges.
“Putting myself out in front of people and showing my work was hard. It’s not like people were critical or anything, but it kinda made me nervous about that,” Mila May shared. “It takes some getting used to, and I’m pretty good at it now.”
Another aspect of that was also getting comfortable with live-painting in public. “Now I can just do it,” she said. The other challenge she faced was working her way up to having a diverse stock to sell.
“I started selling stickers at First Friday and went from there, and tried to paint more,” she said. “It all worked out.”
May also shared that something that helped her overcome challenges, and continues to, is reading about other artists and their daily routines.
“You just gotta keep going, keep at it.”
Looking to the future, she shared that she wants to create more fine art and murals, and keep working on building up her portfolio and her business.
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Green Morning Art Moving at the Speed of Light
In addition to having her art featured at Area 15 inside Omega Mart and at Life is Beautiful, Mila May’s work has launched her into some really exciting projects lately.
Back in December, Mila May was selected for a residency with the Park West Gallery at the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace. There, she showcased her work for eight days while live painting on a special 4×6 canvas piece.
“It’s a bit more on the imaginative side, I could do whatever I wanted, and I thought I would experiment to see what happens and how it turns out,” she said. “If someone buys it, awesome; if not, I get to keep.”
She was also recently selected as the winner of the First Friday poster design competition last October as part of the foundation’s anniversary. Local artists were invited to submit examples of their work for the chance to be chosen to create the posters for the monthly festival through October 2026.
In the Community’s Orbit
In addition to her projects, May also shared some ways in which she’s collaborating with the art community here in Vegas, with some art shows coming up that she will be part of. This includes a mushroom-themed art show at Recycled Propaganda for two months in April and May with Rocio Ruiz of MIST Art Studio.
“I want to try and find someone to pay to help run my booth for First Friday while I’m over at Recycled Propaganda for those two months,” she added, inviting folks to reach out if they’re interested.
May also added that her friend is having a birthday party and is going all out on decorations and activities.
“She wants me to do a paint-by-number canvas as a commission,” May said. “I’ve done one before at Area 15 last fall.”
And she has an upcoming collaboration with local artist Ian Hobson of Vivid Visuals LV, incorporating light projections and art.
“We will be doing some public art applications on these three giant windows for the first project,” she said. “They switch out the exhibits in the windows every so often.”
Having previously worked together at LiB doing a projection behind May’s alien art installation, the two applied together as a team for this project.
“We’re working together on the design proposal, and Ian is cooking up some awesome lighting effects,” May said.
The Meaning of Art in a World of Growing Generative AI
The world is so different than the one we grew up in, it feels alien-like. Generative AI and the slop produced through it only accentuate that feeling by destroying our sense of reality while destroying the environment and creative industries. For Mila May, “Art is life.”
“Art isn’t going anywhere; it’s traditional to us. It’ll never steal away my desire to paint, I will always want to paint,” she said. “When it first came out, it made me want to learn about AI just to see how I could implement it in my art, like making mock-ups. But at the same time, it makes me want to abandon digital media completely. Now I wonder, will it steal jobs from people like me? It’s a mess right now, with the way it’s being used, but it will level out.”
May shared how she’d been hired to do a live painting at an Adobe conference. The event had focused on their Adobe Suite programs, like Photoshop, and included workshops on AI.
“It was wild that they hired me as a juxtaposition of having a real artist there,” she shared. “In the presentation, the examples they showed were not good; it was just a bunch of AI slop.”
For May, doing the work is the best part of creating art. Something that AI “artists” fail to grasp the concept and importance of.
“I love getting in the zone,” she said. “And I love coming up with ideas that I then get to actualize, which is the hardest part. Sometimes you gotta sit there and space out, let your imagination run wild.”
#GetinMotion with Mila May and Green Morning Art
There are many ways to support Mila May and her art business!
Follow Green Morning Art on Instagram, Behance, and Facebook, buy her a coffee, and reach out to her for any commission work.
Visit her at First Friday every month or stop by Omega Mart or Akin Cooperative to buy her art, and visit her website to place an online order!
“I’m still building the website, but it’ll be officially launched soon, by April or May at the latest,” she added.
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