Youtube Music, New Live Paintings, Eyelid Studies

> Music
Audio recordings from the videos on my Youtube channel are now available for free/pay-what-you-want download at michaelgarfield.net. I'll continue to update this album as new videos come out, making it easy for people to enjoy my performances without having to wait for the video to load.

In related news, I am now sponsored by L.R. Baggs! Which means, among other things (like getting free toys), that they're featuring my video for "You Don't Have To Move" on their Youtube channel. I'll be doing more videos for them soon in order to show my appreciation for their M1 Active Soundhole Pickup, which amplifies all the weird things I like to do to guitars. In the meantime, go see the current video if you haven't already, and join me in praising the stars that it is, after all, possible to get attention from the right people.

> Imagery

Fire Feathers - 2009 12 05
Boulder Theater Mark Vann Foundation Fundraiser: Great American Taxi,
Tim Carbone, Keith Moseley, Euforquestra, Elephant Revival,
Pete Karsounes, & The Black Swan Singers
opaque pens on masonite
20"x30" - original for sale
signed 11"x17" prints available - $20

This was one of the most awesome shows for which I have ever had the good fortune to paint. Banjoist Mark Vann of Leftover Salmon died back in 2002, and ever since then his band has held a yearly fundraiser to support the things he cared about – music education, feeding kids, stuff like that. So the heart at this show was simply incredible. Everyone was there to remember a friend and put music to good use in helping the community. I set up in the back of Boulder Theater in their loungey area across from the bar, unavoidable on the way in or out but safe from the mayhem.

This one hearkens back to some of my earlier work, when I was less concerned with layering and more interested in vibrant fractals. To me it has the flavor of the flower cross-sections I looked at under the microscope in college, but my friend and unofficial namer-of-paintings Leesah Noble of Umba Imports dropped a title on it half an hour into the show. So fire feathers, they are.

Event organizer Jay Rizzi, one of the nicest promoters I have ever met, took this sweet pic of me in action:

Cross Pollination - 2009 12 04 & 12 B Side & Toad Tavern
DJ Rekluse & Michelle And Johnny Cat, Melissa Ivy
opaque pens on masonite
20"x30" - available for sale signed
11"x17" prints available - $20

In my friend Paul Lonely's book Suicide Dictionary, he writes beautifully of a fictional monastery dedicated to integrating all of the world's wisdom traditions. Many of the poems irreverently mix the symbols, prophets, and language of the various religious institutions to point to the ongoing lively nature of divine creativity, which has a way of throwing crazy ideas together apparently just to see if they'll stick. So here is my "Punnet square" describing the marriage of Islam and Christianity - the octagonal regenerative patterns of Islamic tiling with the crucifix and a lattice of coins in the background alluding to symmetrical union and the Trinity. Intersecting patterns meet in the middle, revealing their nonexclusivity. The center, the nexus, is richer than either axis on its own.

And in studio news, here are the first five pieces in Eyelid Studies, a series of small-format paintings (8"x15" each) I'm using to explore variations in pattern and color and to keep my idle hands from causing trouble. Plus, I can make these available to people who want original work but can't cough it up for a full-sized painting. A lot of people have remarked that some of my recent work looks like the patterns they see when they push on their eyelids, so I figured I'd run with it and actually go for a themed series. Here are the first results:

Eyelid Studies #1 - #5 - 2009 12 01 - 08 - studio
opaque pens on masonite
8"x15" - originals for sale individually or together
signed 11"x17" prints available - $20

Here they are hanging up in Dot's Diner On The Hill at University and Broadway in Boulder, where I had an extensive opening last Saturday night. It was a blast, and I'm sorry you missed it (if you did) – but they'll be hanging up there for another few weeks yet, so go get yourself some awesome breakfast and surround yourself with a floor-to-ceiling journey through the last two years of my live art:

Thanks to Loni Jones and Dot's for having my work up in there! It's a real treat for me to see so much on display in one place. Plus, the wine and pizza was awesome.