New Tour Video, Rootwire Paintings, & Four More Hats

“Buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the sea shores, and the deep recesses of the earth…for in this way and in no other will you arrive at a knowledge of the nature and the properties of things.”

– Severinus 

"And so it was I entered the broken world / To trace the visionary company of love."

– Hart Crane

In this few quiet weeks of respite between the bulk of summer festival season and my whirlwind adventure with FractalNation Village at Burning Man (our camp's last all-star fundraiser party is this Friday at Temple Nightclub in San Francisco), I've been musing on why it is I keep throwing myself into these things.  Living on the road on some fool's crusade to inspire the world is definitely not thankless work – in fact, I am deeply nourished by everyone's appreciation and heartfelt criticism – but sometimes I'm almost overwhelmed with the appeal of getting a weekly gig playing music in some hotel and just laying low.  Getting a studio somewhere and letting my car rust in the parking lot.

Then I remember the travel.  The sacred and secret openness that comes from the chronic shock of constant exposure to new places.  The incredible blessing it is to share these journeys with a global web of friends whose lives don't throw them quite so far as mine does...

Made from highway footage taken on last year's Love Without End Tour, this latest video from A Million Anniversaries is an homage to the sense of wonder that simply moving can instill in you.  Life in fast forward is a lot like death in slow motion, incidentally – as my friend David Titterington puts it, we're moving through tunnels of gates:

Watch this in HD

Download this entire album for free!

While you're listening, here's a recap of the art explosion on my end of Papadosio's Rootwire Music & Arts Festival in Logan, Ohio.  Definitely click on each painting to get a full sense of the detail:

Patience

2011 07 03 Electric Forest (Papadosio, SCI, Pretty Lights)

& 2011 08 04, 05 Rootwire Festival

(Govinda, Papadosio Live PA, Octopus Nebula, The Werks, RoeVy, Emancipator)

24"x36" – paint markers on stretched canvas

check price/availability of original – and leave your comments!

11"x17" prints – $20/1, $30/2 + $5 s/h – email me to order

Starting with the first layer of improvised (some might say channeled) script during Papadosio's set at Electric Forest Festival, this painting just drilled deeper and deeper into scaly, flowing detail until looking at it made my head twist.  Look closely and you can see the reticello pupil and doily iris; look long enough, and it might actually move.  After completing this piece I started wondering how the rest of this entity's face must look...expect richer, more intricate scapes in this style.

Symbiotes

2011 07 22 Jazzhaus (Future Shock)

& 2011 08 06, 07 Rootwire Festival

(Third Nature, Papadosio, The Malah, Damn Right, Invisible Allies, Bluetech, Kilowatts)

18"x24" – paint markers on stretched canvas

check price / availability of original – and leave your comments!

11"x17" prints – $20/1, $30/2 + $5 s/h – email me to order

Something about this one just screams microscopy to me.  Maybe it's the vaguely photosynthetic critters living in the middle of each larger object, or the way everything drifts into each other...an attempt to combine the sensation of earth, fire, air, and water in a single nonrepresentational piece.  A haiku about the elements as they combine in living systems.  Unlike Patience with its strong central locus, Symbiotes doesn't give the eye any obvious place to rest.  Angular, electrical energy leads to the same quivering vitality you get looking into a slide of pond water. 

So yeah, Rootwire was a barnstormer...amazing art, music, and presentations all around.  Huge thanks to Papadosio for inviting me back out there.  In addition to completing those paintings, giving a talk on the future of science, and jamming out a boiler of an afternoon cyber-acoustic set, I somehow found the time to tag a few people and nail out some more custom caps:

Body Art @ Rootwire Festival 2011 (and more)

For Robbie

For Nate

For Jason & Emma

I have some exciting updates aging in an sherry cask for next week's newsletter...in the meantime, here's an in-depth interview I gave to international design collective Arts Projekt a while back.  They ask me how my training as a scientific illustrator informs my live art; about the evolutionary themes I'm expressing through my work; and about my five year plan (hint: solar-flare induced telepathy).

Many thanks for your continued interest and support.  Have a wonderful day!

Bounteous Harvest From STS9's NYE Run (Plus, The Future of Live Music, EOTO Album Review, & More)

> Imagery

STS9 NYE Twenty Ten Concert Poster
2009 12 28 & 29 Studio & Newman Opera Hall
(STS9 Acoustic Show "Axe The Cables")
18"x24" – paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
*some* signed & numbered 11"x17" prints (series of 75) available ($20)
original painting also available

It's a dirty little secret that I was never that big of a STS9 fan. I like my music adventurous, and their tightly coordinated sets, stemming from a tribe philosophy that refuses any one member their moment in the spotlight, never quite took the leap of faith I wanted. And as much as I admire their forays into electronica, I didn't much care for the gangster flavor that turn brought to the music and the scene. But I was definitely curious when I heard that they'd be playing their first-ever acoustic show in Denver...and positively psyched when a friend of mine offered me a ticket to the sold-out show. And I have to say, it was a classy, tasteful, well-orchestrated affair: University of Denver's opera house, dress-to-impress, ushers and everything, an understated light show, grand piano/vibes/harmonium...I mean, wow. I felt swept up in something wonderful.

It'll probably be a while still before I actually get to paint onstage for these guys, but in the meantime I was able to sneak this half-finished painting in with me to the show and the ushers didn't seem to mind that I finished it from my seat, using my necklace LED for light in the dark theater. Major props to Kevin Odenedo for inspiring me to paint "guerrilla style" with no concern for how official I'd be...and equal props to Jordan Burghardt for pulling through with the ticket and the opportunity.

I've been getting more into typography of late, trying to find a way to use the elements of my previous paintings to design cool new word art. For this piece I wanted it all to be perfectly symmetrical and read "STS9 NYE Twenty Ten" the same back and forward, but couldn't get the second "S" to not look like an "F." So it's an ambigram from the waist down. Eye in the middle, the still watching center; hourglass above, the anticipation and fatedness; wings below, holding the whole thing up.

This is the first limited edition concert poster print I've ever made, and I still have a few left if you're looking for a way to commemorate that excellent event.

Pluralism
2009 12 29 Gothic Theatre
(Bluetech Live Band, Emancipator, Flying Lotus, Martyn)
20"x30" – paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
signed 11"x17" prints available ($20) – original also available

Nuisances often yield new creative depths. In the case of this painting, running out of the gold spraypaint I used for the background was seriously annoying – I was standing in my friend's freezing driveway trying to cover this board in an even layer of gold and the empty can was sputtering as my hands and faze turned to ice. But the end result was a glorious patina that this photo doesn't really do justice, a lively surface that vaulted my painting out of the realm of psychedelic kitsch and into the "Restoration Hardware" market. Suddenly I had a painting someone like my dad might buy for his house, even though I'm sure there are still plenty of undergraduate trippers who'd hang it in their "Zen Room." (I say this with the greatest affection for both types...)

And holy macaroni, was this ever an epic event. Without any question, Euphonic Conceptions' Denver STS9 afterparties were the best shows they've ever put on (at least, among those that I've attended). There were about a dozen live painters there, ultrasexy dancers, a flippin' RAINBOW LASER...and I had a cozy little spot up in the balcony of the Gothic Theatre, IN the visionary art gallery, where I had not only a great view of the show, but a chill escape for everyone who was temporarily bushed from the raging dance floor.

I'm sure that you've noticed by now how most of my work has some lofty spiritual concept behind it. Transcending and including earlier work like "Order Under Chaos," this painting alludes not only to the deeper symmetry (here, a crystal field of breathing octagons) behind the flowing energy of manifestation (those paisleys), but also how one person's view of the transcendental is "colored" differently than the next's. Adherents to the so-called "Perennial Philosophy" beneath all of the world's religions argue that everyone worships the save God; but the fact remains that every wisdom tradition offers something unique to the banquet of faith, a valuable and distinct perspective on that-which-transcends-all-perspectives. And, intuiting this, we bare ourselves and reach for one another, a cosmic game of show-and-tell that some people have taken to calling "integral spirituality." This is that.

Roaring In The New Year
2009 12 31 & 2010 01 01 Gothic Theatre & Zach's House
(The Glitch Mob, Tipper, Mimosa, David Seied)
18"x24" - paint pens and spraypaint on masonite
signed 11"x17" prints available ($20) - original also available

Kind of a self-portrait. I was working the raffle booth for Collective Conscious at the December 30 STS9 show and got to the afterparty late, so I had to come up with something I could whip out quick, and there isn't anything quicker for me than a good old Tyrannosaurus.

Early on I decided that my New Year's Resolution for 2010 would be to dedicate every creative act to someone or something – to recognize my life as a sacrifice to the world (where "sacrifice" is taken literally to mean "the work of making sacred," just as "artifice" means "a creation of intentional design"); to connect my energies and intentions to something greater than my own satisfaction-in-self-expression; to give an additional layer of depth to everything I do, and to keep myself in a spirit of joyful service.

2009 was a difficult year. I spent most of it sleeping on people's couches and floors, broke, jobless, watching my family struggle with health problems and legal bullshit, and struggling myself to maintain a dear but seemingly star-crossed relationship. At the same time, 2009 was a year of profound growth and positive change. I rediscovered my purpose, inspired thousands of people, and learned the difference between false security and real stability, how to navigate the tides of life with a little more grace and equanimity.

So when it came time to dedicate this last painting of 2009/first painting of 2010, I chose to send it out to that rebellious, rambunctious, primal force that T. rex symbolizes for me and so many other people. Like a coyote howling at the Moon, half sorrow and half exultation, the letting go of what was and the celebration of what is coming, a pure and unselfconscious emotional release directed skyward into the shining heavens (and the heavens were shining, a blue moon and partial lunar eclipse on the 31st). Some of each: the lizard and the angel, the red of destruction and the green of growth. Thank you, 2009. Let's get it on, 2010!

My dear friend Marieam Shohadaee took some great pictures of me at work on this painting, which you can find on my Facebook art page.

(full gallery at tinyurl.com/mgpaintings)

> Writing

"Best Seat In The House: You're Virtually There" (H+ Magazine) – What are concerts going to look like in five years? I follow the last few years' of development in music technology to where the lines converge: on a radically different experience for live music fans. What did I get right, or wrong? You won't know for a while, but in the meantime you can leave your own vision of the future of live music in the comments section.

"Album Review: EOTO's Fire The Lazers!!!" (Colorado Music Board) – EOTO's latest studio album is deliciously dark and sexy, but I miss the radiance that suffused some of their earlier work.

"Stuart Davis Sings The B Side's Swan Song" (Colorado Music Board) – Boulder "punk monk" Stuart Davis, one of my major inspirations, just played his final show at Boulder's finest small venue (now-extinct). The show in review.

"The Mile High Sound Movement Throws Down" (Colorado Music Board) – I recently had the luxury of painting and playing as a member of a positively awesome music and art collective emerging out of Denver's hybrid electronic/hip hop/jam scene. The show in review.

Cosmic Consciousness & A Custom Hat

> Imagery

2009 10 17 City Hall (KiloWatts, Big Gigantic, Emancipator, Heyoka)
20"x30" - opaque pens on masonite
11"x17" signed prints - $15; full-size signed & numbered (x/30) prints - $50

I recently had the honor of painting alongside Alex & Allyson Grey, Mars-1, and J Garcia at one of the most epic parties I've ever attended, thrown by my friends at Boogie Down Productions in Denver last weekend. It took place at City Hall – not the actual civic building, but Denver's most promising new venue, three floors and a majestic outdoor balcony/lounge area that, all together, make for a ridiculously awesome event space. Plenty of corners and corridors, four stages, a fashion show, two floors of live painting, a hefty and delicious array of vendors, and some of the most lovely electronic music I've ever heard. Alex started the evening off with a sweeping survey of his work since the age of five, showing how his psychological development was reflected in a growing capacity for perspective-taking. I don't think anyone there, myself included, had ever seen such a glorious presentation initiate what ten years ago would have been called a "rave"...the otherwise insane, crowded, sweaty, intoxicated evening was still somehow activated, lucid, and open-hearted. And no doubt Alex's excellent primer on visionary art was largely responsible.

That was just one reason that this evening was one of the highlights of my entire artistic existence. Ten minutes after I started, I damn near had a panic attack about my sloppy first layer, the evidence of that day's anxiousness and confusion. But I stuck with it, and the painting ultimately took on an edgy, urban quality I've never managed to capture...and a ghostly inner glow that half captivates me and half gives me the creeps. The crowd was thick, and since I wasn't granted my own riser that night, I was getting bumped and jammed all evening. But momentum is conserved, and all of that energy traveled up my spine, down my arm, and into the piece. You're looking at the vector space of some 2,500 exultant partiers.

I should also mention that this painting was fueled by the excellent cuisine of my dear friend Araminta David, whose pre-show catering for the artists and production team was definitely on par with the quality of all other art that evening. I can't believe she got a "Guest" lanyard instead of an "Artist" lanyard. If you ever have a chance to eat her food, you had better take it. Just might change your life.

2009 10 14 Studio - Owl & Ice

In more modest news, I finally got to do my first custom hat! This was a surprise birthday present for one of my friend's boyfriend. He likes owls, and she suggested cubes...minor constraints like that really helped "narrow the search space" and focus the vision, and the hat she sent me to work on had just enough texture that it opened up new expressive possibilities with my pens. The "feather" of ice cubes on the left side was just silly enough to work, and I love being asked to do characters, which I normally don't have the nerve to attempt in a large format live context. Not to mention, someone is wearing my art ON HIS HEAD, now! Point being, I LOVED working on this hat. If anyone else wants some custom headwear, email me about it. I'd be honored and delighted.