Feathery Fedoras, Cyberacoustic Jams, & My First Foray Into Graffiti

"I have an abiding interest in the UFO mythos, that sense of longing people have as they watch the skies and hope to see something truly different and startling. We never imagine that aliens will be boring."

– Jon Lebkowsky

"We are part of a symbiotic relationship with something which disguises itself as an extra-terrestrial invasion so as not to alarm us."

– Terence McKenna

Well, we are all now definitely in the thick of it, aren't we?  I've had four conversations in the last 24 hours about the importance of learning to interpret the symbolism of waking life as if we are actually dreaming...clearly something new is emerging through us, as us, and this new reality is making itself known through the now-commonplace occurrence of synchronicities and the instantaneous manifestation of our thoughts and feelings in the world at large.  (If you don't believe me, let's talk about it.)

In related news, I just reviewed my friend's evocative documentary on the evolution of cyberspace, Internet Rising.  The review is up on Reality Sandwich, where you can also stream the entire film:

We may not agree on the nature or potential of cyberspace, but we all recognize its intrinsic value as a medium of (transnational and transpersonal) connection – and maybe that is the first idea that seven billion egoic agendas can get behind.  “What’s good for cyberspace?” might be the question that saves the human species. (Read the whole review.)

Meanwhile, my live art interview series, The Field Guide To Live Artists, picks back up after a long sabbatical with a spotlight on the work of Jon Blake, aka Crazy Redbeard:

"People seem to like what I do. I enjoy making people happy. So if I can increase the joy in the world from pushing some paint around, then it's really a no brainer, I guess." (Read the whole interview.)

Live in Austin, NYE 2011

Watch & Share in HD on Youtube / Vimeo

The climax to one of my favorite improvisations so far.  Thanks to Interstellar Transmissions for letting me set an appropriately trippy tribal tone for their initiatory prayerformance on the eve of this most-anticipated year.  Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile remains one of my favorite albums of all time and this is the closest I've ever come to reproducing that sound on solo acoustic guitar.  Download the entire 10-minute track for free from my Soundcloud page...

Feathery Fedoras!

Positive vibrations, negative space.  Wear these hats above your face.  And if you'd like one for your head, just email me and that doesn't rhyme.  (But if you have time and are inclined, then here's the full line of my designs.)

Comment / Purchase on FB

Comment / Purchase on FB

Adventures In Graffiti

Back in the misty collegiate dawn-age of 2003, my friend and classmate Andrew Giessel wrote an essay called "Graffiti and Public Memetics."  A fan of hip hop culture and DIY, Andrew (now a postdoc neuroscientist at Harvard) introduced me to the rhetoric that graffiti isn't mere "vandalism," but the reclamation of public spaces, a celebration of the commons by stealing it back from the corporate entities that sold it off from under our noses.  Why do we accept without argument the idea that public spaces are not actually public?  Why not beautify our creative commons with common creativity?

Luckily I live in Austin, where there are many places that public wall art is encouraged rather than criminalized.  I couldn't get away with this kind of thing on the walls of the suspiciously owlish Frost Bank, but most of this place still remembers what it's like to have an inclusive culture, and gladly invites people to contribute to their rainforest-esque abundance of bohemian atmosphere.  It's an easy city to step out of your shell and scrawl:

Wall Art @ Spider House Café

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I'm not sure what this is, exactly, but I loved making it:  standing on the bench in a booth in the back room, working on it for about half an hour, while everyone around is absorbed in their homework...

Wall Art @ Ruta Maya International Headquarters

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This takes up the whole wall over the toilet in the men's rest room, about four feet across.  It's one of the few pieces in a very busy bathroom that hasn't yet evoked any contrary replies.  Who's going to argue with this?  No, really.

"Vandalized" Valentine's Card: "Whooo Loves You?"

Comment on FB

This was a Valentine's Day card I picked up at the post office because I am on an owl kick right now...but it needed someone to take it up a notch, so I did.  Maybe this is what the card originally looked like, before the US postal service decided it was too intense to be cute.  I disagree.  Thanks again to Louis Wain for the inspiration...

In the next newsletter, I'll have pictures of the most time-intensive painting I've ever made, as well as more recent live concert footage and plenty of other goodies.  I also have a super huge announcement that will forever reshape the face of my career (!).

Thank you so much for your time and attention!  Feel free to write me any time.  And keep participating...

New Video, Upcoming Radio Appearances, & Art Show This Week!

"Michael Garfield has some absolutely amazing chops...the

musicianship on this album is truly wonderful."
- Marquee Magazine

So said the first official review for Alive With You, my album of highlights from the 30,000 miles of touring I did last year. Of course, they also said that "just when you start to get lost in Garfield's abilities" my rants about aliens, lucid dreaming, and sex in space break the flow, and that "without the stage banter, this album would be a definite winner." Apparently they didn't much care for the storyteller format - and plenty of people probably agree - so I've uploaded an alternate playlist without the talking for everyone who just wants the music. You can listen to it here:

http://bit.ly/banterless

Before I go any further, I want you all to know that this newsletter is an experiment and I'm thankful to you all for following along with me as it unfolds. Some of you came to me through my music, some through my art, and so I cannot possibly hope to please everyone all the time when one or the other of those strands temporarily takes over my life. (To put it another way, I'm like the Obama of Art...only without international banking family connections.)

This week is heavy on the tunes and light on the views, but it's only because I've been working on an epic new live painting (some of you have seen it in progress at the Praang and Invisible Allies shows...my friend Danny Litin took some amazing pics of me at work on it, which you can find on my facebook profile). I have also started curating a new gallery of my sketchbooks from over the years. Both of those things will show up very soon, so thanks for holding tight! In the meantime...

- "Offering Hands" (Unplugged Across America) -

It's finally online: the last of five unplugged, spontaneous road-side music videos I filmed while on tour last fall. Out of the five, I think it's the finest performance...in no small part due to the ludicrous natural beauty that surrounded me and the relief that two months of touring had finally come to a close. Here's my percussive anthem to finding our common ground in the shared joy and suffering of human experience:

Video Link: http://bit.ly/offeringhandsontour

Download This Song Free: http://bit.ly/mgunplugged

- This Week! -

• 8 Feb, Everywhere - Live@Lunch on KRFC FM 88.9 (Fort Collins)

12 - 1 pm MST, instudio performance/interview

Listen Online - Full Details on the FB Event Page

My first instudio radio performance...you can listen via the dial anywhere on the Front Range, or online anywhere on the planet (and in space, although you might have to wait). I'll have a recording up soon for anyone who can't hear it live.

• 10 Feb, Everywhere - Progressive Radio Network

2 pm EST, guest on Expanding Mind with Erik Davis

Listen Online

Expanding Mind is, without question, my favorite radio talk show - a fearless exploration of the fringes of human understanding, guided by author Erik Davis' encyclopedic literacy of the occult and innumerable esoteric subcultures. I was half-joking when I asked him if I could be a guest...and now it's happening! I'm not sure where the conversation will take us, but it's guaranteed to be both profound and bizarre. I highly recommend you tune in if just for Erik's end of the discussion...

• 11 Feb, Boulder CO - 1111 Wellness (on The Hill)

7 - 9 pm, Time Spiral: A Live Art Reception

RSVP at the FB Event Page

Oh, you live in Boulder? Well, awesome! Come out to my first legitimate art show and meet some kindred spirits in the suffuse glow of fourteen of my live paintings. Live music and snacks will be served unmercifully as you bathe in the delightful aroma of one of Boulder's finest medicinal dispensaries. And Lord only knows when you'll get to see this much of my work in one place again.

- Recent Publications -

• My friends at LostInSound.org recently republished "Live Art Is Nonsense," part five in my ongoing series of essays about performance painting. Here's a preview:

Most art forms are kept hidden in the studio until some dramatic Moment Of Unveiling. Instead, the transparency of performance makes this strange behavior distinct enough to deserve a name that will set it apart in people’s minds from the rituals and religions of conventional studio art. Process becomes an obvious, living part of the piece. Journey and destination take on new meanings. Since music, dance, and theater evolved in context as public entertainment or ritual, they belong in a separate category (especially those composed beforehand). In fact, it is the very change of context that makes something like performance painting strange in the first place.

People have taken to calling this kind of thing “live art.” It is probably better than nothing; but insofar as it is used to realistically distinguish one kind of creative expression from the rest, “live art” is nonsense.

• Thanks to Jonathan "Seymor" Sandberg, who has joined The Field Guide To Live Artists with his recent interview about how he got into live painting and what inspires him to keep rocking out for his friends & family in Detroit...

"I see live painting as a turning point in live entertainment that will offshoot into other new ways and combinations of perception. I see actors, comics, light-operators, photographers, writers, musicians, the unnamed and the not-yet-invented sculpting a new media for an awaiting audience."

Thank you, everyone, for your time and attention. I'm a lucky guy to get to share myself for a living like I do, and I'm always happy to hear from you (be it questions, or comments, heckling, commissions, or whatever) so drop me a line any time...and have a wonderful day!

Announcing My New Design Shop! Also, New Videos From The Light & Shadow Tour...

"If magic were to drop its unfulfillable pretensions as a science and come out of the closet as an art, it would ironically enough obtain the freedom to pursue its scientific aspirations, maybe even sneak up on some unified field theorem of the supernatural, all in terms acceptable to modern culture. In purely evangelic terms, as propaganda for a more enlightened magic worldview, art must surely represent our most compelling ‘evidence’ of other states and planes of being."

- Alan Moore, in "Fossil Angels"

New Merchandise Design Shop at Arts Projekt!

People have been asking me for years whether I put my work on clothing...now I can proudly say I do. Not just cool new t-shirts, but shoes, ties, iPhone cases, stickers, stamps, skateboards, buttons, postcards, and my favorite: the Painting While Dancing 2011 Calendar, with a different piece illuminating each month. Of course, I'll still be selling original artwork and inexpensive poster prints through the holiday season, but take a moment to check out my new project and if you think of anything that should be in the store, let me know - I'll be happy to add your ideas!

http://bit.ly/zazzlemg

Ukulele + Fish Ladder =

New "It Hurts So We're Not Dead" Video

The latest from my series of spontaneous unplugged music videos shot on tour, Light & Shadow: Unplugged Across America. Something about the juxtaposition of such a serious song with the salmon striving to swim upstream behind me gives it that "je ne sais quoi"... Enjoy!

Watch it in HD

Download this song for free

New Video From The Light & Shadow Tour:

MG On the Perils of Letting Go

More footage from last month's national Light & Shadow Tour with Charles Shaw, in which I discuss my issue with so many self-proclaimed "spiritual" people – namely, that we tend to use transcendence as an escape from who we are! (I can squeegee that third eye all I like, but if I'm not this and not that, then what reason do I have to be here?)

Join the conversation about this talk on Facebook!

Watch it in HD

Download this talk for free

Eric Moorcroft & Audrey McNamara

Join the Field Guide To Live Artists

Two brief-but-lovely interviews with some of the live painting scene's freshest faces, as part of my ongoing mission to create a directory of inspiring stories from the front lines of process art:

"Painting and music are two art forms I believe complement one another."

- Eric Moorcroft

"You have to do your thing 'on demand'. You can't get flustered or shy, you can't hesitate or just buckle under the pressure of having others watching. You must be confident."

- Audrey McNamara

New Light & Shadow Tour Video, Custom Hat, & Process Pics

“Learn your flaw, because your flaw is also your glory.”

- Ken Wilber

"In fact, something cannot be internalized until we emerge from our embeddedness in it, for it is our embeddedness, our subjectivity, that leads us to project it onto the world in our constitutions of reality."

- Robert Kegan

"The widest audience I'm trying to reach is simply every aspect of myself. The goal is not reaching out, the goal is reaching in."

- Saul Williams

• "Tin Heart," Another Roadside Music Video from The Light & Shadow Tour

My tour with journalist and film-maker Charles Shaw is almost halfway through – we've been engaging audiences across the country in conversation about the repressed and denied aspects of our personal and collective psyche...and filming interviews for his Unheard Voices Project (an online archive of testimonials about the U.S. criminal justice system...contact him if you would like to get involved). Meanwhile, I've taken a few opportunities to pause along the way and record performances for the serialized video album, Light & Shadow: Unplugged Across America.

Here's the latest – a bantamweight anthem about forgiving ourselves for this whole "incarnation" debacle:

"Tin Heart," by Michael Garfield

(free download here)

(watch it in HD)

The remaining three weeks of our will take us through the South and South East, up to Chicago and then across and back up the East Coast to New York. Have a look at our tour schedule and updated program info...I hope we can meet up along the way!

• New Big Gigantic Custom Ball Cap

My latest custom assignment was for a fellow fan of my home team band, Big Gigantic – those are the Boulder Flatirons along the brim, along with a few of my client's favorite plants making an appearance in the overall cornucopia of delight. Now she can represent with the best of 'em...

I'm always open to doing more custom hats (or whatever I can paint on), so if you have any wild ambitions for embellishing yourself, email me about them!

• Peer into the Process of a Few Earlier Paintings

I recently went back in time and took pictures of some paintings from last year in varying states of completion. Click on the images below to get a better look at my process – how I build up from the broad shapes into increasingly intricate detail:

• Field Guide to Live Artists: Jamie Morgan

Jamie Morgan is the latest addition to my Field Guide To Live Artists, an online interview archive with everyone crazy enough to set up an easel at a concert. This is an opportunity for community to develop out of this scattered emergent art movement, for the artists to get to know and promote one another, and for us all to draw from our collective well of inspiration. Know anybody who'd like to be involved? Send them my way!

• MG at Art Outside Festival in Austin, Texas

Next Stop: Art Outside Festival, my first musical gig in Austin and by all accounts one of the finest boutique art festivals in the entire U.S. I'll be playing on this amazing stage at 2:30 pm on Saturday the 23rd, and then painting live alongside hundreds of other performance painters, studio artists, dancers, installations, and other amazing displays of human creativity. Make it out if you can, and if you know anybody within a day's drive of this awesomeness, let them know it's about to go doooooooown... (Here's the facebook event page.)

Thanks for your time, stay in touch, and have a glorious day!

Sonic Bloom, Ramble On The River, Field Guide To Live Artists

"The way you stretch the envelope of culture is by creating language...Culture cannot evolve any faster than its language, because what cannot be said cannot be done. What cannot be said cannot be put in place."

- Terence McKenna

I am so, so committed to language creation. McKenna imagined a post-verbal world where we all broadcast our intricate messages on our skin like octopi, "as though the project of communication becomes high-speed sculpture in a conceptual dimension made of light and intentionality." Others have pursued the same posthuman xenolinguistics in myriad interesting ways.

So let's take a low value for the exponent here and assume that a picture is worth merely a thousand words. I have no choice but to try a new approach: less rambling and more imagery. I want to show you where I've been painting...detailed close-ups...strange angles that show the diversity of sheens and textures in each piece. I want us to paint the skin of each other's minds with the living rippling of our heart's tongues, a bright and noisy quiet in intimate explosion, like chatty squid with a direct line to the Beloved. So here's to that.

But first, preening.

• Press

Just a couple of delightful recent snippets about my art and music culled from the infowebs that I am honored to share with you. I got a wonderful shout-out in one of the more thorough write-ups on this year's Wakarusa Festival:

"[Michael's] work is multi-dimensional ethereal reflection; like peering into a vortex. His channel to the divine is wide open and clear, much like Alex Grey, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he achieves the same kind of world-renowned respect and affection."

- Caeli La, Lost In Sound

Less hyperbolic but equally exciting, my latest (free) instrumental EP, Daylighting: Electronic Improvisations on Acoustic Guitar, was somehow picked up by one of Colorado's most highly-regarded reviewers:

"Don't jump to conclusions based on 'acoustic guitar improv'...this sounds more like some of the sonic explorations that came out of the Robert Fripp/Brian Eno collaborations than some hippie 'jamming' on an acoustic in a park somewhere. [It's] full of odd timbres and textures, but the occasional splash of melody erupts and there's a strange, sci-fi psycho-Western feel to a lot of it – let's just say if they'd ever done a psychedelic drug sequence on Firefly, this would have worked perfectly as the accompaniment. It's occasionally beautiful, frequently evocative and never less than interesting."

- Cory Casciato, Denver Westword

• Illustration

Stun Flower

2010 06 23, 25, 26 Ogden Theatre & Sonic Bloom

(Hamsa Lila, Tinariwen, David Starfire, Eminence Ensemble,

Michal Menert, Signal Path, Merton, Octopus Nebula, Bluetech,

Zilla, Big Gigantic, ill Gates, Project Aspect, The Acidophiles, Deru,

Rena Jones, Vibesquad, Lynx & Janover)

24"x24" – paint pens on masonite

• email me to inquire about or make offer for the original

• email me to order $20 poster prints (11"x17")

Dedicated to the work of Dan Winter, one hell of a physicist and the man whose research so emphasizes the phi rosette phase-conjugate love fields emanating from the heart of someone in love.

Click to enlarge and see the painting in various states of completion:

Detail of the flower's heart, as the galactic arms spiral inward to sweet completion:

I had the color-shifting LED flashlight aimed at this thing almost all weekend. People kept bringing their friends back to me to ask me to show them, too... No promises that I'll actually paint something with one of those lights in mind – one of those ten-in-one pictures that distributes various scenes across the spectrum, coming together in a weird cluster of superimposed notions under full white light – but I'm thinking about it.

UFO Jellyfish Gnosis

2010 06 26, 27, 30 & 07 03 Mishawaka Ampthitheatre

(EOTO, Eskmo, Karsh Kale, Sonic Bloom Orchestra, D.V.S*, Jantsen,

Future Simple Project, Heyoka, Beats Antique, Post Paradise,

Holden Young Trio, Futaba, Dave Watts, P'Nut Daniels, Michal Menert)

24"x24" – paint pens on masonite

• email me to inquire about or make offer for the original

• email me to order $20 poster prints (11"x17")

Yet another reason I want to share more angles on what I do is because I get to paint in beautiful places – like the riverside idyll that is The Mish:

This one, dedicated to my friend Brandon Watson for letting me steal the title from his religious views (and facebook group – population: 2), has all kinds of shininess going on. Mmm:

Gem Chains

2010 06 Studio Commission

16"x20" – paint pens on canvas panel

• email me to order $20 poster prints (11"x17")

As my live paintings have gotten larger in the last few months, the smaller end of things has opened up for more accessible custom work. That means modest canvas panels like the one above, and also hats, guitar cases, tattoo designs...I'm eager to get creative with venue as you and I all work together to think of cool places this could go.

And as increasingly the case, body painting figured hugely into my weekend at Sonic Bloom Festival. You can check out the gallery on my Facebook visual art page, here:

Body Painting @ Sonic Bloom Festival 2010

• Writing

Lastly (for now, with much cooking for the next newsletter), enjoy these two latest entries from my Field Guide To Live Artists at Examiner.com – an ongoing interview series with anyone and everyone who sets up their art studio at public events and works in front of an audience. This go, we have new interviews from two live painters active in the Denver scene...

Interview w/ Eliza Ross

Interview w/ Brian Holmes

If anyone you know is a live artist, invite them on board! The goal is to create the most comprehensive directory available, to give everyone free press and opportunities for cross-promotion, and ultimately to publish it all in a beautiful full-color coffee-table album. So join in!

Painting Is Dangerous And Here Is Your Proof

The first thing, the big thing:

I'm proud to present my newest video, which marries timelapse live painting footage, acoustic guitar Live PA, and one of my finer essays into a multimedia assault on the uninspired mind.

"Painting Is Dangerous" is a word of caution to you creative types out there (and perhaps a relief to the less-creative)...a reminder of just how potent creativity is and how respectful we must be of it. This video is dedicated to Dennis McKenna and anyone else who ever burned themselves (even a little) on the Divine Flame:

There is a lot more information about it at youtube – which I encourage you to visit anyway so you can rate, favorite, and share this with your friends. (I can't say it about all of my work, but I'm pretty sure you have friends who will appreciate this.)

You can download both the music and the voiceover track for free here, for anyone who wants to mix it into their DJ sets – and the original essay is available to read in its entirety here, for anyone who thinks I talk too fast.

(I'm delighted to discover that this video is already getting a modest amount of exposure, coinciding with new features on me for my second residency at the Wakarusa Festival's Interstellar Meltdown and my developing relationship with the aya-heroes at Chimbre.)

The second thing, the not-so-big thing:

Put down that online poker subscription and invest your tax refund in something you'll admire for years! I'm having my Big Spring Cleaning, I'm-Going-On-Tour-And-Don't-Want-To-Haul-It-All ART SALE.

From now until I leave Boulder on the 7th of April, make me an offer on original artwork and I'll probably take it. (Every available painting, and its value according to an average hourly graphic design wage, is listed here: http://tinyurl.com/michaelgarfieldart – I'm happy to take as little as 50% of their market value, maybe even less if you can sell me on a good story).

So there you have it.

> Imagery

And now, the last exhibits of my recent infatuation with adding new dimensions to old work:

Before

After

Such A Noisy Room

2010 03 18 The Engine Room (EPROM, Mux Mool, Gladkill)

& 2008 10 29 Crosstown Station (Madahoochi, Brother Bagman)

My first gig in Tallahassee, Florida at The Engine Room was as low-key as it was loud. Everyone there was wondering where everyone else was...but not only did that mean an unusually intimate show (always a treat) but something tells me that subsequent trips out won't be quite so anonymous. The highlight for me was meeting Boris Gladkill, who in spite of his name is a kind and mellow guy (above and beyond being a wonderful DJ/producer). That, and getting to commend Mux Mool in person about his "A Glorious Dawn" remix.

This painting makes me feel like it's New Year's at 12:00 AM...or the full moon when all of the corals and anenomes release their sperm into the tides...or everyone in the traffic jam has their windows down and different radio stations blaring out of every window...blissful pandemonium, awkward angel orgies, a cacophony of color. (Unofficial official music for this painting: They Might Be Giants' "Man, It's So Loud In Here.")

Before

After

Drapes & Climbers

2010 03 19 The Maison

(Lazer Sword, Mux Mool, Gladkill, Unicorn Fukr, Rekanize)

& 2008 07 19 Owsley's (BLVD, Souleye, Jantsen, Chordata)

& 2008 07 09 The Fox Theatre (Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad)

This painting started as an exploration in partiality, incompleteness, and missing parts – so it's appropriate that a year and a half later, when I was on a layer-adding bender, I picked it back up and recorded what else I know now of these things. I had a chance to play with stroke (the yellow, somewhat ink-bamboo-looking drapery), metallic paint (they look like bubbles from one angle and coins from another), tentacles (I take every chance I get – soooo many permutations!), and the 2D version of one of my favorite aesthetic principles (another win for the Japanese): miegakure, or "hide and reveal," creating "a sense of vastness in a small space" by making it impossible to view the whole thing from any one angle.

This painting is dedicated to Donovan Fannon (aka Rekanize) for being such a photographic badass that almost 6% of his Facebook friends have one of his beautiful pics as their profile image. Thanks for the awesome snaps, Donovan!

> Writing

This week brings another two entries for my Field Guide To Live Artists, a web-serialized collection of interviews with anyone I can find who performs as a visual artist (painter, sculptor, flower arranger...). Know anybody who isn't in there and should be? Tell them to email me! Eventually it'll be published in glorious coffee table book form. First, I have to find another 150 artists. For now, here are lovely-if-brief interviews with live painters Laura Sellers and Dylan Brooks:

Field Guide To Live Artists: Laura Sellers

Field Guide To Live Artists: Dylan Brooks