Crowdfunding my Google Glass | Reflections on a Shift | New SCI Pin | New GRC Flatbill

NOTE:  If you subscribe to this blog by GMail, please note that they just changed their settings and even though you signed up for it, you are likely to miss future updates from me unless you drag this email from the "promotional" to "primary" folder in their new tab format.  (Sheesh.)

"Art is the opposite of war. Artists wage peace with their creations."

– Alex Grey

"When everyone realizes they are an artist, we will have world peace."

– Roman Villagrana

The big news continues.  Here's the best of what I've been up to for the last few weeks:

Help Support My Google Glass Video & Essay Series!

Google selected me on the basis of this tweet to be one of the first 2000 people with access to their game-changing new smart glasses, which allow me to share my work more fluidly than ever before.  Even though the opportunity is kind of overwhelming, I feel a profound responsibility to take it up so that I can continue my work to inspire and empower as many people as possible by making my life a work of art.

My plan for Glass is to share as much as I can about my own creative process and the amazing community of artists with whom I work through a video record of my transformational festival tour and an ongoing video time capsule project for people to leave messages to their future selves.  You'll be funding an ongoing series of intimate views into the work I do as an acoustic-electronic musician, live painter, public speaker, writer, and awestruck traveler – with plenty of windows into the work of other artists, inventors, and inspiring people.

I am also going to write a series of short essays on the promise and risk inherent in this new technology, and others like it.  It's a Golden Ticket to the Chocolate Factory...but most of those kids got eaten by machines.  It's a Lightsaber...but with great power comes great responsibility.  Hopefully these writings will help a generation of digital natives navigate their world with more care, discernment, wonder, and respect.

Please support this project however you can – in small ways or large – by donating to this campaign and sharing it with your friends, family, and anyone who is interested to see what Glass can do to empower someone in service to the creative commons and the evolution of our planet.

Here are pics of the brass pin and vinyl stickers I'm offering as perks:

The World's First POV Video Projection Onto Stage! (?)

Watch in HD

Huge thanks to Morphis Art for taking these four short videos of my set at Gratifly Festival, where I streamed live video from my face back onto the stage, where members of the audience could see themselves up there with me – as well as the fire dancers and live flower arrangement by the legendary Anthony Ward – and get an up-close look at what I'm doing with all of those guitar pedals.

My talk from Om Vibrations 2013: Reflections on a Shift

Free Download Here

New Live Album: This Never Happened

Stream for free on Bandcamp

For real, guys.  I don't know what you're talking about.  ;)  But Magnetic Eye Records does.  They made this album #007 in their catalog; given all the spy talk surrounding my appointment as a Glass Explorer, I'm tickled.

Official SCI Hornings Hideout Pin [Sold Out]

After years of flirting with The String Cheese Incident to make some official merchandise for them, I was approached by Sales & Shenanigans to make this pin for their Hornings Hideout shows this year.  The limited series of 220 sold out in ten minutes.  D'oh!  We should have made more.  I suspect we will be working together again soon...

The New MG x Herbivore Designs x GRC Flatbill

The SE Festival Tour Continues

Michael Goes To Burning Man, Part Five

This time as a Glass Explorer.  A big part of the work I'm hoping you'll support with my Indiegogo campaign is to get out there to record as much awesome and inspiring work as possible – both my own and other people's. My full Burning Man speaking and music schedule is here (on the left sidebar).

Speaker Series Lineup on FB

Fractal Planet is also taking a quantum leap and powering their camp with a RevAir vertical mag-lev wind turbine – clean, quiet energy that will turn the desert winds into the electrical life of celebration. Support their crowdfunding campaign and help usher in a new era for transformational festivals...

Palenque Norte Speaker Series Lineup on FB

You might already know as the "TED Talks for Psychedelics," but it's a lot more than that – over the years it has featured such luminaries as Alex & Allyson Grey, Alexander & Ann Shulgin, John Perry Barlow, Bruce Damer, and more.  They're running yet another donation-worthy campaign, which you can read about and donate to by clicking the pic above.

That's "all" for now!  Deep gratitude from me to you for your time and attention.  I'm always available to respond to your questions and feedback.  Stay in touch and have a beautiful weekend!

My New Collab With Grassroots Cali & Paintings From Houston

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself."

– Henry Miller

First of all, the most exciting news since...well, since the last newsletter when I announced my new place on the roster next to Alex & Allyson Grey, Nadis Warriors, Govinda, & D.V.S* at Re:Evolution Media.  But whereas that was exciting for me, this has (also) been exciting for everyone else:

GRC x MG Collaboration!

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Preorder for $50 + s/h

Last August I painted a custom hat for Ryan Connolly of Grassroots California, who sell limited run custom designs on fitted ball caps at pretty much every music festival I've ever attended.  He liked the piece so much he had his comrade Graham Considine vectorize the image so it could be immortalized in embroidery on a signature MG Grassroots design...and now this picture of the prototype has scored more "likes" than anything else I've ever posted.

Right-click on that picture to take a closer look:  all of that is embroidery!  Everyone involved agrees that this takes flatbills to a whole new level...and pre-orders have been FLYING.  If you want to claim one of these before they're officially out in April (and sold out before they hit the streets), I'm taking preorders right now ($50 + shipping = less than half what this would cost from a company like New Era).  

Only 420 of these will be made, but that's still 419 more than any other hat I've ever designed.  ;)

And now on to Houston, where I joined the Morphis Art Collective for some shows on their home turf a couple weeks ago...

Painting with Chris Morphis at Villains, Houston

Hooo Do You Love?

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2012 02 11 Villains (various Houston DJs), 02 12 Morphis Art Studios

32" x 20" - paint markers on two 16" x 20" masonite panels

11" x 17" signed poster prints - $25 (incl. s/h) - email me to order

My first diptych, a pair of "his and hers" owls (I leave it to you to decide which is which) in classic conjoined transpersonal endless-palace-of-spirit configuration.  They look really cool set slightly apart, so the viewer's eye stitches both panels back together...the gold-red background makes these really shiny in person.  I had a hard time keeping the two panels taped together during the show...which is poetic, considering how I was set up to paint with Chris Morphis in between two rooms with two DJs playing completely different music and I was feeling insane by the end of the night, caught between competing influences.  Totally disruptive sonic environment, not recommended.

Right-click to check out the painting in various stages of its process:

The Walls Have Eyes

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2012 02 14 Mango's (various Houston DJs)

2012 02 19 Austin Roadhouse (various Austin kids)

18" x 24" - paint markers on balsa panel

11" x 17" signed poster prints - $25 (incl. s/h) - email me to order

Kind of a Jeff Wood does H.R. Giger piece if I ever saw one.  I ordinarily use masonite panels because of their finely textured, high fidelity surface, but didn't expect to stay in Houston as long as I did and had to borrow a piece of this balsa laminate from the Morphis family.  Consequently it was primed by them and I got to work on a white background for the third time in nearly 250 paintings.  It led to an entirely different approach, building things up instead of pulling them out, painting over the luminosity rather than as it...

Right-click to check out the painting in various stages of its process:

Custom Hat Explosion Continues Unabated

The ongoing exploration of all possible ways for me to paint a hat proceeds apace, kindled by the attention my Grassroots California collaboration received over the past week.  In addition to my first live hat painting (the one on the bottom, tagged at one of my shows with Applied Pressure for a friendly donation), here are three of the classier lids I think I've done so far:

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And, I was just featured on Leakworthy.com – they "leak" new undiscovered music and artistic talent every week, and have made a gorgeous little page presenting a full slideshow of my live paintings in addition to exemplary videos of my work.  Check out their whole site – it's full of amazing artists!

So much more already for the next one.  I'm excited to share...but for now, thanks and love!