Evolver Mixtape, The Untz Challenge, & 420 Painted Flatbill

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have some huge things to share this week – but first of all:  D'oh!  I forgot to make a list of all the shows I painted at during South By Southwest before I left for tour – so before I can share two of my favorite paintings yet, I have to get back and dig through my records for the details.  Hold tight on that – and in the meantime, here's a sneak peak courtesy of my friend Jenna Jasso:

Process pics of both paintings at various stages of completion can be found here and here.

And now onto some great news.  :)

Evolver Social Movement Mixtape Vol. I

Q:  What do Thievery Corporation, Tipper, Phutureprimitive, KiloWatts, The Nadis Warriors, Dynasty Electric, The Portal, Cualli, Greg Howard, and Michael Garfield have in common?

A:  We're all on the new benefit compilation I curated with my friend Annie Philo!

For the last few years, I've been a contributor to Reality Sandwich, an amazing online magazine featuring esoteric perspectives on our changing times.  Recently I was recruited to help them put together a futuristic mix to help support their online social network, Evolver.net.

Check out this lovely new album of music from, and for, the evolutionaries: a planetary mycelium of explorers, artists, and builders...neotribal, technoshamanic, trans-urban grooves for new humans in the next nature.

We believe in the gift economy and want to make this available to everyone...it is also an experiment in sustainably supporting a thriving transformational community, and requires your support, so please make a donation or become a member of the Evolver Social Movement.

"Acoustic instruments and organs, synthesizers and trance beats, guitar riffs and bass props; this mix has it all...
blended together perfectly for the sake of an innate groove."

- The Untz

(FYI, I'm not making any money on this project.  I'm just lucky enough to be involved.)

Please vote for me in The Untz Challenge!

I do my best to live inspired because it's the best way to be an inspiration.  The more I strive to show people the ways in which we are all participating in Something Greater, the more I feel it and live it myself.  The giving and receiving come together to form an endless braid.

So before I say anything else, the opportunity of a lifetime is before me I need your help.  Click the pic or keep reading for full details:

If you'd like to see me play for you and your friends this summer, please vote for my music at The Untz Challenge (or here's the contest page for those of you who aren't on facebook).

If I win, I get to perform at four amazing music festivals: Summer Camp, Wakarusa, Sonic Bloom, and Electric Forest. It'd be the culmination of over a decade of tireless effort to bring my music to a new audience of appreciators – and it'll be a great counterbalance, to offer my improvised instrumental prayerformances as a glen of peace amidst the raging grimy beats.

"Golden Hour," the track I entered in this competition, is one of my finer moments – you can listen to it here.

Not only will I give everyone who votes for me a copy of the entire unreleased hour-long "Ratatat & Sigur Ros in bed" set featuring "Golden Hour"...if I win, I'll also improvise a completely unique set at each festival, record it, and make that available for free to everyone as well.

"[Michael] is leading the charge in bringing a more human and soulful aspect back to electronic music."

– Jason White, aka Zympht

(I'll also give discounts on my prints to anyone who helps me spread the word.)

And I'm not just in this for me.  I'll use my opportunity to invite hoopers, live painters, and other performers on stage to collaborate.  Success is supposed to be shared and I want a circus up there with me if I win!

For example, here's a pic of me playing at the DMT RMX party during SXSW with Teresa Cantu doing live painting ballet (Listen to this on the Evolver Mix, if you're curious.):

I want to spend my life doing this.  Your help is HUGELY appreciated.  Like, "I'll never forget this" appreciated.  So please vote, and get your friends to vote...and let me know about it, so I can hook everyone up with those unreleased tracks!

Another "Dope" Hat

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I guess it was only a matter of time before this got literal.  Click on the picture for a closer view of all the sticky details...it's not like I really want to keep making these, but I really won't mind if you want me to do an encore in your favorite colors.  Just shoot me an email...

...and of course, there is still time to preorder the embroidered flatbill I did in collaboration with Grassroots California.  Details on that here.

Thanks again for your time. Don't hesitate to write, and have a beautiful day!

MG Joins Re:Evolution Media, A Live Art Opus, & More Awesome News!

"The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist"
– Ananda Coomaraswamy

"It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations."
– Walter Bagehot

Looking at this bevy of announcements, it occurs to me that life is moving too fast for a biweekly newsletter, anymore.  I'd rather send you something you can actually read in one sitting, so I hope you'll stay with me as I switch to more digestible weekly updates.  But if you'd prefer, you can always follow me on twitter, or at my facebook music and art pages.  Thanks again to everyone for your support!

Michael Garfield Joins Re:Evolution Media

As part of my "Take it to the next level AGAIN!" agenda, I am now on the roster at Re:Evolution Media – the same group that books Alex & Allyson Grey, The Nadis Warriors, Desert Dwellers, Govinda, Birds of Paradise, Kaminanda, & D.V.S*!  These guys throw some of the best events I've ever seen, and after two years of collaborating with them on The Manifestation Celebration and other great shows, I'm honored and excited to join the family as a musician, live painter, and public speaker.

Stay tuned at my facebook music page for more news as things develop – these guys are blowing up all over the country and it's now considerably more likely I'll be back in your town soon to help raise some holy noise!  (It's already getting silly, if you haven't checked my concert calendar recently.)

And speaking of holy noise, here is a clip from my improvised acoustic-electronic "cyberguitar" performance at Ruta Maya in Austin last month:

"Leave Your Face At The Gate"

Watch on Youtube

This is track two on Rainbows At Night, a new and ongoing archive of free live recordings to tide everyone over while I'm working on my next studio album.  I'll be posting a new track for the newsletter every couple weeks.  There are some really juicy ones coming up...enjoy!

And now, to share the most ambitious and time-intensive live painting I have ever accomplished.  Be sure to click the image to view it in full-size, with every rich detail:

Many Worlds

2011 09 01, 02 Burning Man Festival - Fractal Nation Village

(Left Coast, Heyoka, Mimosa, Dov, FreQ Nasty, Ill Gates, An-Ten-Nae)

2011 09 10 Red Rocks Amphitheatre (STS9, Savoy)

2011 10 25 Cervantes' Other Side (Bridging The Music Presents Electronic Tuesdays)

2011 11 12 Om Vibrations Experience (Nadis Warriors, Desert Dwellers, Rara Avis)

2011 12 30 The Parish (Nadis Warriors, Spoonfed Tribe, Hatch)

2012 01 07 Whomp (Polymyth & various other local DJs)

2012 01 30 Ruta Maya, Esoteric Monday Dubstep & Gypsy Bazaar

2012 01 31 Beauty Bar (Seven Circles, El Commode, Borrisokane)

2012 02 02 The Parish (An-Ten-Nae, Gladkill, Psymbionic)

2012 02 07 Club 606, Whompadelic Wednesdays (Polymyth, Soundshaman, DRRTYWULVZ)

original painting, 24"x36" – paint markers on stretched canvas – make a bid
signed and numbered full-size stretched canvas giclée fine art prints
(limited series of 100): $300 each – order

signed 11"x17" poster prints:  $20 + $5 s/h – order

I posted about this painting in its early stages last fall...now this epic beast, carried from Nevada to Colorado to Texas over the course of six months, ripples with the energy of each of those realms – and, appropriately, contains miniature paintings of over a dozen other live pieces.  This is a "God's Eye View" of the multiverse from which I draw my inspiration...inspired, in turn, by the work of all of my fantastic friends in the global visionary art community who urged me to invest more (more, more!) time into a stupefying, gallery-level piece.

Due to the terrific amount of work I put into this one, the original will be held on extended silent auction and I will make a very limited run of full-size fine art canvas prints so a top-quality version will be available to everyone at a reasonable price.  The giclée prints will be made from a scan of the image, signed and numbered, and shipped for free to anywhere in the United States.

Click this image for an up-close walk-through of how I completed this, one improvised step at a time:

...of course, while working on a huge opus monster of a painting, it's good to blow some steam on smaller, less time-intensive works:

Subduction Zone

2012 01 18 Barcelona Austin (B. Lewis & Insightful, Maintain, Applied Pressure Collective)

2012 02 09 Beauty Ballroom (Gaslamp Killer, Bird Peterson, Grommit, Applied Pressure Collective)

original painting, 18"x24" – paint markers on stretched canvas

signed 11"x17" poster prints:  $20 + $5 s/h – order

This piece is a return to the eightfold geometries that captivated me in the fall of 2009...a revisitation of some familiar patterns from a new perspective.  Local beats collective Applied Pressure made it extremely easy for me to enjoy myself while painting; I know I'll be working with them more in the future...

Click for a close-up look at how this came together:

Two New Interview Videos!

The inevitable consequence of making as much mouth noise as I do.

On proposing over Skype, the threat of solar storms to our electrical grid, and full-body thinking...a conversation about intuition in the Age of Information and the ways that technology both connects and divides us, with host Alexis Neely of The Whole Truth Show:

   

Watch on Youtube

On how to sidestep and overcome creative blocks, the inspiration behind "Many Worlds," and why "imagination is our greatest natural resource"...a conversation about seizing the dream of a fulfilling creative lifestyle, with host Jessie Elaban of Austin art and culture blog, Collective Perspectives:

Watch on Youtube

Custom Hats Galore!

Three of my latest designs for happy heads – plenty of hats still for sale in my gallery of available original art, and of course you can always email me with your budget, hat size, and color and style preferences if you'd like me to make you one that's especially yours.

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Parting Thoughts

From my article "Godhood Is Boring: Thoughts on Radical Life Extension" – now online at the excellent blog, Spirit Of Spider:

Science is, in the final count, not about the increase of knowledge, but the increase of ignorance – if every question answered means two more questions asked, what we don’t know is growing faster than what we do. And so a mature science, grounded in the same wonder at mystery that impelled natural inquiry in the first place, welcomes this mystery. It is not a program of rapturous domination, or prideful power en route to ultimate mastery of the matter, but the cultivation of wisdom through the exploration of nature as macrocosm and the self as microcosm, of the ego embedded in a world defined by interbeing. 
(Read the article...)

The Sacred Geography of 21st Century Renaissance Civilization

(If you got this by email, read it as a web page for full rich media splendor...)

Reading Music:

"Meridians" – improvised at Art Outside Festival 2011
(download this track for free)

“As viewed by astronauts from the moon, the earth lacks those lines of sociopolitical division that are so prominent on maps. And as recognized here below, the web of interlacing socioeconomic interdependencies that now enfold the planet is of one life. All that is required is a general change of vision to accord with those contemporary facts.”
– Joseph Campbell, comparative mythologist

“It’s not science to me unless it’s integrated, in such a way that it makes a story. I have this holistic view. If symbiosis is simply the living together of organisms in the same place and the same time, in physical contact with each other…then Gaia, which is the whole Earth living system, is symbiosis as seen from space. You can’t talk about cost-benefit and cooperation/competition because those words are proper for the banks and the basketball courts, but they’re not proper for a scientific explanation.“

– Lynn Margulis, evolutionary biologist

This month marks the maiden voyage of a most exciting collaboration as lead blogger for The Renaissance Project – an international team of writers and film-makers chronicling the emergence of a new planetary culture, performing a new evolutionary mythos through the personal stories of genre-breaking creative innovators.

As part of our launch, I just published what I think might be my finest piece of writing so far – a jazzy, poetic romp inspired in equal parts by Google Earth, media theory, archeoastronomy, and ayahuasca.

If my calling is indeed to inspire by sharing what inspires me, then it's time for me to take up the sacred sword and devote myself to the illuminated word – to give a voice to this swirling nexus of culture and consciousness, art and science, religion and everyday life in which all of us find ourselves as we cross the threshold into a new way of being.  Out of the clamor of interconnected perspectives, we can hear a new tune playing – the angelic choir of seven billion people unified in a blooming ecology of mind, our flesh quickened in exaltation of the transcendental living mystery in which all of us are woven – the song of the human condition as it awakens ever more deeply to itself through a re-animated sacred and sentient cosmos.

So please, enjoy this declarative first step down the pilgrimage road of my newly-inhabited role as the muezzin for this post-historical call to prayer – I welcome your comments, your sharing, and your reflections as I gear up to expand this work into a regular flow of philosophical performances and, perhaps, finally, a book:

"We Get Around: The Sacred Geography of 21st Century Renaissance Civilization"

"This all starts right here by recognizing that you live on a spherical creature spiraling around the Sun’s own helical trajectory through the dynamic interstellar medium, through cosmic dust and lightning storms, and whichever way you point we can go no deeper into 'space' than we already are. And as the feeling of humanity as a layer stretching out in every direction on the surface of this sphere increases, as you can almost sense those people in their houses, watching tv or making love or crying about work, the children wondering what adulthood is like, the adults wondering about God…this is you, this is your body, and everyone’s successes are your successes. Every new idea is as yours as your heartbeat – out of your control but part of what defines your being in this time and place." (read more)

This is an open-ended project and we welcome collaborators.  If you feel inspired to contribute to this with your own celebration of world creative culture in an accelerating age, you can fill out an application on the website...here's the video I made as part of that process, to state my interest and intentions.  It's the closest thing I have right now to a mission statement:

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.  :)

EarthKidzUSA's 2012 Visionary Art Calendar

While we're on the topic of awesome creative projects in which I am honored to participate, here's the coolest wall calendar you've ever seen (Long Now Foundation clocks that measure time in the passing of seasonal flowers don't count).  "FutureEarth" is both a solar and lunar 13-month calendar that gives not only the standard weeks and months but also the Dreamspell dates some people use to feel a closer connection to the harmonic currents of time reimagined as art...and with contributions from an all-star line-up of visionary artists (including Martina Hoffmann, Android Jones, Amanda Sage, Adam Scott Miller, Autumn Skye, Jessica Perlstein, and almost the entire Colorado live painting crew), it's easy to see time as art.

AND the $20 you spend on this calendar funds a FREE Youth Art Workshop Series for 2012!  So you're empowering the next generation of creative brilliance by picking up some of these for your family and friends.

Here's my page – big thanks to Justin Maynes for organizing this, and for making me May:

Buy the FutureEarth 2012 Wall Calendar

So Many Hats

I've been on a roll with the hand-painted hats, of late, and here's your proof.  Most of these are still available for purchase, if you see something you like:

"Fireworks" – check price/availability on fb

"Heart Display" – check price/availability on fb

"Tesla" – check price/availability on fb

"Neon Streamers" – check price/availability on fb

"Nightscape" – check price/availability on fb

"Desert Flower" – custom design for Whomp Austin

"Lite Brite" – custom design for Paul Rush

Stay Healthy For The Holidays!

It's out of form for me to publish a bunch of health links in this blog, but I am after all addicted to sharing, and just found some helpful short articles about psychosocial health and nutrition I think it would be a crime not to spread around.  Here you go – a few easy tips for staying sane and in top form during one of the most stressful times of year:

• Smiling Makes You Smarter

• The Health Benefits of Gratitude 

• 29 of the Healthiest Foods on the Planet

• How to Build A Good Work Environment

From the above article:

"Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an ideal — and he will do his own 'making over' far more effectively than you can do it for him."

Forthcoming:

Austin is treating me better than I could have imagined.  Not only do I get to celebrate my 28th birthday and Saturn Return with a free concert at Austin's utterly delectable Whip In on January 8th, but – dude! – I just landed an opening slot for two of my favorite bands in Texas, at one of my favorite venues in Texas.  Click the flyer for more info...I hope to see you there!

...and, lastly, if you've made it this far then you probably have the attention span and dorkitude required to reap full satisfaction from the two-hour interview I just did with poet, former MIT cultural historian, and planetary culture pioneer William Irwin Thompson.  It was an incredible conversation that took us from the religious underpinnings of the singularity movement, to the emergence of new multimodal electronic art forms, to comparisons between the current economic crisis and the critical emergence of photosynthesis on primordial Earth.  And I've never met anyone with betteradvice for a future-shocked planet on how to surf accelerating change.  I can't wait to share it with you.

In the meantime, much love and many thanks to each and every one of you for giving me your time and support!  Lord knows I don't get to book shows at amazing conscious festivals, publish on thoughtful and inspiring websites, and create art that adds lustre to a viewer's soul without this amazing network of friends and co-conspirators turning me onto amazing opportunities and making resonant introductions.  Anything I can do to repay you for your help, please let me know.

- "A Million Anniversaries," My Sleek New CyberAcoustic Guitar LP -

"Fortunately, most people still believe in love, and love, after all, is God's secret name.

The inevitable consequence of love is the building of temples."

– Alex Grey

“When we win it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names.”

– Rainier Maria Rilke

This spring, I was blessed enough to perform my evolving "cyberacoustic" guitar music for audiences across Colorado, Texas, Oregon, Arkansas, and New Mexico. These improvised instrumental pieces soaked up the energies of each location – places with history and holiness that I can't even describe, except through music. From the sacred deserts of the Southwest to the rain forests of the Northwest...playing along with aerial fabric dancers in Denver and to dinosaur skeletons in Dallas...I gathered the most evocative and inspiring numbers into a new double-disc LP that takes my experiments in acoustic-electronic integration to a whole new level.

An all-terrain album if there ever were one, A Million Anniversaries: CyberAcoustic Guitar for Lovemaking journeys through anthemic electro-grooves into hypnotic tribal ambience, cinematic instrumental rock and tender romantic interludes. It's a testament to the orchestra hidden in an acoustic guitar, pushing the envelope of this traditional instrument into an age of digital angels and mycelial technology – and after months of preparation it's finally available:

A Million Anniversaries: CyberAcoustic Guitar for Lovemaking

The entire ninety-four minute, two-disc album (along with liner notes and exclusive high-resolution fractal zoom poster art) is yours for supporting my tireless tour schedule with your donations.

I'm also offering six of my favorite tracks together as a free EP for people who dig this music but can't purchase the whole album...just head over to the download page and turn yourself on to the freshest, deepest, grooviest, most intelligent music I have to offer!

Please blog about this, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and turn on your friends in the live music scene. Word of mouth is really important and anything you do to spread the word about this work makes an incalculable difference. Playing for you is my passion and I deeply appreciate your support!

Beyond the music itself, this album is a milestone in another important way: it marks my first physical release and a new style of hybrid freehand/digital illustration. The music is free when you buy a package of the ayahuasca-inspired fractal zoom stickers I designed while on retreat at Shimbre Shamanic Center with Papadosio & Kurt Redeker back in March:

A Million Anniversaries stickers!

Two each of all three fractal zoom designs

3.5" across, printed on die-cut glossy sticker paper

$15 for the set - free shipping & digital download of A Million Anniversaries with purchase

The first video showing how I layer all of these tracks live is now online – a romantic clip from The Manifestation Celebration with Alex & Allyson Grey, The Nadis Warriors, Govinda, Phutureprimitive, D.V.S*, and many other amazing talents at the Dallas Natural History Museum (!):

Watch it in full HD!

"Extinct" is one of the six free tracks from A Million Anniversaries. Go grab it and join the celebration – the new era of cybernetic instrumental folk music is here!

For anyone curious to learn more about the story behind this new work, Matthew Warnock of Guitar International Magazine recently interviewed me about making a career out of improvisation:

GI: Improvising that much on an album seems to offer up a lot of freedom...but there is also a lot of other pressure due to the fact that no one, including you, knows what’s coming next. Do you think that this is why more artists don’t attempt this sort of thing, that they’ve weighed the options and the risks outweigh the rewards?

MG: I think it’s a more common thing these days. I’m basically following the lead of live electronic acts like EOTO, who are very vocal in their publicity about how they improvise everything. On the other hand, you find out very quickly the result is that you end up flying in small tight circles, improvising similar patterns over and over, precisely because you don’t want to explode in flaming wreckage by taking it too far out of your zone. At some point I started wondering just how adventurous it really is, if you’re not writing anything but you’re not really putting yourself out on a limb, either.

(Read the whole interview here.)

...And while we're on the topic of interviews, I just published a fabulously far-ranging interview with Shannon Clay of Evergreen State College on SolPurpose.com. It's my most articulate attempt yet to explain how I see art & science as two wings on the same bird, and to offer a unifying paradigm in which everything can be seen as both art & science:

SC: What are the benefits of reconnecting the two and how can we combine them? Talk about how we can do this in the scientific world…a lot of people in academia are very sincere about keeping science and the metaphysical separate.

MG: It’s like having two separate personae and you can’t show your friends one, and you can’t show your parents the other. You know you’re both, but those two lives can’t meet. It’s an awful place to be. Science and art are interwoven so profoundly that to speak of them as NEEDING to be bridged belies a horrible rift in the modern mind. [We are] getting to a place where there isn’t “a dialogue between art and science,” but rather both are recognized as specific strategies that we may choose to adopt in order to frame our experience in a particular fashion appropriate to the place and time.

It’s not about building a bridge between art and science, any more than we can build a bridge between your left and right arm. That’s ridiculous. It’s about recognizing the larger context in which both of these methodologies emerge to answer specific needs in human culture and psychology. It’s about moving into an “integral” perspective, within which all of our various methods of inquiry – art and science being only two of many – precipitate as adaptive responses.

(Read the whole interview here.)

Last but not least, I just edited the HD video I took of our amazing live art team at Wakarusa Festival. I am so incredibly proud of everyone involved and look forward to doing it again in just a few days at Sonic Bloom!

(If you happen to be in Colorado this weekend, you'd be silly to miss this one – in addition to 78 of the world's finest electronic acts on three stages, workshops, aerial and fire dancers, and gorgeous installations, I'm also coordinating an eleven-person live painting team and our new Unified Field Gallery in Grassroots California's 30-foot dome! More info here.)

Watch it in full HD!

Next Week: tasty new custom fedoras, another live music video from A Million Anniversaries, and the recording of my talk at The Manifestation Celebration on "Evolution, Astrology, & The Science of 2012"...

- Four New Live Paintings From Wakarusa 2011 -

"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

"It is the function of art to carry us beyond speech to experience."
– Joseph Campbell

(I apologize in advance for the seasonal shift from a biweekly to a weekly newsletter in order to keep up with the flow of new work – I know we're all feeling the acceleration by now (whether you consider it technological, spiritual, or both) and as the evermore rapid influx of information and energy builds toward a local climax over the Summer Solstice, it's all I can do to get the art, music, and talks I've given over the last couple of weeks online before they start to ferment. For a little while here, we'll be in full-bore festival season mode...hold on tight and open wide!)

This week chronicles my third annual stint as the Wakarusa Festival's resident live artist – and this was the year of fruition. The festival granted me permission to coordinate their first-ever Live Art Team & Gallery, and I was blessed to invite eight of my favorite emerging artists to join me in a forty-foot tent poised directly center of the 50,000 person festival's vending area. With the help of Ehren and Renee Cruz of SolPurpose.com and installation artist Nate "Nature" Hogen, we turned it into a glorious, altar-filled chill spot – a sanctuary from the blazing heat, and a non sequitur sacred space in the midst of the event's commercial bustle. It was the fullest realization yet of my efforts to transmute the raw energy of the festival environment into an opportunity for growth, empowerment, and change, as I mentioned in my popular manifesto, "The Problem – & Promise – of Festivals" back in March.

Huge thanks to all of the live artists and friends who contributed to the space, and to Tia Christiansen at Moving Parts Productions and Ami Heinrich at Tsunami Publicity for helping us make this a reality!

Very soon, I'll have much more to share about that – including video of all of us set up en force at the Main Stage painting to acts including STS9, Thievery Corporation, Shpongletron, & Umphrey's McGee – but until that's ready I want to show you my own work from the weekend. For the first time ever, I had every painting sold before they even started:

(Click on any image to enlarge it for a better look!)

Love Bites

2011 05 28 3SidedWhole (Banu Noor, Kobiana and Friends, Faracet and Autumn)

& 2011 06 02 Wakarusa Festival (Papadosio, Umphrey's McGee)

24"x24" - paint markers on masonite

11"x17" prints available, $25 for 1 / $35 for 2 (s/h included - email me)

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. And no, it's not about my mommy issues...more about the dual nature of creation and destruction with a cheeky nod to the Cheshire Cat and other slippery archetypes. Plus, I like vampire romance – not teeny-bopper fang fiction, but the gothic profundity of what love means when you live forever and recognize that you subsist on violence (and we all do).

I'm surprised that there aren't more stories out there with enlightened ancient vampires...after thousands of years of satiating your every carnal desire, don't you think you'd long for something more and eventually grow into a deeper wisdom than one human life can hold?

Tree of Eyes

2011 06 04 Wakarusa Festival

(Shpongletron, Ott, Hallucinogen, STS9, My Morning Jacket)

24"x24" - paint markers on masonite

11"x17" prints available, $25 for 1 / $35 for 2 (s/h included - email me)

I just finished reading Catherynne M. Valente's immensely lush and sensuous fantasy, The Habitation of the Blessed, about a lost Oriental kingdom ruled by the legendary Christian king Prester John. In this magical land, anything planted in the ground will return as the fruit of a tree that grows in its place – so the dead are never really dead, only transformed. In a passage I found especially moving, one character brings another to the grave of his wife, whose eyes gaze out from the leaves and branches. He laments how the whim of nature gave back only her eyes and how, even though he is blessed to look upon her still, he misses being able to hear her voice. In line with my mention of vampire love above, I'm increasingly possessed by a fascination with how eternal life shifts our values and experience. What it is to be Forever.

This painting alludes to the sentience of the vegetable world, to the voiceless reaching of our own planet's living skin to the touch of other distant worlds...the drama of cosmic communion in the fathomless depth of space. "I know you're out there somewhere..."

Paradigm Shift

2011 06 04 Wakarusa Festival

(Emancipator, Nadis Warriors, Thievery Corporation, STS9, Big Gigantic)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

11"x17" prints available, $25 for 1 / $35 for 2 (s/h included - email me)

Regarding the interplay of one reality emerging from another – of recognizable from crystallizing from the hyper-order of chaotic flow – of layers upon layers shining diaphanous emergence. This piece is a more well-considered continuation of the themes I established last year, in which one painting is interrupted and dominated by another (see "Let It Go" from last year's Rootwire Festival, here). The best stories start in medias res – and the changes we're going through now are no exception. I don't know if I buy into the whole "Ascension" mythos, but I definitely agree that radical change and black swan events in general demand that we surf the change with as much grace as we can muster.

Maria

2011 06 05 Wakarusa Festival

(EOTO with Beats Antique, Jamie Janover, & Karsh Kale)

16"x24" - paint markers on masonite

11"x17" prints available, $25 for 1 / $35 for 2 (s/h included - email me)

My first live painting started and finished for a trade – in this case, the beautiful jewelry by Carl Weiseth of Third-Eye Pinecones. Like Carl, I see more than just a reminder of our own human pineal organ in these natural wonders...I see a potent lesson in the wisdom and intelligence of the natural world. A pinecone is an advertisement for sex, a testament to selfless progeneration, and a window into the timeless now. No wonder this painting ended up with the same mandorla that graces portraits of the Virgin Mary. They both speak to our wonder at the same enduring archetype of creation...

More soon! In the meantime, I've posted a few new summer dates on my calendar – including appearances at Electric Forest Festival (Michigan), Rootwire Festival (Ohio), and Burning Man (Nevada) – and am always available to answer your questions. Have a wonderful week and thanks for reading!

Wakarusa Festival = Art Explosion!

First the "bad" news: Editing this next timelapse video from my Whole Earth Festival painting is taking longer than I thought. I have abhorrently high standards and want it to be at least as good as the last multimedia blitzkrieg, so thanks for your patience as I work to make it (and my new live album of cyberballadry from the spring Love Without End Tour) as awesome as possible. Can't rush the kiln...

Now, the "good" news: My second year as Wakarusa Festival's resident live painter was a spectacle of awesomeness and here's the proof: one new concert poster; three new live paintings; and my sweetest gallery of body art so far (including some pics of my first foray into live body painting on stage with the Nadis Warriors)...

• Imagery (full gallery & price list here)

Click the images for a better view...

Interstellar Meltdown 2010 Poster

2010 05 21, 22 & 06 01 Art Party!, Evolution Party, & Studio

(Stardust Output & many other Arkansas sound wizards)

16"x20" - paint markers on canvas panel

series of 100 - some poster prints still available

It only seemed appropriate that this painting, which started live at some deliciously underground Arkansas art parties, end up rep'ing the now-in-Arkansas Wakarusa Festival and its quasi-guerrilla party-within-a-party, Interstellar Meltdown. I dedicate it to Johnny Gallup and Jason Sterling, who are responsible for the still-burning flame of electronic music in Lawrence KS and Fayetteville AR, respectively – and without whom I would probably still be sending unrequited emails to Wakarusa's mainstage production team.

Time Spiral

2010 06 03 Wakarusa Festival
(Somasphere, The Heavy Pets, Earl Greyhound,
Resident Anti-Hero, Lotus, Kraak & Smaak, Mimosa)
24"x36" - paint markers on masonite
original painting, poster prints, and full-size giclees available

Don't tell anyone who thinks I'm cool that I named this painting after a Magic: The Gathering card. One of my friends remarked that he sees several of my previous paintings in this one – that it "transcends and includes" my prior work, enveloping it into a new and higher order. Well, alright! Subsuming the old by putting it to work in richer and more intricate structures is "what I'm all about."

Other people pointed out it looks like a top-down view of everyone's favorite medicinal angiosperm. What can I say? Good ideas like the logarithmic spiral show up everywhere.

This painting is dedicated to Richard J. Bird, ex-president of The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & The Life Sciences, and author of one of my favorite books.

Reverence

2010 06 04, 05, 06 Wakarusa Festival
(Spoonfed Tribe, Big Gigantic, Future Rock, EOTO, Sub Swara,
Nadis Warriors, BoomBox, Two Fresh DJ set)
24"x36" - paint markers on stretched canvas
original painting, poster prints, and full-size giclees available

I found an old canvas at Goodwill last year, painted with a crude mountainscape that its original owner clearly didn't care much for. This is the best way to pick up cheap canvases that I've found so far – FYI to all you other thrifty artists. Not quite painting on driftwood, but equally attentive to reclamation and re-use. The canvas sat in a closet until I had a gig epic enough to warrant something of this size, so here we are.

SOOOOO much gold on this one – perhaps due to the intense shininess of working inside the Outpost Stage's ludicrous lightshow of a tent. The last night of the festival, working at the unofficial stage set up on the vending avenue, the waning crescent rose behind the painting and begged for inclusion. This one is dedicated to Polly Babcock, whose finger pointed to that moon, and who gave me the most awesome little piece of hematite (which has been riding around in my pocket ever since).

That's What's Up

2010 06 05 Wakarusa Festival
(BoomBox, James Zabiela, Dub Tribe Soundsystem,
Ott, Mark Farina, Bluetech)
16"x20" - paint markers on canvas panel
poster prints and full-size giclees available

A tiny custom piece for a friend of mine...it oscillates between wings, hands, and whales, in that order (a personal perception confirmed by strangers, which is always equal parts cool and weird). Named by a random fellow near dawn; when it comes to nomenclature, I frequently go with fun suggestions. This one's dedicated to Nikita Kern, whom I suspect is an alien from the same planet I am.

Wakarusa 2010 Body Art Gallery @ Facebook

• Upcoming (full calendar here)

Click event titles for more info...

• Sonic Bloom Festival – 25, 26, 27 June 2010

Mishawaka Amphitheatre – Bellvue, CO

I'm reprising my live art residency at Colorado's premier electronic music festival, presented by unified-field-theory-preachin', hammer-dulcimer-shreddin' mad genius Jamie Janover. This year, I'll be painting alongside visionary art legends Robert Venosa & Martina Hoffmann, who on their own are worth the price of the ticket.

• Ramble on the River Festival – 3 July 2010

Mishawaka Amphitheatre – Bellvue, CO

I'll be playing an afternoon set of my unique cyberacoustic balladry before painting for a full day and night of amazing music from the likes of Whitewater Ramble, Holden Young Trio, and many other Colorado legends including members of The Motet and the Kyle Hollingsworth Band...fifty cents of every ticket sold go to support the Larimer County Food Bank.

• Mile-High Meltdown v.2 – 7 July 2010

Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom – Denver, CO

Another guaranteed rage-a-thon with my homies in Denver's Mile High Sound Movement, at which I'll be dropping improvised cyberacoustic setbreaks and rocking easel in rapid succession all night. Come on out if you want a taste of some of the finest emerging electronic music and hip-hop in the Denver scene...

• Convergence: Painting With Music – ongoing through 28 August 2010

Arvada Center – Arvada, CO

An amazing ongoing exhibit from both locally- and nationally-renowned performance painters, organized by movement leader Scramble Campbell – to my knowledge, the first of its kind in the United States. This exhibit is paired with a retrospective on the late great Denny Dent, who with multiple brushes in each hand showed us all what it means to paint as a performance. If you're in Colorado at all this summer, don't miss this free exhibit!

I'm headed down to New Mexico this weekend to play, paint, and sermonize at a summer solstice party at one of the most beautiful, sacred places I've ever seen, so plenty more soon. In the meantime...love you all, stay in touch, and have a beautiful day!