Dancin' In The Streets

August 7 - 9 marked the first Dancin' In The Streets Festival at in Denver, a romp two years in the making (due to the red tape involved in persuading city to shut down its busy Five Points intersection for a party). Not only was it a weekend of multiple sets from great bands like Darkstar Orchestra, Steve Kimock Crazy Engine, and Cornmeal...it was also an explosion of live art the likes of which I've never seen. Not only did I get to work on several paintings of my own, but I also participated in a few massive and enduring collaborations. It was a weekend of playful experimentation and satisfying artistic community. Enjoy!

2009 08 07 Dancin In The Streets Festival
(Darkstar Orchestra, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Billy Kreutzmann and Papa Mali, Nailhouse)
16"x24", paint marker on masonite

A two-tone gold background and fat red markers got this off to a fun start. The nature of improv: what I had intended as a kind of Indonesian jewel-relief ended up very strange and sort of insectile. I have half a mind to lay a coat of gold spray paint on top and keep going, letting all of it drift sort of holographically out of a metallic fog...

2009 08 08 Dancin In The Streets Festival (Hot Buttered Rum, Steve Kimock Crazy Engine, Head For The Hills, Cornmeal)
16"x24", paint marker on masonite

Fat white marker on naked masonite laid the foundation for this maze of flourescent tubing. Sheet after sheet of partial outlining gave it a glistening metro vibe but complicated the layering...ultimately, it's hard even for me to follow the lines, and my eye drifts aimlessly through the labyrinth of closed loops. Which is actually kind of cool, but it lacks the coherence of a strong central image.

2009 08 09 Dancin In The Streets Festival (Everyone Orchestra)
16"x24", paint marker on masonite

The most intricate background work I've ever done – four colors (blue, maroon, purple, and gold) plus extensive scratching and blending – made the major challenge with this piece trying to leave enough of it exposed. So I saved it for a one-set quickie with the beloved Everyone Orchestra, and made my experiment with this one more about the technique than how I was filling space. After working with brushes on the Welton Street Mural (pics below), I was on a paint-smearing bender and tried streaking the wet white marker as I laid it down. The bubbles all have a soft glow from this, and it was fun to apply – one hand chasing the other, rubbing the masonite before it dried. Everyone Orchestra's fabulous line-up, including Bill McKay, Steve Kimock, Dominic Lalli, Reed Mathis, and the entirety of Hot Buttered Rum, made for another great show – what I've routinely come to expect as one of the most memorable sets of the festival. And I was all jazzed up because right before the show, EO's conductor Matt Butler showed me that he's been using my painting from their set at 10,000 Lakes Festival as his iPhone's wallpaper. So yeah. This painting will never, never turn out right in a print. I like that.

2009 08 09 Dancin In The Streets Festival (Disco Floyd & Nershi Mosely Deutsch Miner)
16"x24", paint marker on masonite

I spent half an hour getting in people's way trying to set up my easel to paint in the crowd for Leftover Salmon (asking people to move so I could run an electrical cord for my lamps, accidentally setting up too close to someone's video camera, half-blinding people with my ridiculous full-spectrum CFL...), and then as soon as they hit their first long-delayed note the skies tore open and dumped an enormous storm on us all. Half the crowd ran for shelter, including me – even though I can theoretically paint in the rain on masonite board, I had my prints out and I was worried about being plugged into a street lamp for power during the lightning. So I ran breakneck back to the tent at the front gate, where I had to put all of my supplies up on chairs because the whole place was starting to flood. As I looked down the alley towards Welton Street through the downpour, a fountain erupted out of one of the manholes. I later heard that all of the Five Points intersection was underwater, including the amps for Stage Two. It was a pretty epic catastrophe to end a weekend of otherwise idyllic weather, and most of the Sunday-nighters were scared off. But that just meant that the late-night sets indoors at Quixote's were for the determined remainder. Disco Floyd (exactly what they sound like, a Discoed-out Pink Floyd cover band) was great fun, and the supergroup SCI's Nershi and Mosely put together included Erik Deutsch, one of my favorite keyboardists. My first monochrome painting. I look forward to more.

Unfinished Massive Two-Panel Collaboration (approx. 8 feet tall) – w/ Frenchie, John Bukaty, Scramble Campbell, Norton Wisdom, Darci Hill, Michael Garfield (...and probably a few people I am forgetting)

I never saw what the finished product looks like, so hopefully I'll make it back there in the next month or so and can post an updated picture. But in the meantime, here's the last of what I saw: another big fun mess of the kind that only happens when you have a ludicrous number of live painters all in one place. ALL FOUR of the "elders" of live painting (at least in the States) were there: Norton Wisdom, Frenchie, John Bukaty, and Scramble Campbell. These are the guys that were heroes for MY heroes, if you know what I mean. Which made working on this, and the Welton Street Mural, a real honor. And it was extra cool to work right on top of Wisdom's little dragon and rider...I had never heard of him before painting with him in LA at the Global Sound Conference last year, but he's on a whole other level. (He sets up a huge backlit screen and works with wet paint, creating new portraits out of the old ones every few minutes. It's very different from any other live artist's work I've seen, very alive and engaged.)

Collaboration Detail – Norton Wisdom & Michael Garfield

Here's a closer look at my tiny contribution to the panel, all of the intricate penwork I threw on top of Wisdom's fantasy figurine. I might open the original fullsize image in a new window and get a closer look at it, because at this size it's hard to see all of the feathery features.

2637 Welton Mural

From across the street, here are the results of a huge collaborative effort from over a dozen live artists. John Bukaty, bless that man, organized the whole thing – he secured gallons of acrylic paint and a sizeable scaffold, then scheduled us all in to work in three- or four-hour blocks during the music. Don Callahan helped run ship while Bukaty was away on Saturday. This mural is going to remain outside Cervantes and Quixote's indefinitely...which means my "Starry Night With Giant Squid" contribution is just about the most public and eternal thing I can lay claim to. Not that "public" and "eternal" are necessarily better...just more obvious.

[Update: To my INCREDIBLE disappointment and outrage, the owner of the building had the Bianci brothers (who manage Cervantes & Quixote's) paint over this mural. Apparently some people can't tell the difference between grafitti and artwork, desecration and blessing. If it weren't so pointless to stay pissed about this, I'd probably enlist people to send angry letters and burning excrement. Well. I'll have more pictures of this mural up soon...as a memorial to something beautiful that happened, once. Christ. I'm glad I took a lot of pictures.]

When I get back from my travels in mid-September, I'll be posting a review of Dancin' In The Streets and a more thorough write-up about my experience with the other painters at ColoradoMusicBoard.com...so stay posted for those. In the meantime, here are some other recent festival write-ups you might enjoy losing yourself in for an hour:

Colorado Music Board – Windows Into Rothbury Festival

Grateful Web – 10,000 Lakes Festival (coverage by day):
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

10,000 Breaks & My Lark For Zuvuya

> MusicBefore we dive into the paintings, I'd like to invite you to dive into my latest album: Quixote's Lark For Zuvuya, a live recording of my recent opening set at Quixote's in Denver for Zuvuya (the acoustic side project of Zilla's Michael Travis & Jamie Janover, with Xander Greene on acoustic guitar). Being invited to play in support of these fantastic musicians was a tremendous honor, and I had no choice but to seriously step up my game for their audience. Which was easy enough, because it was already a very significant day (marking my little brother's 10th birthday, as well as the transformation of a very long and difficult romantic relationship into something more nameless and profound)...this recording captures one of my most energetic and passionate performances ever, as well as the debut of several new live looping arrangements for older songs. You can download it for free here – or name your price for the music, if you're in a generous mood.

For those of you who were there, thanks so much for your patience in getting this online! For those of you who weren't, check it out! The performance swerved from swinging balladry to acoustic guitar techno to spark-shooting instrumental etudes...and it's yours as a gift of appreciation for your time and attention. So please, download it and enjoy!

> Imagery
FYI, I'm having a liquidation sale f some of my earlier paintings, which have been discounted 30% - 50% from their original asking prices. If you've been waiting for this apparently seasonal event to roll back around so you and your buds can scoop up some affordable original work, have at it! You love art; I love health insurance. Let's play "win-win." Here's the list of available paintings (at facebook and at myspace). And now, onto the new work...

2009 07 24 10KLF (Everyone Orchestra) - 18x24
Certify Electrify

I got into my virgin 10,000 Lakes Festival last week, a delicious gathering in upstate Minnesota held on permanent festival grounds (flushing toilets and shaded camping = major luxury). I was granted entry on journalistic assignment for GratefulWeb.com (my extensive festival write-up coming soon) and spent most of the weekend taking pictures and notes, but found some time to paint for some of my favorite artists. The Everyone Orchestra show was spectacular – with Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic on saxophone and Steve Kimock on electric guitar, and conductor Matt Butler's energy was higher than I've ever seen. The show was a benefit for The Rex Foundation, founded by the Grateful Dead, which was raising money to buy instruments for local music programs – check them out and offer support if you can.

As for the painting...I've been getting more and more into intricately preparing backgrounds with cross-color fades and metallic spraypaint. In this case, I got so carried away with the background that this piece was an exercise in leaving it visible behind my penwork. The result was a perceptual paradox in which foreground objects appear to be behind background objects, like those trick rooms you look into through a viewfinder and kids appear taller than adults. Entirely unintentional. The guy who bought this one named it...he was on a "certify" kick that night.

available - 2009 07 23 & 24 10KLF (Wilco, Steve Kimock Crazy Engine) - 18x24
Swimming In Words

I'd never seen Wilco before and wasn't expecting much...but they rocked my socks half off. That Nels Cline was wailing on the electric guitar – but unlike fellow headliners Widespread Panic, Wilco's lead lines were integrated into a jangly wall of sound, instead of pushing the rest of the band into the background. And that's my style; I prefer band-as-explosive-organism to band-with-a-badass-hired-gun. I set up in the concrete beach of a general admission area down front for this one, which was kind of foolish. It was a high traffic area but TOO high traffic. One girl spilled an entire new beer all over the place and very nearly destroyed my book of prints; I got bumped into a lot; it wasn't especially visible to anyone but the river of people, and difficult for anyone to actually stop and watch. It was much easier to finish this during Steve Kimock's set, although I was baking in the midday sun the entire time for that one. Regardless, I consider this one a successful experiment in laying down a complex monochromatic background beforehand and spending the "live time" pulling out details and creating many layers from one. It reminds me of what it must be like to live in the naked Logos, deeper than space and time, swimming through the fundamental language of reality.

available - 2009 07 23 & 24 10KLF (Garaj Mahal & Boombox) - 18x24
A Wall Of Windows

I had the honor of painting onstage during Garaj Mahal for this one...if you don't know Garaj Mahal, make it a point to and you'll know what I mean. Every member of this jazzfunk supergroup is a master of his own instrument, and two of them (Fareed Haque on guitar and Kai Eckhart on bass) are actually music professors for most of the year. This band is their recreational project, which gives the music a playfulness and spontaneity rare even among jam bands. And of course, I love painting for Boombox whenever possible. Another experiment in dualtone backgrounds with gold spray. Looking through a fan coral at the evening's first stars, or the reef's reproductive bloom...

2009 07 05 & 24 Rothbury Festival & 10KLF (EOTO, Shpongle, Alex B, Big Gigantic & Big Gigantic) - 18x24
10,000 Breaks Vestibule

I had started this one at Rothbury, painting as an unofficial member of the ReSOurce Center's IAMU visionary art gallery next to the Tripoli Stage. But I was pretty distracted by other things that weekend and didn't have the opportunity to lay the finishing touches until 10K, which was just fine: I had another opportunity to paint for Big Gigantic's heady mix of live drums and saxophone with killer laptop production, which is always a treat. It was weird to be (to my knowledge) the only itinerant sidestage live painter at this festival, but I got a lot of welcome appreciation for it when I set up in the entryway to the event's Saloon Stage (the only permanent indoor venue I've ever seen at a festival – very cool). Thus the title (again, courtesy of the buyer).

available - 2009 07 31 Beaumont Club (Nick Steady, Mixed Method, Galactic Soul Tribe, Clandestine) - 18x24
Bassdream

I can't seem to shake those ferns! This one "happened" at Cicada Rhythm's Sunshine Bassdream, a lovely two-stage mini-rave in downtown Kansas City, where I set up outside in the glorious and unseasonably cool evening air and listened to great local live electronic hybrid acts and uptempo DJs until the wee hours. My friend David Titterington, a truly amazing visionary painter who puts my work to freakin' shame, was in town from Japan, and I enjoyed having him around to offer his painterly advice. The first time I ever started one of these pieces with an intricate background from scratch at the show, which was messy but fun. And even though I didn't know where I was going with it at the time, it does seem to have captured both the "summer" and "bass" vibes of the event with fidelity. I'm sure watching Planet Earth's "Grasslands" episode the night before had something to do with that. :)

> Writing
I've been a busy writer this summer. Here are some recent essays for your reading pleasure, as well as a few solid little interviews:

Vivid Journal – "Michael Garfield: Exposed!"
(...in which they ask me about my artistic process and how I've braided together art and music and writing in my life.)

MusicAndSpirituality.com – Interview w/ Michael Garfield
(...in which I contribute to an ENORMOUS survey of music visionaries by offering my own interpretation of the spiritual significance of music.)

D/Visible Magazine – "Biomimicry: Breathing New Life Into Design"
(...in which I introduce the emergent field of biomimicry, which seeks to solve human design problems with nature's own pre-existing solutions.)

Colorado Music Board – "Field Guide To Colorado's Live Artists: Kenzie Page"
(...in which I interview one of Boulder's newest live painters for my ongoing comprehensive survey of Colorado's insane live art scene.)

Colorado Music Board – "Sonic Bloom Festival In Pictures"
(...in which I share a very tiny slice of a very lovely weekend at one of the most beautiful venues in the world.)

Colorado Music Board – "Luke Redfield's Folk Mysticism And Mystic Folk"
(...in which I review recordings by my friend, legendary nomad-meditator-troubadour Luke Redfield, who demonstrates that spirituality knows no genre.)

> Share this with your friends!

The First Of A Busy Summer's Fruit

2009 05 30 & 31 Sail Inn & Rhythm Room (Endoplasmic & Black Moth Super Rainbow)

16x24 - masonite - available

My last painting from Phoenix...a poignant few nights. Endoplasmic is a band of national-level talent mysteriously stuck playing local gigs...going out alone to paint for them at the Sail Inn for probably the last time was a strange, quiet affair amidst all of the jamming. Black Moth Super Rainbow the next night co-headlined a show with School of Seven Bells. The latter made me turn off my lamp during their set (a first-ever for that one...but then again, they'd just come off a European tour, if you know what I mean). But the former were more pleased than anyone ever has been to have me...an adorably nerdy ensemble, very friendly and very real, the frontman sitting cross-legged onstage below crowd eye level and the girl drummer anonymized and androgynized behind a ninja costume. They said they were happy to have something else for people to pay attention to. This painting is the sequel to the painting from Zilla and Glitch Mob's NYE 2008 run at The Fox Theatre in Boulder...another tentacled alien god shimmering into the foreground from some oceanic mindscape.

2009 06 11 & 13 Crosstown Station & Jardine's (The New Mastersounds & Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey)
20x20 - canvas - available

After checking out both The New Mastersounds and JFJO at Wakarusa, to paint for them both again in Kansas City the week after was a summer-synchronous treat. Jardine's - the Odyssey's favorite KC jazz club haunt, tucked away over the green shoulders of the Country Club Plaza - is the classiest spot I've seen in this town...although I'm sure they're playing had something to do with how much I reveled in the find. This is the last in a trilogy of twenty-inch circular canvases...it falls somewhere between the first's crystal structure and the second's leafiness. An integration.

2009 06 17 & 23 501 Club & Quixotes (Brad Senne, Luke Redfield & Zuvuya)
16x24 - masonite - available

After extensive preparatory background work, I started this one on my first night touring my music through Minneapolis. I'd just set up the easel to paint during the other two acts (my friend Luke, a fine folk musician, had hooked up the gig) when I realized I'd locked my keys in the car. Luckily one of the friendly locals let me use her AAA membership to call a locksmith...but only after I'd broken off a cocktail stirrer in the door trying to break in with the power of sheer dumb chance. Until I was able to dig the plastic piece out later that week, I had to walk around the car to unlock it every time. Mildly tragicomic. Minneapolis is BEAUTIFUL. A garden city, lakes and trees and footpaths and bohemia and strange elegant sweeping architecture. Most of this painting, however, was completed in Denver at Quixotes', where I was granted the honor of opening for Zuvuya (Michael Travis and Jamie Janover's acoustic dance jam band with Xander Greene on nylon string guitar and guest Garrett Sayers of The Motet on delicious bass). There were five painters crowding the venue's entire south wall that night...I'll have much more to say about that show in the next entry when I'll finally have finished mixing the recordings of my show that night. For now, suffice it to say that I'm not sure if that jellyfish has more to do with my friend and fellow live painter Kayla Andreano's jellyfish obsession (I'd been staying with her that week, talking jellyfish A LOT) or that these beautiful stinging beasts are the unofficial mascot of Michael Travis' home team, The String Cheese Incident (who were playing a private rehearsal for their forthcoming reunion at Rothbury Festival the next night, and cheesy anticipation was in the air).

2009 06 25 B Side Lounge (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey feat Fareed Haque) - collab with Todd Shepherd and Kayla Andreano
30x30 - canvas - available
I loved the look on the faces of JFJO when they saw me show up to paint for them for the third time in three weeks in three different states. :) Half the show I spent preparing the painting below for further work at Sonic Bloom Festival the next day, but the other half of the show I spent in pure artistic bliss on my first live collaboration with Kayla and "Tourmaline" Todd Shepherd. We were all so stupified by what emerged from between the three of us that we stared at this painting for over an hour after the show, mumbling dumbfounded partial sentences. Also, this is the only painting I've ever stepped on. We (mostly Todd and Kayla) spent a good chunk of the afternoon preparing the canvas with layer after layer of paint, and at one point Kayla and I painted our feet and walked a few circles around it...unfortunately all that remains visible of that are a few stray toeprints.

2009 06 25 & 26 B Side Lounge & Sonic Bloom Festival (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey feat. Fareed Haque & Lynx and Janover, Anasia, EOTO + Kang + Kyle)
20x30 - canvas panel - available

Fareed Haque's guitars and equipment were put on the wrong plane and ended up in Wichita the night of this Boulder gig, so he had the audience clap along instead of laying down live loops. Of course they were all a bunch of musical laypeople with a few drinks down, so the rhythm was dubious...I took the initiative and clapped and danced as cheerleader to help everyone keep the beat. Later Fareed let me know how much he appreciated the energy I helped bring to the evening (both as cheerleader and painter) and ok'ed me to paint for his band Garaj Mahal at 10,000 Lakes Festival in a few weeks. Yay! As for the night I completed this painting, what can I say about this year's (and my first) Sonic Bloom Festival except that Mishawaka Amphitheatre is one of my favorite venues in the world, and you should go there. I'm sure the canyon river right behind the stage and the beautiful blue skies had a direct influence on the "vibration" of my paintings. And of course I feel I produce better work when painting for world-class musicians.

2009 06 27 Sonic Bloom Festival (Boombox, Big Gigantic, Sasha Rose, Zilla)
20x30 - canvas panel - available

Krystle Smith and I were responsible for assembling a visionary art gallery at this year's Sonic Bloom, which we put together (with lots of help) on the indoor stage at Mishawaka. We moved all of the lounge's couches up onto the stage and made it a sweet elevated chill spot with art sprouting from every direction – including the diagonal ceiling, where I had a row of my own paintings attached with velcro (making the gallery kind of a danger zone...a few times they fell off and nearly beaned somebody...but because of weak adhesive, not the velcro itself). Anyway, this painting is about the closest I've ever come to making a "Krystle Smith" painting. Lots of layers, lots of blue, lots of simple floating elements and hexagonal geometry. At one point I accidentally smeared the green paint on one of those fronds, but ended up smearing the other fronds as well and it acquired a very painterly effect that was previously impossible for me to attain with markers. I'll probably do more "destructive" smearing like this in the future. And DEFINITELY more painting on gradients.

2009 06 27 Sonic Bloom Festival (Random Rab, Bassnectar, Mochipet)
20x30 - canvas panel - available

Each of these bubbles was painted in advance with Wildfire brand UV ultra-white paint, the kind they use for film backdrops (apparently). When you hit this one with a blacklight everything inverts and the bubbles all glow a profound luminous blue. It's totally sweet...I picked up a 9 UV LED flashlight while living in Arizona (at the Walgreens, billed as a "scorpion finder" because the chitin in their shells is UV-reactive) and would occasionally dip out of "normal light mode" and into "UV light mode" while working on this one as an additional layer of strangeness for the audience. I hope whomever ends up with this painting puts it in the same room as a lava lamp.

2009 06 28 Sonic Bloom Festival (Tipper, David Starfire, Beats Antique, Heyoka)
20x30 - canvas panel - available

Harkening back to simpler days, this one. It kind of reminds me of a logging mill, eating away at the fabric of spacetime itself. By this point in the weekend I'd worked myself pretty raw, so I consider this painting an example of what happens when I'm "frame-dragging" (the computing term...although had this been framed at the time, I'd probably have been so tired I'd have been dragging it around).

2009 07 02 Rothbury Festival (Toubab Krewe, Keller Williams, Lotus)
18x24 - canvas panel - available

Rothbury was a very different live painting experience from my residencies at Wakarusa and Sonic Bloom. I was working from the crowd the entire weekend – and even then, only out of a sense of artistic duty, because I was first and foremost there to spend time with a rarely-assembled group of friends. But I still managed to squeeze in some learning, especially as regards preparing panels with various paints and sprays (thanks to Tourmaline Todd for suggesting I use silver spray paint for stars). I'm not normally a big Keller Williams fan (he's too glib for my tastes) but he put on a killer trance party that day. And Toubab Krewe jammed out on "Billie Jean." All was well in the world.

2009 07 03 Rothbury Festival (String Cheese Incident)
18x24 - canvas panel

This one was painted from the hill above The Odeum, Rothbury's main stage (capacity somewhere around 50,000 people?), where my friends and I squatted for the headliners each night right in front of the giant wicker-and-Christmas-lights Rothbury sign (each letter in the word was about eight feet tall...an excellent landmark, and right next to the water refill station). I can't express how difficult it was for me to make this...the first String Cheese Incident show I'd ever legitimately attended (if you don't count the time my girlfriend and I scaled the mountain behind Red Rocks to catch their last show in 2007 for free), and all I wanted to do was dance, my feet were dancing out from underneath me, I wanted to throw myself down the hill and into the heaving costumed flesh festival but I'd pre-sold this painting to some friends weeks before the festival and had to be responsible in the most inopportune moment. Somehow I think the tension helped with a graceful execution, and in person the silver spraypaint gives the whole piece a luminous quality, as if looking up through the waves to the rippling sunlight above. I'm happy with the results, but finally had to admit that calling my live art blog "Painting While Dancing" is a bit of a misnomer, because it was impossible for me to really get down and work on this at the same time. It was an evening of five minute breaks and intense yearning.