Mile High Meltdown & New Timelapse Video

> Imagery

Last Saturday night I painted for my friends in the local music and art collective, The Mile High Sound Movement, at the newly-refurbished Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver. I played a fierce-but-brief setbreak jam as well – another delicious opportunity to paint and perform music at the same show – and if any of the recordings came out, I'll have those posted soon as well. But for now, suffice it to say that I had a blast and highly encourage everyone to keep their ears to the ground with these cats, because they all have entirely too much talent and goodwill to be as unknown as they are for much longer. And I'm delighted to share my newest work:

What Now
2009 11 28 Cervantes (Jeff The Box, Project Aspect, Unlimited Gravity, Earth Tones)
18"x24" - opaque pens on masonite
original and signed 11"x17" prints available

I've recently gotten myself on an ambigram kick, which is probably the most interesting way I can start working more lettering into my designs. Words that exhibit some kind of visual symmetry not only bend the our normally-rigid rules of typographical perception, but also allude to deeper symmetries in mind and nature (at least for me) and how we bring multiple perspectives to bear when trying to make sense of our world. Plus, I wanted to come up with a kickass logo for my embryonic new instrumental electronic music project. So here it is.

Chromatin Research
2009 11 xx - 28 Studio & Cervantes (Contraband, Jeff The Box)
20"x30" - opaque pens on masonite
signed 11"x17" prints available

This was one of the most satisfying projects I've ever had the pleasure to tackle – a commission for the new homepage of Colorado State University's Chromatin Research Lab, courtesy of professor Jeff Hansen. I met Jeff at the Alex Grey show back in October and both of us could scarcely believe the other exists. A live painter who specializes in his area of expertise? A molecular biology professor with a love for downtempo electronica and psychedelic imagery? Needless to say, it was a match made in heaven, and this hybrid studio/live painting was the result.

But wait, there's more! I managed to mount my camera on a microphone stand behind me at the show and get a new timelapse video. Check it out, below – and turn up your audio, because I've narrated it with a mini-lecture on the biological science and artistic technique that went into this painting.

Rediscovered Mini Studio Painting

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The Tenderest Moment Of Our Lives - 2009 06 ?? - studio
8"x12" - opaque pens on canvas
original and 11"x17" prints available for sale

I accidentally left this piece at a friend's house in Kansas City when I left for Colorado and forgot I'd taken this picture of it to share with everyone. But here it is! This painting was completed on my friend Rick's couch back in June sometime. The background is a layer of semi-metallic blue dry pigment marker, which gives the original a lovely dull sheen that shifts in changing light kind of like interference pigment (which I LOVE).

This piece captures very simply the yearning and poignancy I so often find myself striving to express in my work, be it (examples:) art, music, or writing. Behind all the bold colors and flashy technique is the same sentiment that drew a plaintive howl from all of us at the Temple Burn this year at Burning Man, when the final stairwell collapsed in flames...not a raging against the dying of the light, but a simple cry of the heart. It's what connects you and me.

My Time Has Come (Jeff Buckley Tribute)

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My Time Has Come - 2009 11 18 B Side Lounge

Jeff Buckley Tribute Night:
Jeffery Hyde Thompson & Band, Dechen Hawk, Ramaya,
Katy McNeill, Greg Isakov, Kendra Current
18"x24" - opaque pens on masonite
original & signed 11"x17" prints available

Last Tuesday, Jeff Buckley would have been 43 years old. Instead, the legendary singer and songwriter accidentally drowned in Tennessee's Wolf River in 1997, the day his band was convening to record a second album...and now, I like to think, he's up there with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Miles Davis kicking out the jams. So it's left to his adoring fans to carry on the tradition of his music. Last year I played in a Jeff Buckley Tribute on his birthday (17 November) at Lawrence, KS's Jazzhaus, but this year I didn't hear about it until the bill was full. So I do what I always do in that situation, and squeezed in at the last minute as a live painter.

The night was great...everyone sang their hearts out (you have to, in order to even approach Jeff's passionate virtuosity), and Jeffery Hyde Thompson's newly-formed tribute group played Buckley's entire album Grace and passed the Turing Test with flying colors. Jeff's 13-year old guitar student Aaron Kirschner kicked off the night with Jeff's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and blew everyone away. Dechen and Ramaya did a stellar version of "Everybody Here Wants You," my favorite from the album that never was. The B Side was packed, people were cheering, the whole thing was a blast. My only regret is that I should have talked with the band about setting up on the side of the stage, because there were so many people that nobody could get to me...might as well have made myself more visible to the audience.

As for this unusual painting, the first in my third year of live art, it's a little more rigid and formal than I'm used to because I wanted to put something together to honor this specific man and his work. The microphone is the one he's holding on the cover photograph to Grace. The text is a past-tense paraphrase from the title track, his uncanny song about intuiting his own demise, which also mentions waiting in the fire (hence the ring of fire). And the wings are the "black feather wings" that unfurl from the "dark angel...watching over them" in "Dream Brother," Grace's closing track and my personal favorite.

The red ribbon was supposed to allude to the red thread of life and give the whole image a bit more dynamism (red is a color Jeff used frequently in his imagery, being a Scorpio and all). But I think it ended up making it look kind of like a Christmas ornament. Which is okay. One thing I know that wasn't lost on Jeff was how it doesn't always come out the way you expect.

More about the concert itself, including photos, in my write-up at Colorado Music Board.