(View this in the vastly-superior web format and click to enlarge every picture for a closer look!)
"More conservative minds deprive coincidence of meaning by treating it as background noise or garbage, but the shape-shifting mind pesters the distinction between accident and essence and remakes this world out of whatever happens. At its obsessive extreme such attention is the beginning of paranoia (all coincidence makes 'too much sense'), but in a more capacious mind it is a kind of happy genius, ready to make music out of other people's noise."
- Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World
You guys! I can't tell you how excited I am about how this year has been shaping up. I mean, check it out...
Entheogenic & Michael Garfield at Geoparadise Festival
(The voiceover is from my contributions to the 2010 Integral Theory Conference Integral Art Panel, which you can stream for your own cerebral binging pleasure at the link.)
And now for the paintings.
And now for the paintings.
Night Bulbs
2010 04 29, 30 12 Bar & The Republic
(DS@STR, Big Gigantic with Murph, Rusko, DJ Quickie Mart, Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band)
18"x24" - paint markers on 1" laminate (check price & comments)
11"x17" prints available - $25 or 2/$35 (s/h incl) - email me
This is actually an older one (back from when I was busy exploring artichoke-related themes last spring) that I didn't have the opportunity to properly photograph until my latest trip back down to New Orleans last week. My friends kept it safe.
The night I made this, I gave Murph of Sound Tribe Sector Nine a print of the live painting I made from the seats of their first-ever acoustic show...and now Murph apparently has cancer and the band has had to cancel a few months of gigs. I've never been a rabid STS9 fan, but my heart goes out to him during his recovery...hopefully this is just the shamanic illness he needs in order to bring a new luminosity to their music.
Emigration
2011 01 13 - The Republic New Orleans
(Twelfth Planet, Quickie Mart, Kaiser, Eddie Gold)
24"x30" - paint markers on masonite (check price & comments)
11"x17" prints available - $25 or 2/$35 (s/h incl) - email me
People kept telling me this was a Van Gogh thing. Okay, yeah...I mean, everyone's interpretation fills out the living significance of an artifact. But I mostly see some kind of Greek-Chinese influence. In unrelated news, apparently Miley Cyrus and Kelly Osborne were at this show. My promoter friends in New Orleans are blowing up, apparently!
Lots of sheen effects in this one. Check out the detail pic below for a better shot of that transparent blue shimmer making it with the gold background layer. Mmmm. Thanks to Winter Circle Productions and ActionPacker Pro Productions for bringing me back out to one of my favorite cities!
Voodoo Revival
2011 01 15 - Maison
(Lorn, Teebs, Shanook, Mono/Poly, Ryan Pearce, Rekanize)
24"x30" - paint markers on masonite (check price & comments)
11"x17" prints available - $25 or 2/$35 (s/h incl) - email me
I was on this kick in my sketchbook last week with the idea of one animal's third eye becoming a second eye on a "more evolved" (that's bad science, people) animal...the third eye of a person is the second eye of an angel, and so on for ever and ever. (Likewise, a snake's second eye would be the third eye of a...fish?) But it's pretty obvious that a serious bayou groove got into this one and the finished product gives me the sense of some resurrecting swamp wizard reassembling himself from the local herpetofauna on a moonless night...and my friend Mackenzie mentioned that the whole "snake with a big ol' third eye" thing is totally a Martina Hoffmann trope (although she takes it in a totally different direction). Seems like maybe my forthcoming trip to Chimbre in Peru is already taking hold of me...
Thank you, four years of drawing reptiles and amphibians at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, for giving me the experience necessary to paint this piece.
Other things worth mentioning this week:
• A lovely spread of my paintings is hanging in 1111 Wellness, up next to The Fox Theatre in Boulder. I should be announcing details on the reception soon, but in the meantime go pay them a visit and check it out! For those of you who can't make it, I'll be sure to post pictures.
• Last November's Bear Creek Music Festival was a hurricane of live art...now you can watch the explosive creativity, complete with bouncing face-painted ragers and color-changing LEDs, on either Facebook or Vimeo.
• And here is a short reel to give you an idea of the crazy time we all had together at Circus 8 in Detroit, last December...as well as the body art gallery from that night and a couple of others. Can you find yourself in there?
• I've been booking a lot of great gigs for the next few months...you can check out my tour calendar for more details about upcoming shows with Papadosio, Heyoka, Alex & Allyson Grey, D.V.S*, and many other amazing artists this spring! Plenty more to be announced soon.
