Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
High Sierra Music Festival 2011
If you were at High Sierra Music Festival last year, you might have seen my giant lightboxes in the Jam House – one of the late night venues. Well, this year we went bigger. I’ll have some large banners of Birth of a Star on either side of the main stage and I’ve helped House & Garden design and decorate (with some nice mesh banners) the smaller acoustic stage they they’re sponsoring where Nathan Moore will be headlining. They, along with Summit Art Licensing of South Lake Tahoe, are also responsible for bringing my artwork there in front of so many people. Thanks guys! (I’ll also still have work in the Jam House and will be working with Jonathan Singer creating some lovely visuals for the late night events).
Here’s a (daytime) picture of one of the lightboxes from last year. It’s backlit, is about 18′ tall all together, and weighs a ton. And, yes, it hangs.
Michael Divine @ Harmony Fest, Santa Rosa, CA
I’ll be a featured artist at Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa on June 10 – 12. I’ll have a number of works featured in the gallery and I’ll be live painting during the late night event from 10 – 2am during Krishna Das. I hope to make something pretty 
Live Painting – “Shiva Playing the Song of the Buddha’s Knee”
Yes, so, on a theme… I’ve been doing more live painting lately. I’ve called myself “The Reluctant Live Painter” although perhaps a more apropos title would be “The Distracted Live Painter”. What can I say: I like parties and sometimes I’d rather be dancing and playing than painting. I spend a lot of time listening to music and painting – completely absorbed by the nuances and colors. Admittedly, parties and events can be a tad noisy for the live painting thing. In any case – I decided on a new flow a while back for painting at events. I wanted to create larger pieces that focused more on rhythm, gesture, and style rather than detail. So much of my work is very detail oriented. It’s very precise and structured, even in it’s looseness. I enjoy flowing and spontaneous brushstrokes and the quick no-thought painting process. I have found that, if i set the space right on the canvas and have a general plan, then it goes really well. In a sense, it’s like jazz music: there is a general form in the beginning but then it’s riffing and exploring and tangentializing on different ideas and melodies. I just want it to end up in the seat of the Divine in the end.
So here is a painting I’ve worked on at a few different events in the past few months. I started it at a Greensector/Moontribe party in February at Area 33 in LA, worked on it at a couple of Artwalks in Downtown LA at Temple of Visions Gallery, and then last worked on it at a party up in Malibu. The painting is based on a drawing I made in 2003 @ my first Burning Man. The theme that year was Beyond Belief and, after I’d spent the night roaming and exploring, I sat down in Center Camp at sunrise to the beautiful sitar music of my friend Rik Shiraj, a master sitar player. I spent the morning drawing to his beautiful music. He passed onwards this past winter and I decided that it was time to finally paint this sketch…
Lightning in a Bottle
Had a blast this past weekend at Lightning in a Bottle – a big art and music festival here in SoCal – in the mountains and valleys east of Orange County no less! It’s truly a special event that goes above and beyond the ordinary consumption and party fest that many festivals are. Not to say there isn’t a party. I think that the best dancing moment was with John Kelley, a good friend and old-school Moontriber, at the Woogie stage at midnight on Sunday.
I participated in Lightning in a Paintcan and created a painting over the weekend that was sold to a lucky person. It was a lot of fun to make and I think I’ll be making something similar for the upcoming show at Temple of Visions Gallery (Opening on June 25). It’ll be a nice accompaniment to the other piece I’ll be showing – The Glass Onion.
Here is a detail of the 5′ x 4′ painting (thanks Mario!):
The Magic Bus: Twist of Fate
This past summer I painted a bus. It wasn’t just any bus… it was a pretty wild thing – still is. With a kicking sound system, velvet upholstery, embroidery, and multiple levels to it, it’s got some character. I showed up without a plan – just a loose vision. I figured to allow the character of the bus and the project shine through. The bus is named “Twist of Fate” and there is still yet work to be done on it. It was at Burning Man this year and a few other events. It’s mostly around San Diego, so you might run into it there if you happen to frequent that city. It is in honor of and homage to. It is a well-rounded creative vision. It’s a trip, all right.
The Sketchbook
I’ve carried a sketchbook with me since I was 16. Barring a few rare instances when one was not available, it’s always been a Strathmore sketchbook. The Strathmore seemed to have the nicest texture amongst day-to-day sketchbooks, the spiral binding is durable, the paper strong enough for average (and often times above average) wear and tear. I tried a few hard-backed journal style books here and there. They were decent but they aren’t as handy; the spiral binding and ability to lay flat are important. At some point or another, I decided the 5.5″ x 8.5″ size was best. It packs down well: fitting just about anywhere, seems unobtrusive even sitting on a table with someone else. Larger sketchbooks declare themselves to the world, as well as the mind. The smaller book is a tad more innocuous and, when the mind approaches the empty page it doesn’t seem so daunting. Afterall, this is for sketches – illustrations of a feeling, intimations of a curve of a branch or a hip or the vast plane of awareness that is Mind. If you give it too much space, it’ll freeze up. Give it too little space and it feels cramped. Just enough, so that the window can rest upon the knee without feeling like there are distant corners that need to be filled, and it will submit and surrender itself. Yes, I trick my own mind into unlocking it’s secrets. But I would never tell it this. Only later, in paintings, do I begin to understand what those early sketches might have been insinuating.
This never-ending sketchbook has been carried with me on all journeys, to the most random of situations, and, in the most mundane of places, has opened up spaces in me that I didn’t know were there. It emerges while sitting in a cafe or at a bus stop, riding on a train or a plane, at my desk, waiting in an office, pr pausing during a hike on a mountainside. The images are rarely planned. They ride along a stream of consciousness echoing my emotional and psycho-spiritual state mixed with my general will and momentum. By allowing the drawing its own narrative, the inner visual language expresses itself unhindered. The observant viewer will note the similarities amongst the imagery and different visual symbols and cues that show up over periods of time, again and again.
It just happens. I sit. I observe. I let my eyes relax. I let my mind… I let my mind just be. I set it adrift. I don’t try to force it into anything. I don’t attempt to still it but I don’t attempt to agitate it by thinking such things as “this had better be good” or “this is going to be a drawing for a painting”. I allow it to be whatever it is: a tidal wave, a simmering fire, a cool breeze, a breath. I notice how I’m sitting. How I’m holding the pen. I do all of these things and, at the same time, none of them: just sit and draw unself-consciously. I allow elements of nearby architecture or the shapes of leaves or roots of trees or a glimpse of a pattern to be points of departure. Our minds are shaped by the world around them as much as by their own preconditions. Why not allow the drawing the same freedom? The surface of the page gives way to a penetrable depth. I allow my instincts and intuitions, however subtle and unknown, to draw me onwards. Everything, however, seeks light for growth. It is nice to allow the drawing the same.
The sketchbook is a meditation tracing mental symbols, stories, and tangents, drawing out underlying connections, seeking, however organically, to find logical conclusions. It has it’s non sequiturs and moments of random association and completely free connectivity. It has moments of clarity, moments of abstraction, moments of pure thought and pure selflessness, and moments of complete, unadulterated, distraction. Then the lines take shape into something that I understand. I could expand on that, I think, I could make a painting out of that.
When I stand in front of my canvas, I flip back through sketchbooks, finding a drawing that speaks to me from a certain place, embodying a direction or vision that I wish to pursue. Only then do the symbols they contain begin to make sense.
A selection of drawings from several years worth of sketchbooks. All are drawn with the Pilot V5 pen, a great all-purpose writing instrument. Click the thumbnail to view. Enjoy.
To read more about this gallery, please see this blog post: Sketchbooks
House of Hamsa Party/Day out of Time Event – July 25, 2010
I know it’s a ways off but I recently created a commissioned painting for this flyer and event, held in San Francisco on July 25th, 2010. Featuring the music of a collective of musicians from Hamsa Lila, Beats Antique and others, some great DJs and my artwork and some live painting, it’ll be a fun time. O yeah, it’s in honor of the (semi-controversially important) Mayan Day out of Time. One way or another, it’s a fun time… Come check it out. 800 tickets available…
For more information and tickets go HERE.
STS9/Conscious Alliance Posters
I’ve been working with Conscious Alliance for quite a while now producing a poster or two per year for them. Conscious Alliance gives the posters away for donations of food or money at various events and shows they attend. The donations go towards needy families across the country. They do some really great work.
Here is the poster that will be printed for the Sound Tribe Sector Nine shows this coming August in Chicago. The image is a detail of the painting entitled “Gratitude” which can be seen here.
While we’re at it, here is a poster I made for them for an event just about a year previous… at least, according to the dates on both posters. This one was made for the August 2009 STS9 shows in Georgia. This one used the painting “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” from the Evolution Series
Late Night Painting II
II.
Sometimes, one aspect gets to drive and choose where we’re going. If Bear gets hungry is so hungry that he won’t let Mr. Business Man stop to think then the Mr. Business Man needs to compromise for a moment and allow Bear a chance to eat, understanding that he and Bear share the same body and Bear’s basic needs are as important as his own. If the Mr. Business Man wants to make a deal that seems fluid enough but goes against the ideals of the Inner Buddha Mind then they have to talk it out and see who comes up with the clearest solution. Sometimes the clearest solution is turning down the deal. Sometimes, it’s just a rewording of a contract. If The Lover has just been let down, we must take notice of conciliations offered by Inner Child who really just wants to be loved and allowed to play. The desire to be loved wears many masks and sometimes becomes a motivation that has less than noble intentions for it is an i-me-mine sort of emotion. All the while, the Inner Batman, a vigilant watcher, keeps an eye on everything. Underneath that mask is only me. The inner Batman has the fatal flaw of seeming both aloof and sometimes overly righteous. Yet, he also helps maintain the nobility of all of these aspects, just as Inner Child and the Lover remind him of his softness and ability to yield. All of these aspects – both individually and as a whole – have the potential to devolve into the i-me-mine space. Yet, they also have the potential of evolving into the all-one-being. So who watches? Who guides? Who is the overseer here? Whose eye is the all-seeing eye? And who really gets to drive?
All together, these aspects are a part of a larger whole that, like Jane’s Addiction or Phish or any other band of great musicians, is greater than it’s parts. That larger whole is both the ego and lack of ego. Ego is simply there as a built up identity structure that the mind creates as a placeholder for “i” in the same way that we create a concept around “cup” or “painting” or “Barack Obama”. We create a concept of an inherent being within us that we identify with. This is all well and good but when the intentions of this being become less than wholesome and the subtle patterning and conditioning of a lifetime of learning at the hands of the cultural norm which preaches the i-me-mine edict, it becomes, shall we say, rather hollow. Yet, when we start to subdivide it and learn it’s nuances, we find different identities who all developed in our being as answers to specific situations that life at one time asked of us.
This, too, is all well and good – my inner meditator might not be so suited for wearing the suit of the inner business man. So the inner business man is there to serve a valuable purpose. The inner business man has his mind on infrastructure and marketing awareness and fair deals and sustainability and growth and doesn’t always think about things like hunger, so there is this bear that is a pretty physically oriented sort of thing. Now, none of those can be tender and soft yet playful and child-like. So we have Inner Child. Then, of course, there is the punk-ass flirtatious lover. Well, to be fair, they are all lovers, but the punk-ass sort of has that bred into him. Watching over all of them is the Inner Batman, aloof yet fully aware of all that is going on – he is there to protect and serve.
I am the sum of my parts. I am like this table: the table is a collection of parts creating a concept of table. I am merely a conceptualization, walking through this world. My paintings are also conceptualizations. Everything that I create is a conceptualization of some mental concept. Even the person I’m creating when I look in the mirror before stepping out the door is a concept – a loose reproduction of what is inside or what I would like to create or be. The only time I stop maitaining this concept is when I stop thinking about it.
There is a magical moment in painting, when I am no longer thinking about what might come next or how that might interact with what has come before it, when the brush and the canvas and my hand and my mind and body and spirit are all one and are moving in this lovely beautiful aware flow. Sometimes these moment stretch… and stretch… Sometimes. Sometimes the mind checks out. Sometimes it’s a record on repeat stuck on some emotionally charged event or phrase or word or person or place. But even then, like a loop in some song, there is a release, a momentary space in which, if we remain open to the possibilities of life, an answer might appear. Most of the time, that answer is: LET GO.
This is the meditation. This is the concept of what I paint. In all of the flames, in all of the clouds and the dark corners, in the stars and spirals, I lose myself, I crumble. And I allow those pieces of me to remain there.
In it’s wake there is always something that goes beyond “a light”. It is what Mircea Eliade called, in all of his studies of the nature of spiritual experience, the “mysterium tremendum”. There really are no words for that space. However, the reflection of that moment of Letting Go upon the canvas is something magical, effulgent, creative. It’s a leap of faith. An effervescent line. A bit of laughter caught in the paint. It’s a reflection of a concept of absolutely everything and absolutely nothing. It is union.
Late Night Painting I
I.
3:30 in the morning: one of my favorite times of the day. Or night as it were. Or morning, really. After painting for five or six hours, the lights get turned off and candles are lit. I can only paint for so long. There is not only a law of diminishing returns at this hour but my body begins to ache a bit and I feel I need to save some energy for later. I know, one would think hat” save the energy for later” bit would have come up a couple hours ago. Regardless, one should know one’s limits and be careful to not deplete too much of ones reserves. The ayurvedics and Chinese Medicine doctors and so on all feel I should have been in bed hours ago and my organs and meridians and such will all be out of whack. The creative muse isn’t one to listen to the advice of doctors. The creative muse knows only this: there is a ready and wiling participant and there are magical mysteries to explore. So we explore.
And so, to follow, we have a bit of late night writing time. Late night writing: the ritual is thus: first we put away our paints, wash our brushes brushes, meditate on the painting a bit and find the point we will pick up at next time. Where are we going with it? is it coming together? Does it make perfect sense? If it does then I am pleased with myself. Sometimes I don’t even look at the painting when I’m done. I just turn and walk away. When I look at it again there will be, instead, a sense of exploration. Oh, I might think, that’s interesting, what I did right here. Or, look at this: that was a terrible idea.
Then we pour a glass of wine and prepare some sort of snackishness which usually includes, more or less, some cheese (tonight there is an aged sheep’s milk gouda), a few crackers, some olives or capers, a few anchovies, a bit of sliced tomato, and whatever else might present itself as an option. Those aforementioned doctor-types would have a field day with this one too: one should not eat at 3:30 am, according to the wise. Then all the lights go off, candles on the Bundance™ table are lit and I settle down on to the Crouch™. This little late night idyll is like stepping into another work of art.
The candles illuminate the undersides of the flowers in the vase. Spring flowers picked from here and there and three roses brought by Radhika a few nights past to add some color to the meeting we were all having. The dark rich woods of the crouch and the subtle patterning of the cushions adds a warmth to the white walls and the chill late night air. Sometimes the zebra print side is flipped out tho. It would seem like that might change everything. But it doesn’t.
Outside, the wind whips at the palms and tramples over the rooftops and ducks in and out of drafts and cracks of my house causing the candles to flicker slightly. My laptop is opened and I allow myself some time to filter out a bit of what went through my mind while painting or at least reflect on what I’ve been creating. These words too are a part of that process. This centering and placing of myself. This noticing of the soft blue text on the dark screen (using a wonderful text program for Macs called WriteRoom) and the backlit keyboard juxtaposed to the warm golden candle glow that flickers and licks light against the underside of an orange calendula blossom. The sounds of the aquarium offer a bit of watery calm in the face of the chaotic sounds of the wind outside.
The center that I find in all this is very deep and whole and, at the same time, so clear as to seem empty of anything. It is a clear mirror to see myself in, in this post catharsis, in the after-the-illumination, in the charred remains of another lightening strike there is a calm that refrains from picking up the pieces for there are no pieces to pick up. We let go of pieces. It is better to look around and simply take note that there were pieces and seek to understand how they got there in the first place. We let go of a shell. Anoher shell and another shell and another shell.
We have a bite of cheese, a sip of wine, a nibble of anchovy.
We notice the sound of fluid in one ear and wonder if that is a sign of impending health disaster. We – all of us in here – the whole cabal, the whole committee – we make choices as a whole.
