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New Poster for Conscious Alliance and STS9
I made the artwork for this poster which is available from Conscious Alliance and Sound Tribe Sector Nine this weekend (March 21/22) in Atlanta, GA. The 18″ x 24″ poster is silkscreened and the colors look great! I’m so happy to work with Conscious Alliance again. I think they do really really great work and I’m always happy to support them when I can.
Who/What are Conscious Alliance?
Conscious Allaince is a “non-profit organization committed to hunger relief and youth empowerment.” They bring in money and food donations through posters that they sell through their “Art that Feeds” program at music events. It’s a great model for a really powerful non-profit that helps to provide food to those who are in need.
It makes me really happy to be able to give of myself and give my work to causes like this that do such good work in helping others. It doesn’t stop there, though. The printer as well donates HIS time and energy and materials. The band lets them use their name for free (making it a commemorative event kind of thing) and allows them to sell the poster inside the venue – ALL FOR FREE! All donated through the various individuals involved because we all love what CA does!
Here’s a bit of what they did last year:
• Increase the value of services delivered directly in the field by 25% to a total of $603,800.
• Hosted 84 food drives nationwide
• Provided over 130,000 meals to those in need through food drives and partnerships with natural food companies
• Developed a series of artist workshops for at-risk youth designed to inspire creativity and teamwork
More here: http://www.consciousalliance.org/2013/03/a-letter-from-the-executive-director/
If you aren’t aware of the hunger problem that plagues this nation, this website is a good place to become more informed: http://feedingamerica.org/
More about Conscious Alliance can be found here:
http://consciousalliance.org/
5-Session Drawing Workshop in Los Angeles
Foundations
A 5-Session Drawing Workshop Meeting Every 3 Weeks
Come for 1 class or all 5
I have spent many many hours with pen and paper. Long before the painting, before colors are considered, there is a drawing. I love the drawing process – creating sweeping forms with a few lines, the delicate cross-hatching of the pen, the deep blacks of the ink and the bright whites of the paper. The process of drawing has significantly impacted my creative process and I think it does every artist a world of good to spend some time working with the basic drawing tools like charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink.
In this series of workshops, we will work with a charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink as we work to better understand light and shadow, the interplay of objects, and proportion and dimension. We will also allow ourselves the creative space to find points of departure within our drawings – where we can let our imaginations run free.
More specifically, we’ll discuss and practice such things as using line work to infer volume and texture, making measurements with the eye and not the ruler, and shifting perspectives.
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This class is open to artists of all skill levels.
SIGN UP NOW
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The Still Life
For the subject of our creation, we will work from a still life designed by Michael. The Still Life, a surreal menagerie of forms, is designed to stimulate imaginations while staying true to the real world considerations such as the placement of objects on a plane and within a space, working with perspectives, and concepts of form, volume, and light. At the same time, we will allow ourselves space for points of departure: places where our imagination can take hold and run with an idea or inspiration.
Class Sessions – Times & Dates
Through the course of 5 separate workshops, we will work on various aspects of the creative process through the exploration of various drawing techniques. We’ll work with charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink.
We will meet every three weeks on the following Sundays from 12pm – 4pm at the Hive Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. We will focus on the medium that is noted. but we will be working from the same still life each time. Trust us, you won’t get bored with the still life. It is not a bowl of fruit.
- March 17 – Charcoal
- April 7 – Pencil
- April 28 – Pencil
- April 19 – Pen and Ink
- June 9 – Pen and Ink
Tea will be provided.
Materials
In our five classes together, will focus on a variety of drawing materials including charcoals, pencil, and pen and ink. We will work with understanding the shapes and working with concepts of light, spatial proportion, and composition.
You will be required to have the following:
- Charcoals:
- Soft vine charcoal – Soft Charcoal
- Hard charcoal – Charcoal
- Charcoal pencil – Charcoal Pencil
- Pencil Drawing Materials
- 2B, 3B, 4B pencils – Pencils
- Pencil sharpener – Pencil Sharpener
- Eraser – Mars Eraser and Kneaded Eraser
- Pen and Ink
- Drawing paper
- Large block of newsprint paper – 18” x 24” - Newsprint Pad
- Drawing pad – Strathmore Drawing paper is perfectly fine – Drawing Pad
- 18” x 24” Large drawing board – Board
Cost
Classes are $60 each or $250 for all five classes. You may sign up for one class at a time or purchase the full five class series. Attendance is limited. Pre-registration is encouraged. You may pay with cash or credit card at the beginning of class but please send an email to michael@tenthousandvisions.com if you plan on attending.
Register for all five classes – $250 -
Register for individual classes ($60 each) -
Thank you for your interest. We look forward to your attendance!
Refunds less 25% deposit will be given up to 30 days before workshop begins.
Egypt – Luxor, Giza, Alexandria, and The Great Convergence
Observations, Experiences, and The Great Convergence in Egypt
Dec. 13 – 25, 2012
“We must be some kind of important,” I chuckled quietly to Violet as the six tour buses of revelers traveled quietly down the twisting desert road away from the Giza plateau and the Great Pyramids and a party so unbelievably perfect that the bus is actually quiet and now here we were led by Egyptian police on motorcycles with lights flashing whisked down down down through the sand and back into the city and decrepit neighborhoods and little fires on the sides of the road, old man looking up and taking note and not a traffic light to be stopped at, straight on through back to the safe bubble of the hotel, six busloads of tired mind blown ecstatic alive and wild people.
Wow, was all that many of us could say.
As I sit now in Alexandria in this spacious high-ceilinged café along the Mediterranean, drinking a creamy cappuccino (possibly the best coffee I’ve had in Egypt, save for those from the night before with Jimmy and Violet) and watching the minibuses and old German cars and newer Japanese cars pass by on the busy Corniche road that runs along the sea, it seems far far away. It seemed so very far away too with each moment that led up to it. Just before Thanksgiving we were invited, along with our good friend Jimmy (founder/curator of the Temple of Visions gallery in LA) to attend – to live paint and display artwork. Once tickets were in hand, the gears were set in motion. We were going to Egypt! It was surreal and real. New passports were ordered and expedited (the old ones were expired). I got really sick and hoped I’d get better. It all worked out. I healed thanks to Chinese Medicine and the passports arrived several days early. Packed and sorted and there we were, meeting Jimmy at LAX and getting on a plane bound for Cairo after a layover in Frankfurt where we ceremoniously ate sausages and sauerkraut and drank a beer.
Landing in Cairo in the night time, we exited the terminal into the thrall of taxi drivers all vying for our attention but my eyes locked with the suit jacketed attendant of a transportation desk in the main lobby. Young and clean shaven he spoke fairly and sported a shiny belt buckle that looked like a berretta. He arranged for a van to take us to the Giza train station where we’d booked an overnight train to Luxor. The cab driver, like most cab drivers, was happy for some listening ears and, in broken English, wanted nothing more than to tell us about Egypt, how expensive the apartments near the airport were (in the Heliopolis neighborhood – a million dollars a piece, in USD), how we shouldn’t trust anyone in Luxor (Not entirely true. You can trust most people most of the time just not all people all of the time so proceed with caution.), and how Egypt is very good, very safe.
Once we circled around Cairo and into the rush hour thrall of Giza not much different than downtown LA. Street vendors and everyone walking driving riding honking. It was just a bit dirtier and a few more halogen bulbs and no bacon wrapped hot dog vendors. Cars passed within inches of each other and at first you think it’s amazing that no one hits anyone else but then you see how every car is scratched and dented and a bit worse for the wear.
“Ah,” said our driver, “Egypt is great but traffic. Traffic is a problem!” A comment heard uttered by many a taxi driver after him.
In the coldly lit office of the young station master in the Giza train station I tried to explain how I’d purchased tickets for the night before because didn’t realize that the time change from the US to Egypt would make us lose a day and would it be possible to use those for today. We went back and forth with the cab driver translating. I was never sure who was pulling my leg. Violet and Jimmy waited in the cab. Finally I bought new tickets. There was no way around it. I’d have to eat the $127. It’s things like that which make people in some countries think that people from other countries are made of money. We’re not. We’re just on different value scales.
The train showed up and our cabbie through much fast talking got us onto a car, into two sleeper cabins, and the cab driver is telling me that he needs me to give him all this money so that he can go pay for our tickets but I wasn’t born yesterday and it’s best to take care of transactions yourself, in any part of the world, so we gave a a handful of US dollars to the car attendant or whatever he was, the cab driver was off the train. The doors closed. The train started moving. Our two cabins had a door between allowing them to open to each other and there we three were, bound now on the night train for Luxor.
Create:Fixate Show in Los Angeles
The rest of this painting ‘Interdependently Arisen I’ (the picture is a detail) as well as several other new pieces will be on display this coming weekend at ‘Magnetic’ a Create:Fixate group show in Los Angeles. More info here.
Art Outside outside of Austin, TX
Had a whole lot of fun this past weekend at Art Outside in Texas. Art Outside is a heavily arts-focused festival (in lieu of a festival which is MUSIC + art) put on by a wonderful crew of people, mainly, I think, from the Austin area. Violet and I really enjoyed it – met a lot of wonderful people and made a lot of great connections. Thank you so much for having us out to join y’all!
Here’s a picture of the painting I made over the course of the weekend…
Painting Workshop starts tomorrow!
I’m so looking forward to this. It’s sort of a newish thing for me, as you may know, to be teaching painting and such. After 15 years of working on my process – translating visions to canvas, formless ideas into forms and paying attention to the creative steps that it takes to make it happen – I have felt ready to share this process in order to help others on their creative paths. I’ve had people ask me for years about whether or not I teach and have had friends nudge me in that direction. It’s only recently that I’ve felt ready to start sharing that. If you wish you could have joined us this time, let me know, and I’ll keep you posted regarding the next workshop.
Lightning in a Bottle 2012
I had a ton of fun this past weekend at Lightning in a Bottle in Irvine, CA. Irvine isn’t the sort of place you expect such things – a wild artisticly inclined endeavor of a party – part Burning Man, part LA performance, part…. everything else. But sure enough, there it is and it’s a whole barrel of fun. I met some great great new friends and planted seeds for some really awesome upcoming projects. For one, there was Archival Inc, a fine art publishing company that I am working with to produce a new series of high quality limited edition prints on paper. You’ll be hearing more about them soon. Another cool thing was a collaboration I did with Hans Haveron. We’d never met before but were certainly aware of each other’s work. Hans tends more towards the street art scene while I tend more towards… well, whatever it is that I tend more towards. Our work, while different, was wonderfully complimentary and we created something really beautiful. I look forward to next year.
Symbiosis Pyramid Eclipse Painting/Poster
I created a painting for Symbiosis Gathering’s Pyramid Eclipse Festival, May 17 – 21 at Pyramid Lake in Nevada. Signed copies of the poster will be available in the merch tent at the gathering.
View a gallery of it’s step by step process here: Symbiosis Pyramid Eclipse Painting Gallery
MAPS Conference/Art Show in Oakland This Weekend
I’ll be in Oakland this weekend at the MAPS 25th Anniversary Event at the Oakland Marriott. MAPS is a pioneer in the field of psychedelic research. Most notably they are spearheading research into PTSD and MDMA, psilocybin and LSD and their treatment of anxiety and depression, and much much more. This weekend there are presentations, workshops, an art exhibit (of which I’m a part along side such luminaries as Martina Hoffmann, the late Robert Venosa, Alex Grey, and many many more), an all night party and much more. I’ll be displaying half a dozen original paintings and also live painting both Friday and Saturday nights.
For more info and tickets: http://www.maps.org/conference/25/
Join me for a Painting Workshop in LA – Dec. 2011
I’m excited to have the opportunity to be teaching a workshop with my friend and fellow artist Amanda Sage from Dec. 14 – 18 at Temple of Visions Gallery, Los Angeles. We will be exploring light and shadow, painting techniques, and various methods of drawing forth each artists unique visual language. The workshop is $525 for five days of instruction, presentations, and one-on-one learning. The classes will be taught using acrylics.
For more information and to sign up:
http://tenthousandvisions.com/workshop
I hope you can make it! It’s sure to be a wonderful experience for all!