Michael Garfield

from ecstatic instrumental improvs to deftly executed fretboard-tapping etudes to athletic songcraft of heart-breaking sweetness – pointing past the genre and techniques to bring his audiences into lush and atmospheric, driving and dynamic spaces spanning folk tradition and the avant-garde. This is the transcendental soundtrack to the best film that you've never seen...

Fresh from his month-long tour of the Australian electronic music festival circuit, Michael has also given notable performances at Boom Festival's Chillout Gardens, Burning Man's Fractal Planet Village, Wakarusa Festival, SXSW, the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference, Art Outside (five years), Sonic Bloom (five years), and Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. The sheer diversity of acts with whom he's shared a stage speaks for itself: Gaudi, Papadosio, Taylor McFerrin, W***y Porter, Random Rab, Tim Reynolds, That 1 Guy, Zach Deputy, The Floozies, Rena Jones, Andreas Kapsalis Trio, DVS*, and side projects of both Beats Antique and The String Cheese Incident. He has jammed onstage with many more – including Fareed Haque, Entheogenic, Bird of Prey, The Human Experience, Ayla Nereo, and Erothyme.

-- WRITING --

Paleontologist turned futurist performance philosopher, Michael Garfield's boundary-hopping, mind-expanding work maps the evolutionary landscape and our place in it. Cohost of the Future Fossils Podcast; former editor-in-chief for visionary media companies Globalish and SolPurpose; regular contributor to Reality Sandwich and Metapsychosis Journal; and frequent guest on podcasts such as Third Eye Drops, Psychedelic Salon, and Expanding Mind, Michael writes and speaks about – and from – the intersections of emerging planetary consciousness, accelerating techno-culture, visionary art, and a cosmic vision that transcends our evolutionary narratives entirely. The goal: to help heal the alienation and disenfranchisement of our modern age by showing people how each of our lives is inextricably a part of something vast, mysterious, and awesome – pointing to the common core of science, art, and spirituality with equal dedication to both playfulness and rigor. Michael rides the line between critic and advocate – in the words of Speed Levitch, refusing to be enslaved by a single perspective. futurist think-tank The Arlington Institute's internationally-syndicated FUTUREdition newsletter, and on stage for myriad prime-time talks at Burning Man and numerous other festivals. Michael walks a tightrope between the New Age and the Academe – reminding us that everything is equally art, science, and spiritual practice.

-- VISUAL ART --

Michael’s live art is the evolution of his training as a scientific illustrator – a field guide to the strange inhabitants of hyperspace invoked by the ecstatic air of festivals and other gatherings. Each work emerges as an exercise in mindfulness and concentrated listening will, as a response to the unique tone of a place and time – casting shadows of a moment's shifting energies to capture vivid scenes of unabashed intensity, verdant and exultant imagery erupting from a fractal growth of calligraphic paint pen strokes and written in the archetypal tongue of dreams. This is the world beyond our age of crisis, consciousness as known by animals and sentient machines, a post-apocalyptic glory radiant and timeless like the first day of creation. Since November of 2007, Michael has set up popup open studios and painted in a legendary range of situations – from raging basement clubs to NASA's Ames Research Center to the Australian outback – day and night, onstage and off, and often alongside the legendary artists Alex & Allyson Grey, Robert Venosa, Martina Hoffmann, Mark Henson, Android Jones, Amanda Sage, Oliver Vernon, Mars-1, Chris Dyer, J Garcia, David Hale, and others. In addition to countless festival appearances, he has logged thousands of hours on easel at live art residencies in Boulder, Denver, Phoenix, Kansas City, New Orleans, and Austin. He has also shown up for the growing live painting community as an organizer and a journalist, including five years as art director for Sonic Bloom Festival and two as art director and Wakarusa Festival.