Michael Barnard
Local Artist In Residence

Michael W. Barnard is a documentary and experimental filmmaker, as well as photographer and fine artist. He has made hundreds of films of every genre in locations all over the world, many of which have won awards in various festivals and competitions. His earliest work “Field Films” were experimental pieces, the first of which was inspired by footage he collected on trips throughout the west coast. During the 1970’s, he spent seven years documenting the TM Movement and Maharishi Mhesh Yogi. He also designed, built, and supervised a complete film post-production facility, which included a state-of-the-art 16/35mm Color/B&W motion picture film laboratory.

He currently is serving as the Program Director of the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts.

Barnard received his BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Ft. Wright College. In the 1980s, he founded Barnard productions, which later became Bolt PIX Studios, a full service digital production and post-production company. His company has produced and posted countless commercials, music videos, documentaries, FX sequences, and feature films for clients such as HBO, Columbia Pictures, Sony, and Warner Bros. In 2017, Michael W. Barnard completed a 27-year feature documentary project entitled “Secrets of the Sun – Journey Into the Fire”, as well as functioning as the Producer of “The Next Town Over” – a sophisticated David Lynch MFA in Film student-produced web-series. He has also published his recently completed illustrated children’s book entitled “The Red Tree”, as well as staging several poetry/fine art reading events featuring his own poetry along with projected images of his fine art work.

Over the past ten years, Barnard has also been focused on his Photofields, an idea that emerged from assembling and color Xeroxing images taken with throwaway cameras as a child. He began creating large-scale photographic montages from custom prints that were cut, fitted, and mounted together on a sturdy surface. The Lewis Library and Technology Center in Fontana, CA commissioned 12 2’ x 8’ pieces, for which Barnard spent almost a year gathering images in the Fontana area and experimenting with different arrangements.

Artist Website