In 2004, he had a solo exhibition at Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco, and in 2007 he was part of the Roswell Artist in Residence Program where he experimented in sustainable living as sculpture.
"[4] On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, a devastating magnitude 7.0 M earthquake centered approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) west of Port-au-Prince, leveled buildings throughout Haiti, including the "Peace of Mind" Hotel in Jacmel.
He was sitting with a visiting friend and fellow artist, Sue Frame, when the earthquake hit[1][5] and was killed as the building collapsed on top of him.
His gardens functioned from recycled grey water and included hands-on, instructive material on creating compost at home and the artist's own recipes for meals designed from both a nutritional standpoint and their palatability.
This teaching material, as well as most of McGarrell's other writing, was distributed freely, in accordance with the artist's dedication to free copyright, or Creative Commons approach to intellectual property.
[8] McGarrell was the art director of the film, Maggots and Men Archived 2013-07-25 at the Wayback Machine, an experimental retelling of the story of the 1921 uprising of the Kronstadt sailors in post-revolutionary Russia.
His transition involved a limited amount of hormone therapy—but no surgery—and was part of an intellectual journey into radical politics which was, in turn, related to the artist's philosophy and output.