CANVAS: ROCKIE NOLAN
She’s a self-proclaimed wanderluster, daydreamer and overachiever. She hunts for bargains at garage sales and thrift stores, but she looks like a model straight off a runway in Paris. She’s only in her second year of school at the Savannah College of Art & Design, but her photos seem to be the lovechild of an edgy Urban Outfitters catalog and a whimsical, delirious Sunday morning chimera incarnate.
Meet redhead, freckle-faced, sleepy-eyed Rockie Nolan, 19-year-old photography prodigy. Reigning from the town of Lubbock, Texas, she’s a Southern girl at heart but fantasizes about shooting fashion editorials for Vogue.
There are millions of other photog hopefuls out there hoping to make it big one day. What makes Rockie…Rockie? For Rockie, photography is not about recording reality—it’s about escaping it. She describes her work as “dreamy, surreal, or nostalgic” and will photograph anywhere from an empty forest to an abandoned beach to a lush golden field.
Bordering on the status of a “confessional” photographer, Rockie aims to throw a little bit of herself into every piece of her work. Although she often takes photographs of herself, she still claims that even when she’s shooting a model, “I still feel as though it’s a self-portrait.”
If her photos are at all representative of Rockie’s life and past experiences, be jealous. Exquisite, highly sophisticated lighting sets the tone for a cherubic, vintage and balmy, beautiful atmosphere that we could only ever conjure up in our deepest, most blissful sleep. Rockie Nolan does not capture what is real. She captures what we wish were real.
And she is only 19.
Watch out. If Rockie’s future is anywhere near as enchanting and divine as is her artwork, she’s going to take the photography world by storm.
–Hannah McCartney
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VIDEO: OK GO
Reposted from cristinablack.com
OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.
Acouple of months back, I had a long talk with Damian Kulash of OK Go. He’s long winded, as you can see from this open letter to fans he posted on the band’s web site the other day. There’s a whole roundup of the situation on Rolling Stone on Monday, but the basic irony is that OK Go, a band who built its fan base on viral infection of a few dorky-fun clips, is no longer legally allowed to encourage embedding of its videos. They’re doing it anyway, of course, with this new one for “This Too Shall Pass” from their excellent new album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, which Kulash and I discussed at length. It involves a marching band emerging from a field, Creepshow-style, and features a whole different version of the song than the one on the album. Since then, I’ve heard there’s another plan for a clip where Kulash gets thrown across a room with a slingshot which is further support for my theory that this guy’s life is like a cross between Jackass and Nova, but hey, that’s how he wants it, I guess.
Check Ok Go in our February/March digital edition.
–Cristina Black
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SPIN OUT: CRISTINA BLACK’S FEBRUARY PLAYLIST
So without further ado, I bring you the February/March Spin Out…!
–Cristina Black
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MUSIC: FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
Florence and the Machine are led by one wacky lady, but boy can she sing
Florence Welch is often out of sorts. “I can’t remember anything,” she explains. “Where I’m going, where my shoes are, what I’m doing during the day. The only thing I can remember is songs.” Well, at least the rising English pop star’s got her priorities straight. The fiery vocals and dreamy production on her debut album, Lungs, have indeed put a spell on us. But ever since we clicked over to her MySpace page via Lily Allen’s and found a cli of her singing “Girl With One Eye,” a grisly tune about romantic revenge, we’ve known this redhead was a little nutty in all the right ways.
Take her wardrobe choices. Her look is like a messy little girl dressed up in mum’s clothes with a dark, gothy attitude governing. She loves vampy looks by Hannah Marshall, but she mixes up her designer pieces with strange and wonderful things that have found her over the years. She even has a few stage-ready times from the dress-up box she kept as a kid! Her current strangest treasure is a lime green cat suit she obtained last summer while on tour with MGMT. “Somebody gave it to Andrew [VanWyngarden],” she explains,”bit it was a girl’s so it was too small and it split all the way down to the navel. He was like, Oh you can have this.” Welch promptly ripped a green glittery curtain from her window, refashioned it as a cape, an wore the getup at England’s Reading Festival.
Meanwhile, she’s wailing out gorgeous songs about demons and domestic violence. The explosive single “Kiss With a Fist,” which we’ve recommended recently in these pages, has a lovesick protagonist punching, kicking and lighting things on fire. “It’s just about the passion two people can have between each other,” she explains. Speaking of, Welch also caused quite a stir back in the summer when she made out with Victoria Hesketh (a.k.a. Little Boots) at the NME Awards. Admitting intoxication, she denies any real physical attraction. “I just did it to show there’s no love lost between British female pop stars.” Point taken, then.
–Cristina Black
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EVENT: STEVE SHERMAN SHOW & TELL
If you live life through the lens, check out “Steve Sherman: The Black and White Collection Show & Tell” presented by Billabong. The photo clinic and show of Sherman’s work is happening 5 to 7p.m. tonight at the J.Z. Boarding House in Santa Monica and tomorrow at the HSS/ Billabong Store in Huntington Beach.
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DIY: TREE BRANCH JEWELRY STAND
Just because your Christmas tree is pretty much dead by now, it can still bring you plenty of joy when you convert it into a rustic display for your jewelry. After some Urban Outfitters inspiration and a trip to the hardware store, we made ours in under an hour.
What You’ll Need:
-A sturdy tree branch with lots of smaller off-shoots
-A small block of wood
-A drill
-Wood glue
-About two cans of spray paint
How to Make It:
1. Clean the branch well with hot water and lots of soap. Scrap off any dirt and weak twigs with a knife or sandpaper.
2. Drill a hole into the small block of wood that is about the same diameter as the bottom of the tree branch.
3. Fill the hole half way with wood glue and stick your branch in so it stands up straight. Hold it steady until the glue dries.
4. Spray the entire branch and wood block with paint. Let it dry completely then spray on additional coats as needed.
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CANVAS: THE REAL JERSEY SHORE
In a reality show generated “reality”, the shores of New Jersey are riddled with fist pumps, hair gel and sleazy boardwalk games. But when Jonathan Arbogast looks through his camera lens, he sees another sort of reality.
“It’s a wonderful place full of memories for so many people so I try to capture those places with my photography,” says the Bucks County, PA native. “It could be the ferris wheel that you rode every summer. That place on the beach that you built sand castles on. Those waves that you splashed into every summer.”
It’s that sense of nostalgia and effortless natural beauty that make a simple setting, like a fence next to some dune grass, into a work of art. Jonathan is a self-taught photographer who let his part time memory-making hobby “grow organically” into a profession. “It is a great feeling to know that someone likes your work enough to make a purchase and to hang it up in their house.” And with his work’s graphic composition and familiar subjects, who wouldn’t?
For Jonathan, photography is about finding beauty in the little moments. “I usually take most of my shots in the off season, like when it’s too cold out for the Shoobies. The sunsets are amazing in the fall and winter, much more color to them than in the summer. The shore is so much quieter, with less people. You can get better shots because no one is in the way.” Not exactly what we’d call guido-country.
You can find Jonathan’s photography prints on his website and on Etsy.com.
–Johnie Emma
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EVENT: NEW IMAGE ART GALLERY FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS
Put your finger on the button!! Women Photographers Show at New Image Art!
Come out on Saturday night and REPRESENT! All of Foam’s favorite females are showing their work. See you there!
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