PATTERNS AND TONES

Welllll... if 1954 was the year Rockabilly was born, 1978 was definitetly the year it got a fresh shot in the arm from England's own "Levi and The Rockats". It was the start of a new Rockabilly revolution in the UK and the US and The Rockats got the ball rolling. I recently caught up with their legendary standup bassman Smutty Smith in Hollywood while he was hosting a party at   Sweeny Todd's Barbershop to promote  J.S. Sloane ,  his recent line of hair pomade . He was in town to play Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend , where 20,000 kids lined up to hear The Rockats perform. The following interview is accompanied by photographs I have taken of him over the years - here in Los Angeles, London and in Brighton. Smutty has graciously allowed us a peek inside the heart of the rockabilly, punk, glam and rock n' roll scene he was a part of. Cheers Smut! Julie Pavlowski Green April 27, 2013 Julie Pavlowski Green :   WHEN DID YOU MEET LEVI DEXTE...

What does it mean to be a an American?  That question is sure to elicit varying answers from each person you ask. Whether your parents moved here or you are a seventh generation citizen of The United States, how you identify yourself as an American may be based on your family upbringing, how extensively you travel or how you see yourself in the context of the world. You man even identify solely with the city or state you live in, more so than The United States as a whole. It is a very personal view and one that isn't often discussed in a casual setting. We Americans have an unsaid understanding that each individual has the right to feel anyway they like about how they view themselves and this extends to how we assimilate into the vast landscape that is America. The land of the cultural melting pot contains all customs and civilizations of the world. Our unifying culture if you think about it, really is Pop Culture. I haven't yet visited a country that didn't...

"From Campfires to Rocket Fuel" 20 x 16" Mixed Media Art is a process and a journey. It leads us to explore and question and probe. The best advice I ever received was from a colleague, Jason Archer, who upon hearing me complain that I didn't have enough money to produce an exhibition, pointed out that it didn't take money to create art but it did require a lot of thought and a fresh perspective. He pointed to paintings created on cardboard, paper collages with string and glue. But his best advice was to take an image I had created (and loved) and reproduce it in many other mediums. This inspired me to render many photographic portraits and still life's in oil, acrylic,  mixed media , ink and pencil. Dabbling in mixed media over the years has provided me with an alternative format in which to explore a different way of conveying an idea or a message. I see these images as illustrations. They would fit nicely in an article on the quality of our fo...

" Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with the strings "  Wassily Kandinsky Color. It's all around us. It has served our species well to understand and decipher the inviting shades and warning signs represented by color. Our perception of color is based not just on our visual interpretation and the juxtaposition of different colors together but our emotional and social cues we have attached to specific colors throughout our lifetimes. These social color codes are inherent in societies and helps to bind a culture together.  Color is allusive and fleeting. Like photography, it cannot exist without light. Like music, it is a universal language that can convey a multitude of feelings in a single instance. The subject of color is so vast and interesting that from time to time I will come back to color and explore its interrelationship with emotion, music, science, vision,  psychology,  culture and other elements th...