Everyone don your bathing caps, preferably those with shiny tassels on top, for this short film. Aquadettes is a beautiful mini-documentary about 75-year old Margo Bouer and the synchronized swim club at Laguna Woods Village of which she is a part. In the charmingly shot and poignant film, the latest by Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper of California is a Place, Bouer talks about her experiences dealing with aging, multiple sclerosis, medicinal marijuana, independence and pointing her toes in the water. It’s a sweet and thought-provoking piece that also kind of makes us want to take up synchronized swimming as a lifetime investment. Much more practical than tennis, no? Click through for the video, and let us know what you think in the comments!
Vans tend to remind us of stoners, our cousin’s reggae band, and that time that Phoebe and Monica got thisbitchin’ ride. But thanks to our friends at Nylon, we’ve been turned out to Joe Stevens, a Cali-based photographer and filmmaker who’s changing our reference point. Stevens describes his ongoing project Vans And the Places They Were as a documentation of vans in conjunction with “the dialogue which exists between a van’s design aesthetic and that of its surrounding environment.”
He also notes that vans have been disappearing from the roads, making his subject harder and harder to track down – and at the same time, film photography is declining to make way for digital. “Consequently,” Stevens says, “the goal of the project is to one day shoot the last remaining van on the final frame of photographic film in existence. Then the project will be finished.” He may be at it for a while. Caution: these photos may make you want to drop everything, buy a van, and ride around Southern California with your band for the rest of your life, sleeping on a mattress in the back. You’ve been warned.
Oklahoma photographer Hugh Holland traveled to Venice Beach, California in the mid-1970s to document the heady days of the early skateboarding scene. His dreamy portraits — shot with old color negative movie film in late afternoon light — will be on display at M + B in Los Angeles starting October 23rd in an exhibition called Local’s Only which runs through December 5th. Click through to travel back in time and check out some of the highlights.
Featuring works by 30 artists, Re:Cycle: Bike Culture in Southern California investigates the cultural influence of the bicycle through sculpture, illustration, photography, performance, and video.
The exhibition challenges the automobile’s role as the dominant form of transport, drawing on a wide range of applications, styles, and media to highlight the bike’s increasing appeal in car-centric urban sprawls. Regardless of the approach, each artist raises questions (and sometimes, answers) regarding the bicycle’s timeless benefits, including overall health and sustainability.
Fascinated with bunnies, beauties, bees, and meat, Mark Ryden makes magical paintings and drawings inspired by pop culture, old masters, and mythical archetypes. A master draughtsman and impeccable painter, Ryden creates visual fantasies that are oddly populated by wide-eyed femme fatales, Abe Lincoln, Colonel Sanders, and Jesus. A cult figure in his own right, the California-based artist counts Stephen King, Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Elfman, Bridget Fonda, and Jake Gyllenhaal among his celebrity collectors and has designed album covers for Ringo Starr, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Butthole Surfers, and Michael Jackson.
In 1958, real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn purchased 320 square kilometers of Mojave desert paradise with the aim of turning it into the so-called California City, an urban paradise whose size would rival that of Los Angeles. The idealized city would be centered around a lush park — stocked with flora non-indigenous to the desert and watered up the wazoo, naturally — complete with a gigantic artificial lake. As you may have interpreted from the ghostly grid pictured above, Mendelsohn’s utopian vision fell flat, and California City is left as a “mirage of suburbia in the middle of nowhere,” a novel relic to delight aerial photographers.
Art-themed architecture can be big and bold, or stark and subtle. In mid-century California, Brutalism was the design edict of choice, and now area code 510 is bringing it back into the public eye with a renovation of the Oakland Museum of California.
Civic architects Mark Cavegnero Associates are retrofitting the existing structure with modernized gallery spaces and open interiors. A cleaned-up new logo is part of the museum’s reinvented aesthetic identity. Take a look at the relook below the cut.
If you live in California, we’re sorry. Your beloved state gets swallowed up by the Earth first. Your only chance of survival is to rent a plane with John Cusack and fly to momentary safety. In preparation for the November 13th release of 2012, Columbia Pictures pictures staged what SlashFilm calls “the largest American media roadblock ever.” Read More »
The State announced this morning that it’s taking a genuine, depression-style approach to paying back its debts. According to the LA Times:
With budget negotiators at a loggerheads and California government facing a cash crisis, the state controller’s office will start printing IOUs this afternoon for the first time in 17 years.
The presses are set to start at 2 p.m., churning out 28,742 IOUs worth $53.3 million that will be dispatched mostly to residents throughout the state still awaiting their income-tax refunds.
IOUs, eh? I didn’t realize those actually existed. At first what what’s happening here appears outragous, but this SRSLY certificate actually goes to the state’s inhabitants. SRSLY guys, you didn’t want to pay more taxes to balance the budget? Well guess what, the government doesn’t want to pay tax returns.
Whoah, there. Simmer down now! I believe in nothing less than 100% acknowledgment of gay rights and 600% equality for everyone involved. And, as Caroline said earlier, we get pretty upset when things don’t go well. That said, today’s California court ruling to uphold Prop 8— and the actual issue at hand — has been taken woefully out of context. Whether or not you agree with the court’s assessment, when you look at the ACTUAL issue, its logic is pretty unassailable.
