Entertainment
This artist plasters pink sheep across L.A. as a symbol of queer joy
It began with a quote by Alexander McQueen: “I am the pink sheep in the family.”
In 2013, L.A.-based contemporary street artist Ricky Sencion read a biography of the late designer and immediately connected with that feeling.
More than a black sheep, but rather a pink sheep, was how Sencion felt growing up as a queer child of Mexican immigrants on the Eastside of L.A. Here, his youth was marked by his differences— he was ridiculed for speaking Spanish during a time of anti-Latino prejudice in the ’80s, and like many LGBTQ+ kids of his era, was restricted from playing with dolls.
The self-taught artist, who also goes by the alias “Little Ricky,” never imagined McQueen’s statement would help him manifest an internal struggle of self-identity into an all-consuming project exploring queerness.
“When I read that sentence, even though I didn’t know what I was going to be doing with it, I knew that that’s what I was looking for my whole life,” Sencion said.
He bought a toy sheep and started doodling little creatures until the final form solidified on paper. It was everything he’d been searching for: self-acceptance and liberation. And he had to share that joy with others.
Sencion creates sheep as small as his palm, and takes them everywhere he goes.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
He posted his first sheep on the streets of L.A. in March 2013. More than a decade later, the artist has amassed an inventory of thousands of his signature pink sheep, from palm-sized stickers slapped on lamp posts on Melrose Avenue to wheat pastings on walls along Hollywood Boulevard. His sheep have attracted fans who follow the herd in person and share his work on social media — with sightings as far as the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City.
“When somebody sees them on the street, whether they stop and stare or even from a glance, [I hope] that they feel a moment of joy for themselves and who they are,” Sencion said.
Sencion didn’t intend to become a street artist. He studied English at UC Berkeley and worked odd jobs in the Bay Area and on the East Coast, but nothing seemed to stick. It wasn’t until he was laid off from his longest-running job at a travel accessory company that he decided it was time to embrace his passion.
Since then, he’s developed street campaigns of sheep and other characters he calls “Moonsters.” Some may look like Madonna or Anna Wintour, pop culture personas who have been anointed as queer icons, while others carry inspirational phrases like “E(WE) are beautiful,” pronounced “you are beautiful.”
“I like to think that our being different is our superpower for all of us. Whether we’re queer or not,” Sencion said.
Sencion estimates he has put up 20,000 sheep stickers over 10 years.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
“What initially drew me to Ricky’s work was the playfulness, the whimsy, the color,” art historian Elizabeth Dastin said. “You often think of street art as being very aggressive and large with these messages that are overwhelmingly political.”
Dastin was first introduced to Sencion’s art a decade ago, after launching Art and Seeking, a platform aimed at bringing street art to the mainstream. While Sencion’s art is rooted in the LGBTQ+ community, Dastin was struck by how universal his message is, allowing the queer narratives and characters in his sheep to be approachable and joyous.
“He is one of the only openly queer street artists in Los Angeles that I’ve encountered and I think it’s really important for visibility that he’d be as ubiquitous as he is,” Dastin said.
Sencion’s pink sheep developed out of recognizing the power in our differences. Soon, a series of cartoon characters erupted out of his animal creations.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
Although Sencion has been sharing his sheep with Angelenos for over a decade, his work has only recently been gaining recognition in L.A., with showings at galleries like Gabba Gallery , Wallspace and Art Share L.A.
Artist Steve Galindo says he’s witnessed how queer, trans and nonbinary artists like Sencion struggle to enter the conventional art world. Once he turned to curating, he saw the need to highlight underrepresented artists in smaller presentations to open doors to the mainstream.
“I want to help [these artists] reach that level where their work can become historicized and archived,” Galindo said.
Last summer, Galindo teamed up with art collector Arushi Kapoor to curate “Decoding Americana’s Queer Sensibilities,” a group exhibit showcasing LGBTQ+ artists. The intimate show at Kapoor’s Los Feliz home pushed viewers to expand the definition of Americana to include the multicultural and multidimensional landscape — one that is unapologetically queer. Sencion and his pink sheep fit right in.
“Pink is the antithesis of black,” Galindo said, noting the experience of queerness as being made to feel like the “other.” “He brings light to the world with these characters. … He’s infused [queer sensibilities] innately within his work.”
Sencion displays April Dreams ’22, a series in which he compiled his daily dreams each month into a single art piece.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
Following Galindo’s show, Sencion was invited to be part of a group exhibition at Art Share L.A. — his first time showcasing his latest series, “Littlez”, which pays homage to L.A. and his Mexican heritage.
These days Sencion is working on an autobiography made up of 365 paintings. “Doing this project is everything,” he said. “Not to just write about my life, but to paint it.” But his mission to spread joy through his sheep continues.
At his apartment and studio in Hancock Park, stacks of canvases cram a bright, colorful room that houses a chaotic mix of playful creatures resting on walls and tables. In the corner of his studio is a bag that holds all the supplies he needs to adorn the vacant walls of the city with his sheep characters: glue, stickers and paste-ups of sheep.
Next to his pattern-painted couch is the first sheep he ever posted on a wall. Two years after it went up, he found it weathered with its legs falling off. He took it and framed it beside his couch where he returns every night to create more pink sheep in hopes of bringing a smile to someone’s face.
Sencion’s studio walls are covered with artwork that seeps onto the furniture. Above him is a piece called “God, Will I Still Be Gay in Heaven?”
(Jill Connelly / De Los)
Entertainment
Bob Spitz proves the Rolling Stones are rock’s greatest band in magnificent new biography
By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones’ classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”
Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band’s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.
Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.
Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being “ugly,” although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.
This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.
(Associated Press)
Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel’s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.
“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own… It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,” writes Bob Spitz in “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades. It’s all here: The Stones’ evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks — “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street” as well as misfires like “Dirty Work”; Keith’s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the ‘60s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.
Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy.
Take “Satisfaction,” the Stones’ 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I can’t get no … satisfaction” on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger’s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.
Piercing the Stones mythology
Spitz’s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.
The most musically adventurous member of the group — he plays sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane” — Jones wasn’t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.
Author Bob Spitz
(Elena Seibert)
Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of “Exile on Main Street” in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nellcôte in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning — taught to him by Ry Cooder — leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That’s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.
Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.” But it’s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellcôte, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.
Beatles vs. Stones
One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them — until they didn’t.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a psychedelic mess.
The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover
As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released “Beggars Banquet” in late 1968 and “Let It Bleed” the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor — whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards — they produced what many consider their finest works, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” More impressively, the band, with Taylor’s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph “Hackney Diamonds.” The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.
Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.
Like most of the band’s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-“Exile” period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005’s strong “A Bigger Bang” and 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as “adequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.” That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album, “Brussels Affair,” recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.
These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.”
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
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