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WE'RE SUPPORTING

Modern art meets otherworldly feel when Patrick Hruby lays down his imaginative silk screens. Glorious color penetrates with graphical precision and a slight trance-warmth sensation as pieces take on a personality and seem to stare right through.

WE'RE THINKING

I’m really thinking about highlighting the physical properties of paint and inks in my own work, and I’ve been looking to a lot more abstract stuff to inspire me. Stuart Elliot is a great example of someone who achieves really compelling non-representational images by masterfully exploiting untraditional combinations of different traditional painting materials. Read more

Sufjan Stevens creates autistic music for introverts — soft, shy, naive, full of shadows, windows, and insecurities. Yet it all sounds slightly forced, his enigmatic songwriting as comforting as it is unsettling.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

While I’m definitely not into the whole Lord of the Rings thing, I’m convinced Tolkien stole his inspiration from Göreme, in Turkey’s central Cappadocia region. After a mammoth volcanic eruption around 2,000 years ago, the landscape eroded to form a series of valleys, filled with peculiar, phallic-shaped tufts that the locals call ‘fairy chimneys’. Early Christians hollowed out the tufts and turned them into houses, churches and monasteries. These days, most of them are still in use and a few have been converted into cute hotels and hostels. If you’re not too claustrophobic, I’d highly recommend doing the hobbit thing and spending a night in one.

WE'RE READING

Cat-haters, or those simply too jaded by a lifetime of LOLcats, will get a kick out of this site, which wryly refuses to be wowed by any degree of feline adorability. But then, cat worshippers like myself will also enjoy the site, as it is still full of cats n’ kittens. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Last weekend I went to the Golden West in Baltimore to check out the What Cheer? Brigade, a marching band from Providence. I wasn’t expecting much, but when they opened with a cover of Slayer’s Raining Blood, my knees buckled. I think I could hear a musak version of that riff, and I’d still bang my head. The rest of the band’s set was just as riotous, with people dancing so hard, you’d think we were at Mardi Gras. I haven’t had that much fun at a show in ages.

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WE'RE WEARING

Love it or loathe it, you’ve got to admit that the ruffled blouses and strict pencil skirts on television series Gossip Girl give you a guilt-free reason to watch. 25-year-old former model Abigail Lorick was approached to ghost design the Eleanor Waldorf Collection by using her budding real life label Loricklady. The press surrounding the show has boosted her profile and her new collection featuring all the Upper East Side trimmings is greatly anticipated.