Born in America during the mid 1960’s, Rocky’s life was forever changed by an experience he had with an alien spacecraft when he was 9. When Rocky fell victim to a hit-and-run from a UFO. A pivotal event which led Rocky to spend his whole life exploring the alien, the otherworldly and the divine in all their permutations – In his personal life and through art, public performance, music and nudity.
With Rocky’s creations gaining him fans all over the world, including fellow artist Skinner with whom Rocky has collaborated, and band Death Valley Girls, who have used Rocky’s art.
Wanting to get to know him better, we sent Rocky some questions to answer over email.
Take a dive into his world below…
Getting Acquainted
Name + D.O.B?
Rocky Angel.
July 29, 1966, 11:10 PM.
I was 1 minute early for Angel Time, but I can still say Angel Time was the first FULL minute of my life.
City, State and Country you currently call home?
Oakland, California, U.S.A.
City, State and Country you’re from?
Andover, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Please describe some memories – such as art, music, comics, friendships, adventures, study, romance, politics, work, crime, religion… anything really – from the stages of your life noted below:
* Your childhood:
I started drawing very early, at 3 or 4, magic markers and crayons. I don’t know if it was for dramatic effect, or being influenced by colouring books, but I always outlined everything in black.
My Mom noticed my black crayons were getting used up faster than the other colors, and wrote a letter to Crayola asking for an all-black box of crayons, they sent a 64 crayon box – all black.
My 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Sohler, kept many of my drawings, and saved them because she thought I’d be famous someday. My first Art Teacher, Mr. Gillespie, would just hand out big sheets of paper and magic markers and basically say Go to it – draw whatever you want, draw as much of it as you want.
That was the whole of our instruction.
I loved that kind of unstructured creative freedom in a school classroom.
A couple childhood friends and I used to watch Creature Features, and draw monsters from the movies, and we also created our own monsters, and story lines and fights that went way beyond what was in the movies.
With one childhood friend, we somehow ended up in this scenario where these pigs used to draw were his arch enemies. I’m bringing some of them back, in modified form, for some comics.
One pen & ink drawing of them was a recent social media post.
In the 5th grade I changed schools to a Catholic school.
That year I won the Terrence McLarney Penmanship Award, named after a boy who attended the school and was known for good penmanship before he died in a fire.
My Art Teacher, Sister Madeline Carrebino, showed me many new media and ways of creating art.
* Your teenage years:
I went to a Catholic High School with no art or music classes.
Up until late in the summer after my freshman year I had been a Roman Catholic, but one night I decided to leave the church. I prayed on it, said I would finish out my days in Catholic High School, but then that was it.
Late in my senior year there was a poster contest for Spirit Week. The entries were put up on the walls in the hallways around the school. I drew a poster and entered it, but all the posters were stolen before a winner was declared.
* Your 20s:
A couple years into college, I changed majors from Engineering to Art.
In 3D Design class, we had group critiques, and the class got to choose whose project to discuss. I’ve always had difficulty working in 3 dimensions, but on a couple occasions, even though I tied for the lowest grade in the class, the class chose to discuss my
project first, and talked about it long enough that we didn’t have enough time to get to everybody.
In a way, I considered it a win when that happened.
There was 1 computer graphics course, called Art With the Computer. It wasn’t required, and I didn’t take it.
A few years after graduation, I started taking computer graphics courses at night, through an employee assistance program at a printing company where I was working that paid for it.
Tried to move up from menial production gruntwork to the Art Department, but they rarely promoted from within, reasoning that it was cheaper for the company to hire someone off the street because then they only had to train once, even though they had paid for my computer graphics education.
I put together a presentation package for oil paintings I did between 1985 and 1995, slides, 4×6 color glossies, info, Artist Statement, the whole works. I tried showing it around galleries in Boston, Somerville, Provincetown, but they would barely even look at it.
I couldn’t get a show anywhere in New England.
It was around then that I decided I wanted to leave the area, move someplace else, and out of the locations I was considering I chose Oakland, California, and moved here in 1996.
* Your 30s:
Shortly after I moved to California I showed the 4×6 color glossies of the oil paintings from 1985-1995 to a waitress at the Hometown Buffet in Newark, California, who was a born again Christian, and she said a prayer for me on the spot.
(That story is in the Bio section of my web site.)
Those paintings are not online anywhere, but I still have them packed in storage, and the 4×6 color glossies are around somewhere.
My main focus was still full time corporate jobs, mostly in the printing industry, and I finally got to move up into the Art Departments of printing companies.
Photo by Biron
* Your 40s:
After having tried so hard with no success in New England, I started getting cafe and gallery shows for my art in the California Bay Area before I had any type of presentation package put together, before I had even started trying.
* Your 50s so far:
Had my first solo show, and became officially internationally collected shortly after it.
Loving the art scene here, and all its freedom of expression!
You are a proud nudist and we were wondering…
– What role does nudity play in your life?
Nudity is both a part of my art and my day-to-day life, has health benefits, and allows greater freedom
of movement and direction interaction with the world.
– How did you first come to discover the joy of nudity?
I first discovered the joy of nudity at a very young age.
– Why are you such an outspoken and out there nudist yourself?
Body freedom is the most innate and personal liberty, the one from which all others spring forth.
Personal motto(s)?
Don’t have one.
What role did toys play in your childhood?
I used to act out stories with them, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.
They were an aide in creating
imaginary worlds, much like my art has always been.
Art, Performance, Writing + Creativity Questions
When and why did you first become interested in art, music, performance, writing and everything creative?
… and any pivotal creative moments / influences?
It was very early in life, art has always been a part of my life in some form or another. I guess it was just the creative energy within me.
Cartoons are definitely an influence.
Some pivotal creative moments were when I painted my first oil painting, got my first gallery show, made my first gallery sale (it was at a show on the night of a blue moon – red dot on a blue moon), and one night when I was on The Dr. Susan Block Show in L.A.
I was presenting her with a painting I did about coed naked wrestling in space.
Naked, and surrounded by Dr. Suzy and her beautiful sexy, friends and guests, it was like I felt deferred energy from past repressions welling up inside, about to leave me, and, overcome with excitement, I had an orgasm, right there on live TV in front of everybody.
If you had to explain your creative endeavors to some recently crash-landed aliens…
What would you tell them?
The main focus of my Creative Energy is to liberate the planet through body freedom art and performance.
I hope that every thought and action sends waves of energy that do that.
Who are some of your favourite artists, writers and musicians?
…and what is it about their works that so inspire and move you?
Salvador Dali, Igor Tuilpanov, Waone Interesni Kazki, Mear One, Todd Schorr, Leonora Carrington,
Hannah Faith Yata, Robert Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Michael X (1950s and ’60s UFO contactee),
Justin Wright of Expo 70, The Stooges, The MC5, Alice Cooper, Wendy O.Williams.
… add Virgil Finlay, Fred Schrier, Dave Sheridan, and Daniel Martin Diaz to Favorite Artists, and to
Favorite Musicians add Sleep, Earth, Sunn O)))), Electric Wizard, and Sun Ra.
I guess it’s a combination of the power of imagination, raw energy, and rebellion that moves me.
What do you get out of playing music / playing the theremin that you don’t get through creating your paintings and other art?
Playing the theremin allows me to reach people in a way that visual art doesn’t.
It fills the space in a different way, and sound frequencies and music have a power to soothe and heal.
If people wanted to check out your art, work with you or buy some of your wares –
Where should they visit and how should they get in touch?
On my web site, RockyAngel.com, there’s a Contact section with my email, or through Instagram @rockyangel666
Odds and Ends
What role do you feel masks play in life?
They can create a different persona for someone, and they can sometimes feel more creative freedom that way.
If you could live in any place, during any historical era – Where and when would that be?
…and why would you choose that time and place?
Oakland, San Francisco, L.A., New York, or Detroit in the late 1960s/early 1970s – The best era for music, movies, cars, and just about everything else, and all of those places were and are creative hotpots.
You were involved in an otherworldly experience when you were younger…
– Please explain this experience for those reading at home.
One night, when I was about 9, in Central Massachusetts, not far from where Betty Andreasson had her UFO sightings and experiences, I was the victim of a hit-and-run from a UFO.
I was playing in my Grandmother’s yard, with my cousins. It was a time of year when the trees were bare. I was running toward one tree when I saw a glowing white ball up in the sky. No sooner had I noticed it than it swooped down and hit me in my right eye. It was about the size of a large marble, or a golf ball. Just a couple seconds after it hit me, I looked around and it was gone.
I ran right inside and told the adults.
They didn’t believe me, though they acknowledged that my eye was swollen and red.
– What impact has the experience had on your life and spirituality?
It made me think about the possibility of other worlds, civilizations, and realms of existence, and not just in a science fiction way. Around that time I first saw Erich Von Daniken’s ‘Chariots of the Gods‘ movie, early one Saturday morning before the cartoons started.
– Have you encountered or gone through any other similar experiences?
… and if so – Please explain them.
One night at Contact in the Desert I went on the Giant Rock trip that included a sky watch. Greg from the Adamski Foundation was there, with an infrared laser pointer pointing out “high flyers” as he called them, craft that moved amazingly fast, stopping and starting suddenly, and making right angle turns, all the while telling stories about his father’s experiences an early UFO contactee.
One other otherworldly/paranormal experience I thought of:
About 10 or 12 years ago, I was visiting some Open Artist Studios, on a street where a few old factories and foundries now serve as Artist studios. Out in back of one, beyond the parking lot was another lot of freshly dug up looking dirt. Sitting in the middle of it was a small shack, with electricity, made entirely of unpainted, brand new looking wood.
A woman was showing her art in it. We met and talked a little, and she gave me her business card. She went by one name, it was a name, I’ve never heard before or since, started with “J-e”, I think, and her clothing was unusual (both of which I’ve heard are characteristics of people from parallel universes/other dimensions). I liked her and her art, but it was the setting that I really loved – a little shack off by itself, but still there were people coming and going looking at the art and talking, there was enough activity to make it interesting and vibrant.
A few months later I went back to that same converted factory for another art show. When I looked out back to where the shack was, it was gone. There were 2 guys standing there talking. I asked them about the shack, and the woman who used to show her art there, and was told that such a shack was never there.
When I got home, I looked through the business cards I’d gotten from Artists that day and hers wasn’t there.
Does sex change everything?
Sex, and free, open sexual self-expression, can turn a lot of energy from negative to positive.
From ‘Alien Base, Earth’s Encounters With Extraterrestrials‘ by Timothy Good, page 320, writing of visitors from a distant galaxy:
“HEALTH AND LONGEVITY
According to the Itibi-Rayans, Earth is one of a number of planets, referred to as ‘cancer planets’, which are particularly prone to cancer. In addition to the known or suspected causes, they laid the blame on our modern, artificial life-style (citing the lack of cancer among the Amazon Indians) as well as on other, sometimes inherited factors, such as fear, stress, and sexual repression.”
What are the top 3 items you own?
… and what is it about each of them that you so love?
My truck, its been with me for 20 years, we’ve traveled so many roads together.
My big Baphomet chain, I can feel power and strength radiating from it.
…and my Art.
In a fight between the following cosmic musicians: Sun Ra Vs. David Bowie – Who would win?
…and why would they be victorious?
Sun Ra – the space theme is more central to his persona, he stayed with it longer, and he was more prolific.
Plus, you emailed me these questions on the day after his birthday – May 23, after I had just listened to another 24 hour Sun Ra special at kfjc.org.
I could say he was larger too, but I envision the telekinetic power he used to trap his nemesis in the nightclub in the movie ‘Space is the Place’ as being his method.
Bowie was only cosmic during his Ziggy Stardust era, and that persona was based on another singer/performer – Vince Taylor.
Please describe your last dream in detail…
In many of my dreams, I’m astral projecting to another place/dimension/plane of existence, that is familiar to me in my dream state, but not after I wake up. Nothing really remarkable happens or gets said, and most communication is often by Telethot/telekinesis.
One recent exception to this was when I dreamt I was walking up to a big, gray building, and I went inside. Once inside, I was given some files and a bright silver disc, about the size of an old 45 record but with no hole in the middle.
By telethot, I was told to exit out the back of the building, and where to deliver them. There were a lot of people I passed as I walked, including 2 giants in black suits who were so big and tall the only way I thought they could have gotten into the building was by topological inversion, sometimes used by beings to change the size of themselves or their ship.
When I got out the back door, I got into my truck and drove, as I was given directions by telethot. The roads were surrounded by light brown trees with few leaves, and covered by twigs the same color.
Suddenly, it changed from day to night. I was no longer driving, I was in the passenger seat, and a guy who looked like Dave Childress from Ancient Aliens, but younger, with light brown hair, was driving.
All around us were fires and erupting volcanoes, but the roads were still drivable, and he didn’t seem worried or panicked, so I wasn’t.
Of everything you have done, what would you most like to be remembered for?
My Art.
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