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KEVIN ANCELL The RVCA Artist Network Program is an ongoing venture which aims to showcase the talent of accomplished as well as emerging artists who inspire our generation and push the boundaries of creativity; providing something of substance and culture.
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ALL WE HAVE IS Spring Twenty Fifteen
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CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Jason Kenworthy, Dominic Petruzzi, Daniel Russo, Toby Ogden, Tom Carey, Brian Beilmann, Jack Coleman, Andrew Mapstone, Adam Moran, Dave Nelson, Pat Eichstaedt, Julien Lecorps, Ryan Boyes, Zach Hooper, Tim Peare, Michael Lallande, Bob Plumb, Peter Morning, Bryce Kanights, Arto Sarri, Anthony Acosta, Cameron Strand, Brian Fick, Deville Nunns, Gage Thompson, Derek Bahn, Tom Cozad, Robbie Crawford, Ryan Donahue, Joe Foster, Sean Sullivan, Delon Isaacs
CONTRIBU TORS Willie Marshall, Daniel Russo, Jason Arnold, Greg Escalante, Nathan Spoor, Tom Carey, Travis Millard, David Choe, Kai Garcia, Mickey Neilsen, Peter Townend, Hamilton Endo, Tawnya Schultz, Mike Murciano, Geoff Shively, Casey Holland, Steve Stratton, Robbie Sell, Andrew Miller, Pat Towersey, Raul Montoya, Ian Dodge, Richie Olivares, Eric Meyers, Kelly Shannon, JP Olson B a L!SSS Magazine 413 31st Street
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3/11/15
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Check out "Life Beyond Walls: Panama" featuring the adventures of Alex Smith, CJ Hobgood & Brett Barley.
p: Mark Welsh s: Alex Smith
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freestyle shark tooth Freestyle just introduced their newest watch that’s been in the making for over two years now, the Shark tooth. The Shark Tooth is the world’s first watch to feature realtime surf, tide and weather data from thousands of locations across the globe. The watch also lets you control activity tracking, camera and music all from the convenience of your wrist via Bluetooth. The watch basically does everything except brush your teeth for you, and if you can’t do that, then, well, you’re SOL. Best part is that it’s available at a very reasonable price. Look for the Shark Tooth to be available in stores and online very soon! Visit freestyleusa.com or your local retailer and start using this insane technology.
snapping at snapper Well, that was interesting! First of all, hats off to Filipe toledo on a job well done and being on a completely different level than anyone else in his victory at the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks. Brazilians are shaking up the world of competitive surfing now more than ever, and whether you’re a fan of this or not, it’s exciting to watch. Other highlights from the event came in some meltdowns on the day before the final. After 10 lay days for nothing but gutless dribblers a few of the boys let out their aggression. Highlights were Kerrzy’s board punch, Gabriel Medina and Glenn Hall’s feud and, our personal favorite, Freddy P’s rock stomp. Overall, we were thoroughly entertained and can’t wait for Bells. Go, WSL!
smith optics x howler brothers Smith optics teamed up with Howler Brothers this past month to release two limited-edition co-branded frames for those who are passionate about living life beyond the confines of office walls. Both the Lowdown and the Dockside are now available at select retailers and are perfect for any and all adventurers, thrill-seekers and tequila drinkers. If you fit into one of these categories, and we hope you do, head down to your local core store and demand they get you a pair.
revok show Our good friend and world-renowned artist ReVoK is always making moves and turning heads. You may remember his beautification project that saw his art on condemned buildings, adding life to otherwise unhealthy and dilapidated houses in Detroit. Now REVOK is unveiling his newest body of work in abstract pieces he’s been working on over the past year. His exhibit will be going down from April 10th -19th at Library Street Collective, which is at 1242 Palmetto Street in Los Angeles. If you’re a fan of REVOK like we are then make sure to check out his exhibit.
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red bull rainbow Our friend and Red Bull ambassador Justin Ruiz just stopped by the office last month to give us all the 411 on what Red Bull is coming out with. Red Bull North America is hitting us all new flavors for the springtime in new orange and Cherry editions with zero sugar and zero calories. In addition to these flavors Red Bull has unveiled their yellow edition with a refreshing tropical flavor that’s perfect for summer. We’ve tried all three of these styles and they’re up to par in with everything in taste and quality you’d expect from the energy drink that gives you wings. Grab the new trio next time you’re at the store or visit redbull.com to see more in action and products.
aluminati There’s a new cruiser company that’s getting it right by the name of Aluminati Skateboards. Aluminati was founded in 2013 with a mission to create a better riding, longer lasting cruiser board. These aircraft-grade aluminum decks are perfectly balanced and feature unique scratch-resistant graphics on both the bottom and top of the deck. A revolutionary integrated clear grip application lets you actually see what you are riding. Equipped with Alumanti 60mm 78A wheels and 3.25” Aluminati trucks, these cruiser boards will open you up to new levels of fun. Currently offering three shapes in a plethora of designs it’s time to forget the plastic toys and step up to the Aluminati. Visit your local retailer or aluminatiboards.com.
krink Legendary graffiti artist KR came by the office the other week to hang and surf with us. While he was in our company, KR shed some knowledge on his rapidly growing art supply line, Krink, also known as KR’s ink. Krink offers an extensive lineup of markers and inks unique in style, quality and variety. Our own Madsteez received a little gift package filled with Krink K-32 paint-markers in pretty much every color option you could dream of. The K-32 is filled with permanent, odor-free, water-based paint and the ultra smooth, opaque finish will leave you extremely satisfied with whatever surface you’re painting on. Visit krink.com to get yourself some premier art supplies today!
mason x rip curl As we’ve said before, Mason Ho is clearly having the most fun out of any surfer on this planet, and he’s arguably the most entertaining guy to watch as well. Apparently Rip Curl thought the same because this last month the company added Mason as a member of their team. Mason will be a huge contribution to the team as far as talent and sheer personality goes. If he chooses to rock one of the Rip Curl GPS watches, we have a feeling he’ll set new records for wave count, speed and length of ride in his first session. Make sure to keep an eye out for big things to be coming out from the Rip Curl front now that Mason Ho is on the squad!
isurus wetsuits
rev'd We’re all looking for that extra edge whether we’re surfing, skating or snowboarding so that we can perform at the top of our games. In a day and age where nutrition can give you that extra edge, you’ve got to be wise in your decisions on what you’re putting into your body. One brand that’s earned our approval is Rev’d. Rev’d is a non-GMO, killer tasting nutrition bar company. With flavors like Chocolate Chip Cookie, Double Chocolate Brownie and Peanut Butter Cookie, that are absolutely delicious, and ingredients that are natural and healthy like Maca Superfood, they’re a sure win for you and your body. Visit revdlife.com for your extra edge and start going harder for longer!
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A good wetsuit is worth its weight in gold. That’s probably an understatement – more like worth it’s weight in plutonium. There’s nothing worse than ending an epic session because you can no longer feel your hands or feet. But it happens and that’s why we were super stoked to receive a couple of Isurus’ latest wetsuits… and wow, these guys are changing the wetsuit game forever! Instead of cutting development costs in order to keep margins high on the backend, they’re spending more to properly cut panels for maximum flexibility, researching advanced closed-cell technologies and taping suits in a way to aid with compression design and muscle function. They’ve got the best testing grounds with San Fran in their backyard, and anyone who’s tried one of their suits can attest that it’s the best suit on the market. If you’re a hardcore surfer who thrives in surf no matter the conditions, you’ll definitely need to get one of these today.
erres erres means “you are,” and the folks at Erres have embraced this meaning by focusing on never forgetting who they are, where they come from and where they are heading. They brought this focus to the design of their shoes, which resulted in high-quality footwear that is not only stylish but versatile and comfortable as well. A combination of sleek, casual and comfort, the Huntington features leather accents, tongue padding, collar padding, plus the signature Erres heartbeat logo, which serves as a reminder to always remain active. Available in gray, blue and black, be sure to check the Huntington out at www.erresshoes.com
catch surf x chippa wilson & julian wilson
the finest line There are few men in big-wave surfing who are more experienced and respected than Rusty Long. Rusty is not only a remarkable surfer but an extremely talented writer with a trove of stories from his travels and experiences. That’s why we were excited to hear of the release of his new book, “the Finest Line: the Global Pursuit of Big Wave Surfing.” The book contains harrowing big wave tales, amazing photographs and exclusive interviews from the best surfers of the current big-wave era. The book also contains a foreword from legendary surfer tom Carroll, and an afterword by Rusty’s brother and big-wave ambassador himself, Greg Long. This is a book you’ll want to have forever, so make sure to buy one. “The Finest Line” will be available on April 14th at Barnes and Noble, Insighteditions.com or Amazon. com. Also, make sure to check out his signing day on May 2nd at Interval Gallery in San Clemente.
The soft-top revolution continues… Free-surf or competitive, it doesn’t matter who you are, it seems that everyone is having extra fun with a little foam beneath their feet. Leading the charge, Catch Surf recently announced the addition of two new heavies to their ever-growing soft-top roster. The latest to join the team is airaficionado Chippa Wilson and the unstoppable WSL-force Julian Wilson. If you haven’t figured out what all the fuss is about, may we suggest you grab one of these boards next time the waves go to shit or there’s overhead shore break and just see how much fun you can have. You’ll join the revolution too, we guarantee it!
shreducate flux bindings x john jackson Veteran snow-shredder and all-around good guy, John Jackson, has joined forces with Flux Bindings as their newest team rider. John’s traveled the world through his lengthy career and knows a good thing when he sees it. “Super durable, stylish, simple and lightweight – that’s everything I look for in a binding,” states Jackson. So whether you take our word for it or his, you can’t go wrong with a good pair of Flux.
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Our good friend and photo extraordinaire Jason Kenworthy came by the other day to say what’s up. He gave us a little info on a brand new, all-girls skate camp that’s perfect for little lady shredders of all levels called the Shreducate Academy. Whether you’ve got a daughter who has amazing talent or one who hasn’t ever stepped foot onto a skateboard before, we highly suggest you get them into this epic camp. The infamous Pink Helmet Posse will be there to help spread knowledge and show support as well making it a good time for all. To sign up send an email to joey@ shreducateacademy.com, and make sure to hurry as availability is limited.
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Aircraft grade aluminum decks that are perfectly balanced and feature unique, full cover, scratch-resistant graphics. These cruiser boards will “enlighten” you to a new level of fun.
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Interview: Liz Rice McCray one element of your paintings that effects me greatly are your recurring themes, influence of everyday life, contemporary society and the noW culture. Will you tell us about your subjects and their backdrops? I use personal sources. I know the people I paint, playing on their characteristics, putting them into surreal narratives to show the theatricality of the situation. The abstract composition of some of the
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work displays the difference between performance and reality.
studio atmosphere? Fluid, room for improvement.
paintings. It’s an interesting reflection on them!
Will you please elaborate on your consistent influences? People are the most consistent influence. I want my paintings to convey how human ego is translated into image. There’s such a large history of narcissism associated with portraiture, and so I want to give it a satirical edge, playfully mocking the importance we place on image.
What percentage of your time is devoted to your artwork? What do you spend the rest of your time doing? I’d say 95% of the time I’m painting. When I’m not working I try go to galleries but tend to end up in the pub.
Do you do any commissioned portraits? Yes, as long as I have the creative freedom!
How would you describe your
What do you hope people to get from your art? I’m always intrigued to hear how people interpret the narratives of the
Where can people check out your art? I’m working towards a show in London this September; I’ll have updates at tristanpigott.com.
Interview: Liz Rice McCray Will you please introduce yourself to our reader? My name is Dmitry Morozov but my project is called ::vtol:: – it’s my alias also. I’m a new media artist from Moscow, Russia. I’m working mostly with sound and new technologies and building instruments, sound objects and installations, but also I work with computer graphics, robotic and kinetic. Will you tell us about the “reading my body project?” “Reading my body” is a project that I made almost two years ago but I am still working to extend this concept. Basically, it’s an electronic controller
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with optical sensors that detect black and white lines on my hand that are made as a tattoo. So all together it’s a hybrid instrument that combines my body and electronics to play sounds. What gave you the idea to create a special instrument/ sound controller that reads a tattoo as music? I had a couple tattoos before that, and this idea just came in a second. But of course I have a background in music technologies and I knew about many different optical and image to sound technics made in Russia, USA and Germany in 1930-70s. So I could say that I kind of am following these
ideas. How did you get involved with engineering strangesounding mechanisms? I was collecting musical instruments… actually, I was searching for crazy machines that can create strange sounds, and once I bought a guitar pedal that was circuit-bent by my friend. He told me that this wasn’t that difficult to make, so I’ve started to build my own circuit-bent instruments. That was the beginning of getting into the sound and tech. you are also a musician? Yes, I’m also a musician and I compose and perform music as a solo artist and in
collaboration. I also work a lot with theatre and choreography. What do you hope people take from your art? I hope people could get inspiration from my works, especially in the way how strange and interesting technologies can be, even very simple. I also wish that my works can resonate with someone’s frequencies. Where can people check out more of your art? I have a website, www.vtol. cc, where you can see all my works, and I wish to travel more soon to present my work somewhere.
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Interview: Liz Rice McCray you are an artist, tattooer, and a hand-poker from Cape town, South Africa. Will you explain to our reader what a hand-poking is? Hand-poking is tattooing that is done without the aid of a machine. I use regular pre-made tattoo liner needles and I fold the needle bar into a triangle. I hold the folded needle in my hand, and position my index finger so as to get the best drive from my hand to the point. I dip the point into ink, stretch the skin and push the needle into the skin to create a dot. The artist’s ability to arrange the dots determines the quality of the Tattoo. It hurts less than a tattoo made with an electromagnetic machine, but it takes longer and has a particular look and feel that you either love or don’t. I mix ink that has a blue/black color; it has a viscosity that lends itself well to the process. It also heals up to look like the tattoos
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that are made in South African prisons. My original inspiration for working in this way came from conversations that I had with ex-convicts on the streets while out skating. Will you tell us about your most recent print with 1xrun.com? I made two illustrations, one of Ninja that was referenced from a photo of him that I took just before I tattooed his face. The other one is referenced from a photo that I took just after I tattooed Yo-Landie. It reflects the intense mindful genius of Ninja and the playful arrogance of Yo-Landie, opposites that make the whole. They are 12 x 17 inches, letterpress print on hand-deckled 250gsm Stonehenge Natural Fine Art Paper. The originals are all hand drawn, pen on paper. How did you get into tattooing and hand-poking? I painted a graffiti mural for a tattoo
shop in Cape Town when I was 15. They took me on afterwards to help out on weekends fetching and cleaning. I did it initially just as means to buy paint, but as it went on it developed into an apprenticeship. I worked for them for 11 years in total. After I left and started doing my own thing. I had the freedom to play, and that is when I started hand-poking friends. I took a while before I started to do fancy Stoeke-style hand-pokes. I like doing the rough prison style stuff as much as I like taking 11 hours on a portrait. How would you describe the role of the artist/tattooer in Cape town? Collecting tattoos is a luxurious way to spend your time – no one needs a tattoo. So the people that you meet as a tattooer are often in a good space. In order to get a dose of reality you need to get out of those circles often to see
the rest of the city. The political policies of the past that divided this country continue to separate the people. It is a very complicated place. Our role as artists has been throttled by the graffiti by-laws. There is a very poor angry youth that could flip out at any point; if they could afford paint they would have a lot to write. What are some of your consistent influences? Skateboarding and the mindset that comes with it defines my culture. It takes you out into the world in a way that nothing else does. It gives you an appreciation of architecture, people and movement that affects your daily life. You get to meet loads of weirdos when you spend time skating spots in the quiet parts of town. Where can people check out more of your art? On Instagram @sinsofstyle and on sinsofstyle.com.
Words & Photos: David Aumentado I find it entertaining when surfers who think they know everything about surfboards engage in conversations with Stretch. That’s not to say he’s a know-it-all but rather because of how his tall, lanky, gimpy frame doesn’t appear to be the stereotypical surfer/ shaper idol-type that’s patronized by today’s media. It often takes people by surprise to greet him for the first time and realize that he’s hemiplegic with limited use of the right side of his body. Stretch broke his neck windsurfing almost three decades ago. He can’t open his right hand or lift his right foot. Stretch can’t even surf anymore. Isn’t that supposed to be criteria for being a world-renowned shaper? Stretch’s hobbies include gardening, engineering, world affairs, guns, cigars, fly-fishing, boats and anything that goes faster than
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should be allowed. Priority number one, however, is in providing for his family. Surfboards have been his passion since he was a grom under the tutelage of Malibu heavies, where he learned respect is earned and not given. When your livelihood banks on building the best surfboards possible, you don’t fuck around. Stretch’s dad, Mike “Noodle” Riedel, shaped for Velzy/Jacobs and learned in an era where you built things with your hands, made the tools you couldn’t exactly buy, and learned first-hand about the way surfboard designs and materials could interact with each other. His mom was an organic vintner, where being meticulous about process and the end result is paramount. Take one step into our factory and you’ll witness the progeny of his upbringing. Sucking down second-hand cigar smoke for the past decade has let me see a common theme in everything
that he does in regards to building the best board possible, and it all boils down to “value.” Money is worth something but more important are time, waves, and the experiences that you can’t put a monetary value upon. Getting that one epic wave that you’ll replay in your head as long as you live versus the 50 mediocre waves you already forgot is a better value. Being super amped because you waited a little longer for a new custom versus bumming out with buyer’s remorse for settling on what was discounted on the sale rack is a better value. Paying a little extra for a board that will last four years as opposed to saving a little cash and watching your existing poly deteriorate after four months is a better value. Stretch shapes all the boards, whether it’s for Nathan Fletcher or a customer he met 10 minutes ago. It’s a normal sight to see a team rider or pro’s name on an order lined up on a blank stacked next to a stock board or an
individual customer. Knowing that the boards are built in the same way, regardless of who’s getting them, is of great value. Stretch knows that you don’t want something mediocre or run of the mill. That’s why he wants to control what his name gets put onto. His expertise and influences in all things surf related include sailboards, towboards, kiteboards, hulls, twins, logs, wakesurfers, SUPs and everything in between. Engineering something that’s durable yet high performance in function has been drawn upon his extensive epoxy work. Today, the heritage of the custom-built board thrives through his exclusive CFT construction. “Controlled Flex Technology” has been in existence for nearly 10 years. Think you know all about how surfboards work? Give Stretch a call. He’ll give you an earful… If he’s not too busy shaping.
Interview: Liz Rice McCray This month there was no debating which mural to feature. All regular searches that normally take place when picking the mural of the month ceased once stumbling upon collaborative piece by Maser and Conor Harrington. Luckily it happened early in the month when methodically zoning out on Instagram. Apologies to the murals we never saw... Thank you Maser and Conor for making our choice so easy. Maser, not only do we love this recent collaboration you did with Conor, but we really enjoyed interviewing you. How did this mural come about? Who asked you to paint it? I had painted the exterior of Boardertown Skate Shop a few years back when it opened. They asked if I would be interested in painting it again so I said, “Yes.” I contacted Conor to see if he would be up for it and he said yeah. A local organization is planning a weeklong mural festival called “The
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Unexpected” in September and they wanted to give the town a preview of things to come. Where is the mural located? Will you tell us a little about the neighborhood? It’s in Fort Smith, Arkansas, a small “working man’s” town. I see the town as a blank canvas; lots of great opportunities to paint and to introduce something that it hasn’t had before. I like that art can create a conversation where there wasn’t one before. The people of Fort Smith are great – they stopped by to watch us paint, even brought us food and made us feel a part of the community very quickly. Does this mural have a name? If yes, what and why? It doesn’t. There were a lot of conversations about “The Struggle,” the fight, but also the strength inside us to continue. Both you and Conor Harrington are known for your signature styles, so to see you paint a collaborative
piece incorporating your different styles is pretty cool. Will you give us some insight about the mural and its representations, game plan on mapping out the wall, and planning/prep for this piece? It’s a mix of styles, sharing a space together, both styles and themes of work are different so we played with that and discovered a method that would complement one another. The creative process starts with sharing source references, then cresting layouts. From that we decide bulk colors and the rest just happened organically as we painted. How was it collaborating on this mural, and have you worked with each other before? Do you think you will collaborate again? Conor and I worked together before on a wall in London. We are now good friends, both representing Ireland in other countries, spreading and sharing the message. We are talking about painting LA, NY and London; just hoping life doesn’t get in the way.
What did you enjoy most about this piece? The memories. The finished wall is a bookmark to a great week spent together in Fort Smith. Do you have any upcoming projects you can share with us, more walls to keep our eyes open for? I’ll be in Milan in May painting at Milan Expo 2015. After that I’ll be back in Dublin creating a series of limited-edition prints with Dublin’s Graphic Studio Gallery. There are always others wall in the works, planning for New York and Los Angeles this summer or fall. Every week gives me a new opportunity. If I could do them all I would. I love to paint, travel and meet new people. Where can people check out more of your art? Probably like most things, on social media, websites and blogs. My handle is @maserart and my website is maserart.com.
Words: Josh Bernard Surf Ride was founded in 1974 by Bill Bernard and his twin brother Richard. They bought a small adobe building on Hill Street in Oceanside (now Coast Hwy). For the next 25 years they invested every extra dollar into making the Oceanside shop their flagship location. Tearing down the old adobe building in the early ‘80s and building a beautiful two-story landmark for South Oceanside. This property has truly become part of the Oceanside community. In the summer of 1998 Bill and Richard broke ground on an amazing new project in Solana Beach, CA, and one year later the doors were open in July 1999.
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This building is a single-story, 8,000-square-foot masterpiece with tall ceilings and every surf item you could ever need wrapping the walls and filling the floor. Over the last 16 or so years this location has really come into its own, and the staff there work every day to keep the property clean, core and true to their roots. When you walk into the store you are immediately greeted by the smell of surf wax, fresh surfboards and a friendly staff. The Solana Beach store is run by Travis Kaapke and John Ennis, whom have both set out to have the most knowledgeable core staff of any surf retail store. In fact, almost every employee
there actually surfs, including the girls. Along with an amazing group of people working there, Surf Ride is also known for the largest surfboard selection with over 2,000 boards in stock and ready to go. With thousands of boards available for customers to browse, caress, and dream about, there’s also an ample supply of surfboard fins, traction pads, and leashes. Don’t let the massive surfboard selection overshadow the amazing selection of the latest and newest clothing and footwear for both men and women as well. Also, if all that wasn’t enough, Surf Ride has more wetsuits than you can ever imagine! If you want it, they have it, no matter if you wear a small, tall or an xxxl short, there
is one on hand for you. One thing to keep in mind after experiencing all that Surf Ride has to offer is that it is one of the last “Mom and Pop” shops around. A lot of people think it’s a big corporate company because they keep the parking lot clean and the floors vacuumed. However, the truth of the matter is that it has been family owned for over 40 years and has every intention on keeping it that way. Surf Ride also prides its self on being a company that appreciates its employees, customers and being a part of the most amazing community ever – the surf community. Doing everything they can to support the beaches, the sport, and the dream, Surf Ride is all about surf!
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INTRODUCING THE SKETCH FLORAL COLLECTION
NICK GARCIA WALLRIDE BACK FOOT PLANT PHOTO: RAMON HESS
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Photography: Nathan Groff : @nathangroff Model: Callan O’ Conor : @callanoconor Agency: @theeraagency You know that perfect girl of your dreams you have pictured in your head? The one that is talented, sweet and beautiful? That girl that you know you could bring home to mom and have instant approval? I think I might have found her! For this month’s Super Taste we give you miss Callan O’Conor, Texas transplant now living in Orange County/Los Angeles. Although Callan is pursuing her career in modeling and is signed to multiple different agencies, she also has a voice sent from the heavens that’s somewhere between Lana Del Ray and Ellie Goulding. I think I can speak on behalf of all dudes when I say, “I know who I’ll be dreaming about tonight!”
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Iggy Pop : Catskills, ny 2010
Russian Boxer : Atlantic City, nJ 1995
Dragged : Manchester, Mass. 2000
Larry Clark nyC 2014
or texture or person and knowing that with some more elements in the frame the shot will be stronger. So waiting for things… Boogie does that too. And that’s anticipation. And that’s something that you learn that you’re probably not going to do the first time you pick up a camera.
Interview: Clint Woodside What was your first camera and how did you get it? And tell me your story. A Rollei 35 with the little pop-out lens, like a tiny little box. I was 16 years old; my boyfriend gave it to me. Still have it. Still works. That’s a good present! Did you use that for a long time? No. I quickly got A Nikon FE2. I shot a lot of boxing on that camera. That was my first where I was buying a ton of used Nikon lenses. It got stolen out of a car, because if you leave a camera in a car in New York City it will get stolen. Really anywhere… I had an F3, and then I had another camera stolen out of the car in Milan. But yeah, I have had Nikons forever, F3, F4, and then, let’s see - I don’t know exactly when I bought my Leica, but… late ‘90s maybe. What year was the Milan trip? I lived in Milan for two and a half years. Milan and Barcelona from 1985, ‘86, ‘87. What were you doing? Reading, writing, looking at art, walking on the streets and shooting. I decided I wanted to be a photographer and I moved there, naively. Like, “I’m going to be a photographer.” Who were the photographers that you were influenced by at that time? I would say Bruce Davidson, Diane Arbus and Maryellen Mark. I studied Art History in college; it was less in photography and more about painting, with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. So there I was living in Italy amongst all this art that was so revered, I thought, “Wow, it’s just on the church walls and people are living amongst it. I could touch that 12th century Fresco if I wanted to.” It was kind of mind-blowing to me. It was a real insular study time for me and photography was a big part of it because all I did was walk on the streets.
Speaker Bike Kid Queens, NY 2014
So when did you come back? I came back in ‘87 and then I became a photo assistant. When I was assisting, I started to shoot boxing as a documentary subject because I had access to this pretty inaccessible world at the time. This was a subject matter that was selfcreated that wasn’t for anything. I always recommend this to young photographers… When there are no odds, when you can fucking make mistakes and you find a subject and there’s a door open that’s kind of not that big of an in for everyone else, go in there and go hard. Use that as a subject and do a 360 exploration – there is no agenda. It’s not an assignment; there is freedom to explore without pressure. Later in your life you’ll have pressure to produce, so that’s a beautiful stage of your photographic life. It’s kind of a place where you really get a hold of what you are about yourself. You don’t have anybody else trying to push you on anything. It’s just you, diving deep into what YOUR process is and creating your own path. Finding it and making mistakes, because a lot of discoveries come from mistakes. Finding out how people react to you. Your place in that world. What are the skills needed for shooting that subject matter [boxing], I feel, has so much correlation to street photography like speed, anticipating action, how you’re handling your equipment, how it’s an extension of you, where you are on the ring. Did you decide to stand on at this corner or that corner? Because once you pick your spot you can’t move too much. You don’t want to be on your 35th frame when the guy gets knocked out. In hindsight, I realized that so many things equated to street photography in that boxing ring. I did it for 10 years. It really had a lot of parallel skills, I think.
Blake Motel Mrytle Beach, SC 1999
That’s really interesting. I never really thought of the similarities. Anticipation is a huge thing. Joel Meyerowitz talks about that. In my film his father was a vaudeville guy. He would walk with him on the street; he was like, “Okay. Watch this. There is a banana peel on the floor. The guy’s going to go over there and then, watch it, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it…” boom, the guy falls. So he used that in his photography. Seeing a certain background
In your book [Some Kind of Vocation] you had a bunch of shorts on a DVD that came with it, but Everybody Street is the one that really made you more known as a filmmaker, and maybe even a switch that you’re more known as a filmmaker than a ph otographer now. Is that a strange switch for you, both in the way you work and in the public perception? Like, the way you work, first of all, is there a difference between you making the films and you going out and shooting on the street? Filmmaking is a gigantically long process, and I need them both for my head, and I was bugging out editing that film because I had no time to shoot on the street. And so the 16-millimeter part of that film is me doing street photography [chuckles]. It took me four years off and on, but it was a long stretch of a singular focus in a way. And we were editing in the studio and Occupy Wall Street is outside the window, and we are hearing all this shit and we were like bugging out. We would take laps like, “Let’s go shoot some Occupy Wall Street,” just to get a little fix of it. Are you more interested in making the films right now, or are you still trying to keep your feet in both pools? Both. I get work in both things, and I get opportunities in both things, but in making that film I really saw how far films can reach in the world. There is something so special about that, and to travel the way I did in the last year and a half and being invited to, for instance Russia, and all these countries because I made that film, and to see how that affects people and kids was amazing. Kids in Ukraine write me emails because someone bootlegged it [chuckles]. I was so psyched to experience the photographs of these artists in my film and thinking that maybe that kid probably will never hold a Bruce Davidson photo book in his life. That’s a generalization, but he did see Bruce’s work in my movie. I knew you because I lived in New York at the time, and I was a spectator of the Alleged Gallery times there, and all the things that were going on, and you were heavily involved in that world. So, I knew about your stuff way beforehand, but I think this film brought you out even more public. You know, it’s cool to be versatile, but then it also fucks you up in a way if you do too many things – but oh well, that’s my personality [laughter]. I can’t help it. So, you know, if I only took street pictures and made zines my whole life and then I would be one thing… but I explored and did lots of different things, because it’s just what I do. I have a strong curiosity. So, you have been travelling like crazy for the film and doing commercial work like crazy. Do you feel that is encroaching on your own personal work, or are you still able like really chisel out the time for your own work? Yeah, that totally affects me. I mean, how much fucking brain juice do you have? And I don’t want to do shit half-assed, so whatever I’m doing, I give it everything and then I push it away [laughter]. So February I’m like, “Everybody leave me alone.” I built a darkroom in my studio before I left for my last trips; I’m going to fucking use it! I’m going to take care of personal shit. You have to buy your time, you know? Or… I do. When the desire or inspiration to make something comes from yourself, you have to fight for it and defend it with all your might because those boundaries of self imposed work schedules are flexible to other people, seemingly, so you have to fight for those to make them not flexible. I often have to just be like “No, this is the day that I’m doing this for me.” Were you feeling the hunger to get out and shoot a bunch, or were you like, so fried from working the whole time that it’s just like, “It’s okay because I am creating this film”? I wanted to shoot all the time. Always. Always just losing it, that I couldn’t… Of course I constantly have my Leica on my neck. I ride my bike, see a cool shot. And I ride by because I know I don’t have time, but then sometimes I would stop my bike and take the picture anyway. [chuckles] Jill Freedman, in my movie, I always remember her quote. Sorry, I quote all these people, but they are my teachers, you know? When she did Cops, or Firemen, she said to me, “Yeah, shit was hard. Sometimes it was really hard to see, but I would just tell myself, ‘I’m there to take the picture. It’s my job. That’s why I’m here, to take the goddamn picture.’” I think about that and I say to myself, “I’m a street photographer. Don’t fucking wimp-out on that picture – go back and get the picture.” Circle back, throw your bike down, go try and get it. At least try to get the shot!
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Words: Spencer Pirdy Going against the grain, following your passion and doing what truly makes you happy is a much harder task than we all really believe it to be. You can say you’re doing what makes you whole as a person, but a lot of times we succumb to the route that’s easiest to take or what’s most commonly accepted. Robbie Crawford is one man who has strived to always remain true to what really fulfills him in life. He’s taken scrutiny for riding a body board. He’s been told by his peers to “throw the pool toy away.” But he didn’t. Why? Because getting spat out of a barrel at Pipe felt just fine to him in the manner that he was doing it. He was told that the GoPro was an absurd little idea that was going to be the death of photography. But he saw its promise and kept on shooting regardless of critics. Why? Because he was having more fun than he’d ever had before in shooting his friends. No, Robbie hasn’t always chosen the most popular path, but it’s always been a path that’s 100 percent true to who he is. Robbie is, at his core, a worldclass wave rider. He has the ability and knowledge to navigate the barrel and position himself on a wave like few in the world can. With the Wedge in Newport Beach as his home break, he’s pretty much experienced and seen all the place has dished out over the past few decades. Normally, a local with Robbie’s seniority at a high-profile, anything-goes spot like the Wedge reserves the right to scoff at any newcomer or outsider, never giving them the time of day. Robbie takes the complete opposite approach though, always treating everyone with genuine respect and dignity. He’ll just as easily give you credit for a great ride with a clever smile and a hoot as he will get the wave of the day right in front of you. As a professional body boarder he traveled all over the globe, spending extensive time on the North Shore of Hawaii in the winter and posting up at his home break the Wedge during the summer months, and he would even make the occasional trip to Puerto Escondido for some Mexican bombs. Oozing with wave-riding wisdom and a natural beam of positivity, it was only a natural progression for Robbie to take a lifelong career spent in the ocean, combining it with a background in computers and multimedia design to become the influential photographer he is today. Although he’d shot friends previously with a Sony Mavica that used a floppy disc, the bulk of Robbie’s photography began as an accident of sorts in 2010. He had just started to stand up surf more out at the Wedge when a friend
Timmy Reyes
suggested he strap a GoPro to the front of his board to capture his own perspective. Instead, he held a pole attached to his GoPro to capture in-tube views. Then, he used his positioning ability and knowledge of the lineup and started hopping into the impact zone, a lot of times sans fins, to shoot his friends. “I thought it was really cool because the whole time growing up there people would shoot us but would never let us see the photos,” Robbie says. “I was stoked being able to shoot and show everyone their photos.” It was this and the Wedge’s unique evening light that intrigued Robbie the most. Soon, his photography was blowing the minds of people all over with raw, painting-like images that carried a visceral tone. Before the GoPro Robbie had always been interested in shooting, but he was never willing to fork out the dough required to buy an expensive camera. “The GoPro was pretty crazy. Going from six grand to two hundred bucks was a big jump,” Robbie remembers. With insight from his multimedia background he instantly gravitated to the GoPro, recognizing the camera’s potential. “I didn’t want to be a surf photographer or have a label like that,” Robbie says. “My goal was just to work with this new technology that I saw had potential for being the future.” If Robbie had to put a label on his photography he says it would be that of “Life Photographer,” as he enjoys shooting many different facets within the action sports realm and beyond.
Ryan Hurley
For Robbie, the whole journey from professional wave rider to photographer can be seen as a logical one. A man whose witnessed Robbie’s entire growth from the first days on the beach at Wedge until now is legendary photographer and Wedge pioneer Ron Romanosky. “He’s religious about being there when it’s even the slightest bit photogenic,” Ron says. “He spends enough time in the water; he has the talent, the skill and the background to read Wedge and to capture it at its best. He’s been there long enough to know where he has to be to catch it. He knows every little nuance of the place, such as the backwash hump that’ll launch a turkey who has no idea what he’s about to endure. He utilizes the GoPro better than anybody else I’ve seen, and he’s got a whole legion of followers all trying to be Robbie Crawford, at least photographically, if not in physical form. Being at Wedge and riding those waves was key to his evolution as a photographer. Wedge planted this seed [in him] for capturing phenomenal moments. He underwent this metamorphosis of rider to cameraman. He evolved from the tadpole to the full-grown GoPro bullfrog.” As a ‘full-grown GoPro bullfrog’ Robbie continues to push his level of photography, always conjuring up new ideas, scouting out new spots to shoot and thinking of what the next best shot will look like. Where Clark Little made wave photography extremely popular with the powerful and ominous shore break shots, Robbie’s impact has come in the fact that, with a device such as the GoPro, the general public can participate in far less life-threatening conditions. “You don’t have to go shoot
Christian Fletcher
20-foot waves,” he says. “You can get a GoPro and go shoot two-foot shore break and get an amazing photo.” Robbie is the first one to admit that not everyone likes this – there are haters. But for him, it all comes back to doing what makes you happy. Nowadays, if you were to venture down to the Wedge on a sunny afternoon with even faint ankle slappers hitting the shore you’d be guaranteed to find at least a handful of guys running around shooting with GoPros. Their ages might range from an 11-year-old middle school student to a 40year-old real estate agent. Their paths and intentions may be different, but their purpose is all the same – to capture the raw stoke and awesomeness of the ocean, soaking it all in while doing so. For all of the followers, likes and fans that Robbie has accumulated over the years, it all comes back to Robbie doing it for pure enjoyment, not monetary gain, fame or because it’s the cool thing to do. It’s what Robbie Crawford has a strong, enduring passion for–sharing the water with friends, shooting and having a hell of a good time in the process, and it’s something he’ll continue to do until the flame burns out.
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Interview & Photos: Bruno Park You always hear the myths and legends from friends about a person they know who is an amazing skateboarder. The stories about Gustavo Servin always surfaced during the skate sessions between the homies, “Gus did this...” or “Gus did that!” For once, the hype and the anticipation did live up to its name. Gustavo is an all-around ripper! Hola Carnal, como estas? Wassup Carnal! I’m good, thanks. So Gus, how old are you and where are you from? I’m 21 and I’m from Chihuahua, Mexico. How was it growing up in there? Actually, I was born in Chihuahua but I grew up in a little city called Delicias and started to skate there when I was seven years old. I used to skate with my friends but they stopped because a guy broke his arm and they got scared. I didn’t have friends to skate with until I moved to another neighborhood when I was eight. Then I met Jearim and we started to skate a lot. Then we made new friends… we used to skate in a plaza called “El Santuario” every night and then the city built a skatepark and we were there skating every day! Then I moved back to Chihuahua when I was 13. Who got you into skateboarding? My friends from my block, they all started skating and my father took me to get a board – it had a dinosaur graphic. What made you want to come out to California? Skateboarding. I always wanted to go and skate those spots and I went for the first time because Rudy invited me and my friend Francisco, A.K.A. “Switch.” We had the chance to stay at Rudy’s house, and there I met Erick Sandoval and we started filming and now we are good friends. It was awesome; we skated a lot for three weeks. It wasn’t the Lay’s BBQ chips and the Panda express? Haha I found that stuff later on, I love it! But nothing is like Church’s Chicken. What are some things you do outside of skateboarding? I go to college to study physical education. I like to go to the gym, go running, spend time with family and friends. What does your typical “day in the life” consist of? Wake up, eat eggs and oatmeal, go practice at the park or street filming, then go eat and rest a little bit. Then I go to school, 4-8 in the afternoon, and then go practice again after that at the park. And then maybe drink coffee, play FIFA or eat burgers at night with friends, sleep, dream. So you’ve been filming with the homie Erick Sandoval... How is your video part coming along? When is it coming out? I can’t wait to see that! Yeah! I’ve been filming the whole year with Erick Sandoval and Javier Flores – they are awesome. It’s been fun filming for it! I went to different places in Mexico and USA with my friends. I think it’s coming out soon. I’m hyped! on all the missions I’ve been with you, when we get to the first spot of the day, you always disappear. I look over and you are like jogging back and forth. What’s up with that? Haha, it’s to warm up. Those are some exercises that I learned like three years ago when I was in soccer. They help a lot; I do that every time because it prepares me to skate and I feel better skating, and I stretch after the sesh too. That helps me feel less sore the next day.
F.S Rock
Kick Flip 50-50 F.S Over Crook
B.S tail
I consider you an all-around skater. you skate ledges, rails, gaps and some transition. But some of the rails I see you skate and the tricks you do on them are kinda crazy. What’s going through your mind when you’re skating a big rail? I don’t like to just go to try a crazy trick. I just ask God to help me do it and to not get injured and just try to practice the tricks a lot at the parks before trying it in the streets to make sure I can do it in the streets. And when I skate with Rudy Garcia he makes me get hyped to skate the spots because he just goes for it! What skateboarders do you look up to nowadays? Josh Harmony, Cyril Jackson, Jamie Thomas, Donovon Piscopo, Theotis Beasley, Oscar Meza, Rudy Garcia, Paul Rodriguez, Michael Scott, Fernan Origel, Gustavo Aguirre and Marco Rodriguez. Any last words, Carnal? God, my parents and brothers, friends, Bruno Park my Carnal, Javier Flores, Erick Sandoval, Rudy Garcia, Jonathan Bon, Max Barrera, Nike SB, Zero Skateboards, Bones Wheels and So5a Grip. F.S Salad F.S 50-50
Interview: Liz Rice McCray This month’s cover goes to the talented Jean-Pierre Roy, a Brooklyn-based artist. Jean-Pierre Roy’s art didn’t just catch our eye this month, as it was spotlighted when art aficionado/actor Leonardo DiCaprio purchased one of his paintings, “Nachlass” (2015), after seeing the painting on Instagram. The painting was posted by Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, who posted a picture of their booth at PULSE Art Fair in New York. DiCaprio is not the first to scoop up one of artist Jean-Pierre Roy’s paintings. His work is a part of many prominent collections and is becoming one of the must-have artists of this time. Will you please introduce yourself to our reader, a little synopsis if you will? My name is Jean-Pierre Roy and I live and work in Brooklyn, New York. I’m originally from Santa Monica, California. I’ve been drawing and painting and building things for as long as I can remember. In LA in the ‘70s and ‘80s the art scene was almost invisible to a kid, unless you grew up in it. We didn’t have a very street-level art scene, and compared to what I have access to now in NYC, the museum scene in LA was pretty sparse. The only real industry that seemed like an obvious home for someone who liked to make images was the film industry, so from an early age I set my sights there. I started working at an architecture firm at 14 during the summer, but I quickly realized that I wanted something more hands-on and got a job working for Stan Winston Studios working on practical make-up and effects for films like Batman Returns and Jurassic Park while in high school. I ended up in the film program at Loyola Marymount and got a job at DreamWorks doing concept design and art direction work in their interactive division before leaving to work as an independent concept artist and matte painter for a couple of years before getting burnt out on the industry after 10 years. I’d spent too many late nights and burned through too many good ideas wasted on poorly handled projects. I decided that I wanted to be the final arbiter in how good the work was when it left the studio door, so I moved to Manhattan to go to graduate school in painting at the New York Academy of Art. I thought that I’d move back to LA after the two-year program and resume a life as a West Coast artist. I arrived in NYC three weeks before 9/11 and watched both planes hit and both towers fall. Many of the people that I knew at the time just packed up and left following the attacks, but I remember thinking in the aftermath “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life.” I’ve spent the next 14 years painting, teaching and exhibiting around the world and live with my fiancée, Amy Berger, a baker, in Williamsburg. your interest and inclination toward painting started at a young age? How did you get started in painting? Growing up in LA, I didn’t really have access to museums and galleries the way I do now. My visual memory was formed through comics, graphic novels, films, video games and television, so my early languages come out of them. Drawing was a primal language. You saw it in comics in a literal sense, but also all of the “making of” books that I got my hands on were littered with drawings. Thumbnails, concept sketches and whole complex
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compositions in books like the “Bladerunner Sketchbook” and Moebius’ ink drawings for “Dune” hung everywhere in my room. It wasn’t until I did my junior year abroad at SACI in Florence that I had real, direct, daily contact with oil painting. I spent months at the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace gawking over Filippo Lippi, Gentileschi and Caravaggio. That changed my life and started me on a path to really master color in my own idiosyncratic way. What would you say are some of your consistent influences? Speaking of the Uffizi, I had the opportunity to spend some time in a private drawing library there and got to handle some rare Goya prints and ink drawings. They blew me away. He’s been a favorite of mine ever since. I’ve always preferred working from imagination and invention, so artists that had a strong inventive hand have always been important to me. The French and Italian illustrators of the ‘60s and ‘70s had a huge impact on me and still do, as do Syd Meade and Ralph MacQuarrie, production designers from some of my favorite films. The Hudson River School painters, Church and Bierstadt. Francois Millet, Gabriel Metsu and Cornielle de Lyon. Contemporary painter Mark Tansey has a huge impact on me as painter, as does artist Tom La Duke. But my foundational visual memory will always be film, so Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Ran and Stalker are always present in the studio. In our lifetime, technology has exploded. It’s overwhelming with the Internet, social networks, tween sexting... What are your thoughts on the effects of technology, the positives and the negatives? I have a complex relationship with technology, both on a practical and a philosophical level. All technology, whether a conceptual technology like certain aspects of religion and philosophy, or mechanical technology, like a train, start off as a solution to a problem. Eventually, all technology becomes outdated and is replaced with a better, more efficient or cheaper technology, but many outdated technologies survive as an aesthetic. They survive not because they solve the problem they were invented to solve, but because they have found root in culture. The technological explosion we’ve encountered has given some tech a second life as a formal aesthetic phenomenon, like a celluloid film camera, while others have died overnight, like Video-Discs. Painting has gone through similar reevaluations in the past as the tech changed: the switch from egg tempera to oil, the invention of the camera-lucida, highchroma pigments like cadmium red and the introduction of the photograph into the studio. For me, the danger comes from when people confuse something that is an aesthetic for a technology and vice-a-versa. Do you need or have strategies to sustain interest, enthusiasm and concentration while painting? Being an artist is a lonely, monastic experience. If you don’t enjoy spending a lot of time alone in a room making stuff, you’re going to have a hard time of it. My paintings take months, or longer, to make. If I don’t break up the long game with some shorter ones, I go crazy. One of my side projects is
to do a mini-self portrait a few times a week in the studio in one sitting. That way, I intercut the delayed satisfaction of an indirect painting with the immediacy of a direct one. So far I’ve got over 1000 little selfies. I also set up a gym in my studio as a physical counterpoint to my intellectual practice. Lots and lots of squats. What are you really into right now, art-related or otherwise? I love Hard Sci-Fi (where the authors choose not to violate classical physics in order to create a more creativelycomplex narrative) so I’ve really been catching up on my audiobooks lately. Charlie Stross, Greg Egan and Peter Watts are all insidiously infiltrating my paintings. As for art-related stuff, I’ve really been nerding out over technical issues with fellow painters Christian Rex Van Minnen, Eric White and Nicola Verlato. We all have our own idiosyncratic ways of building an image that we’ve pieced together from history and necessity. Will you tell us about your experience being a teacher? Being a teacher was totally unexpected, but 10 years in and it has become a huge part of my identity. Some of my most meaningful relationships are with
teachers that I had in grad school that I now teach alongside, and some of my previous students are some of my favorite emerging artists, even though their work looks absolutely NOTHING like mine. On a spiritual and community level, teaching has been very, very rewarding, but as for teaching on a practical level, I don’t really recommend it to young artists unless you live in a smaller city. In the big cities are there are waaaayyyyy too many people trying to get into the game, and schools can keep their pay scales artificially deflated as a result of demand. This puts the burden on the young artist to teach more than full time or take up other jobs to make up the difference in income and leaves little time, and even less energy, for the studio. The smaller cities tend to pay more to attract the talent to teach, and in these situations the young artists can be highly rewarded but then tend to suffer from being removed from the dialogue of the larger cities. I’ve worked myself into a pretty good balance, but it has taken me a decade to get there. You are co-creator of Single Fare, an annual NYC art event. Will you tell our readers a little about the event? My old studio mate, Michael Kagan,
and I decided that we wanted to create a community-sourced art event that would mirror the kind of all-inclusive salon-style shows that we dreamed of before we moved to NYC. An old student of mine, Imogen Slater, showed up to class after being sick for a week with homework portraits done on used NYC subway MetroCards because she didn’t have any other surface to work on and was too sick to go to the art store. They were gorgeous. It’s a super flat surface, so all your brushwork shows up without any of the tooth of the surface mitigating the mark, much like painting on glass or metal. I thought, “Sorry my dear, but I’m going to steal this.” The idea was that we wanted to put on a show open to anyone and have all the work priced at $100 a piece, total equality amongst the artists. Our first show we had over 2000 pieces from 800 artists hung in our studio and got written up in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The second and third show were at Sloan Fine Art and RH Gallery, respectively, and each attracted over 3500 pieces from over 2500 artists of all ages and profiles from around the world. We plan on doing a fourth one, but since our careers have grown in the five years since we started Single Fare we have much tighter schedules.
What’s your favorite part of living in New York? And why do you still have an LA phone number? Tough question! There is so much here. One of the biggest things for me is that growing up in Southern California presented me with such a specific outer landscape. I spent years learning to tie my inner life to the hills, the mountains and the oceans around LA, but there was always a part of me, a weird little part of my psyche and inner-life, that never had a physical analogue out there. Being able to tie my early development as an artist with the Manhattan/Brooklyn urban landscape has given a visual vocabulary to a part of myself that I never was able to find expression for before. That is probably my favorite part of being here: discovering new parts of myself in union with the new landscape. As for the phone number, I originally had it so my parents didn’t have to pay long distance when they called me, and I just kept it. I was the “LA Guy” for so long out here, but now I’m just a New Yorker like everyone else. One element of your painting that affects me greatly is your use of light. How do you create that play of light in your mind? Light has always been the defining
piece of visual grammar in my work. From my early work in film to my concept work and my matte painting, I’ve always tried to access color as subset of light. For me, it ties into a physicist philosophical point of view. The cosmos is made of matter and fields. As long as I can remember I’ve wanted direct access to the stuff that makes up the world – it’s invisible geometry and systems of change – but I’ve always been cut off from it by the limitations of my senses. The eyes are where most of these natural systems reveal themselves by the paths that the photons have taken through space. For me, light is a map of reality. It is not reality itself, as what we see is a construction in the brain, but it is a starting point to being able to conceive of a greater order of reality than we have access to through our senses. I use my own understanding of light to better understand the physical world. your work is included in many prominent collections: torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach the collections of Anita Zabludowicz, Jereann Cheney, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Jean Pigozzi, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Helena Christensen and Bjorn Borg, amongst others. Do you feel increased pressure from your success? Note: the Torrance Museum and VMoCA don’t have permanent collections; I’ve just had solo shows there. I always want to kick the ball down the field. I’ve gone through some big thematic shifts, from landscape to figurative for example, and I’m always worried about finding a balance between challenging myself and further examining an idea. Every show you do is an opportunity to validate or interrupt your previous ideas, and it can be a terrifying proposition to contemplate for too long. In the face of the fact that the only thing I really have control over is how good the work looks when it leaves the studio, I try not to think about the audience and just think about the eye. not to be depressing but... when it’s all said and done, how would you like to be remembered? Sounds cliché, but I’d like to be remembered as a good man first, I suppose. I don’t have delusions of grandeur. I make what I make
and I want to make it well. I want to be a part of the dialogue, otherwise I wouldn’t be living in New York and trying to exhibit in higher and higher profile galleries, but I recognize that what I do isn’t fashionable. I’m not drawn to the works of many of the painters in the “Forever Now” show that is up right now at MOMA, but I don’t want to be a part of an art world that they aren’t participating in. If anything, I want to be remembered as an artist that allowed for people to be persuaded by a work that they never thought they would be, and to validate the unspoken inner conversations of the rest. How has your painting evolved, and are you going in new directions now? My work really started off as much more of a conversation with PostCinematic Romantic Landscape painting but has become something more complex. It has evolved more into an externalization of an inner conversation about perception and the inability to have direct access to reality. I’ve been making images recently that attempt to infuse the picture plane with a collision between Albertian perspectival and Cubist space as a way to indicate the amorphous space between Classical and Quantum reality, the
world of the sensed and the felt but unseen. Do you have any advice to artists just starting out? Funnel your entire life into the studio. Your jobs, your relationships, your geography… every one of them should direct you back into the studio at every available opportunity. You can’t know everything, but if you know what you are interested in and know it better than anyone, people will pay attention. thank you so much for taking the time to answer all my questions. one last question where can people check out more of your artwork? The best place to check out new work is on my irregularly updated website www.jean-pierreroy. com, at my Danish Gallery www. gallerypoulsen.com, and on my Facebook page and Instagram account. thank you Jean-Pierre Roy for taking the time to answer our questions. It was a great pleasure to interview you, and we look forward to following your career in the arts.
Photos: Steve Baccon (unless noted)* Matt Meola is a weird dude. I mean, he’s not weird in that weirdo sense, but he’s weird in the way that you can tell he’s got a lot going on up there. He’s quiet, humble, but right away you can tell he’s a thinker. There’s something about those that are Maui born-and-bred. They always surprise me with what they have going on upstairs. Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve grown up in that “Land Before Time” type setting; you know, waterfalls, green deep valleys, wildlife and of course the raw and rugged energy that all of Hawaii has to offer. I’m consistently blown away by their knowledge of the ocean, fishing, waves, flora and fauna… some of the stuff us city dwellers might miss out on. And for whatever city knowledge they miss out on, the knowledge of their land makes up for it ten fold. I had the pleasure of having dinner with Matt and the whole Depactus crew in Florida (during the tradeshow circus) and had some time to really get to know him. He was excited to be in new surroundings and wanted to find a restaurant that served gator. He was adamant about it, and although we never found him that spot, it’s something that always stuck with me. You see, whether if Matt charging huge Jaws, bow-hunting at home, filming for John John’s movie in West OZ or scouring Florida for a gator meal, he stays loyal to who he is and what he’s all about. He’s family-orientated, soft-spoken, humble, passionate, true to his roots and an absolute madman in the water. He’s the guy that came out of nowhere a few years back and he and his crew have consistently put out some of the best web-edits, and it doesn’t seem like they’re slowing down anytime soon. That being said we decided it was a good idea to get in touch with Mr. Meola to get the lowdown on what he’s been up to. Enjoy the read! So Matt, where are you at right now and what are you doing today? time to tell the world what you’ve been up to. At the moment I’m in Western Australia filming for John John’s new movie. Other than that I’ve just been surfing all winter at home and trying to get clips! you’re pretty well known for your air game, and it seems like you hardly ever fall. Have you been working on any new tricks lately? Anything you can share with our readers? Um, I got a few tricks in mind that I would love to do, but with surfing it’s not like I can go out every day and try them. The conditions have to be just right. It’s not like skateboarding where the conditions never change and you can work on a new trick every day till you nail it.
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Seq: erik Aeder
We’ve noticed you got some new stickers on your boards. Fill us in on what’s going on and what you think about the brand Depactus and what those guys are up to. Yeah, I’m super happy about signing with Depactus, their brand perfectly represents my life style. It couldn’t be a better fit. Everybody who works at the brand are legends and so is everybody else on the team. We got some super cool adventures planned that I’m really looking forward to. It’s seems like a lot of really, really good surfers are coming out of Maui. Do you feel like it’s difficult to get the exposure you deserve living so far from where the bulk of the surf industry is located? I feel like living on Maui used to be a disadvantage when it came to getting noticed, but now with the Internet and everything it doesn’t really matter where you’re from. If you’re surfing good all you gotta do is put out a few sick edits and you will get noticed.
It seems like for the past few years yourself and handful of others have been leading the charge at surfing the West Bowl at Jaws. I know you experienced a super heavy wipeout last season. How has that impacted you and what you want to accomplish moving forward? Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with Jaws. Some of the best and worst times of my life have been spent in that lineup. I used to be super amped and out there every swell no matter what. Now, I only go out on the super nice days that I’m really feeling it. If you’re not feeling it, you’re gonna get put in a super uncomfortable position. What are your goals and aspirations that you wanna fulfill as a surfer in and out of the water? My goals as a surfer are to strictly have fun. I want this job to last a long time. As soon as it’s not fun it starts to feel like work, and that sucks. As surfers we all started because it
Photo: Erik Aeder
made us feel good not because we thought it would pay the bills. So I’m gonna do everything I can to keep it fresh and exciting so I can keep living the dream. Besides surfing, what else do you like to do with your free time? If I’m not surfing, I’m bow hunting or spearfishing. If the conditions are bad for that I’m trying to build surfboards. Me and my buddy have gotten pretty into it and are having a lot of fun. What does a dream day look like through the eyes of Matt Meola? Dream day for me would be to wake up before light and go bow hunting. Hopefully shoot a big buck, dress it out and put the meat on ice. Then go for a midday surf and hopefully nail a few good clips. After that, either BBQ with my friends or have a nice dinner with my beautiful girlfriend. Who have been your biggest influences in life, surfing or otherwise? My parents obviously have influenced me in the biggest way and raised me to be who I am today. As far as surfing goes I think there are too many to name. My friends I surf with every day are Kai Barger and Albee layer. Then John John. Every time he invites me on a trip I feel like I learn so much. When it’s all said and done, how do you want the world to remember you? When it’s all over I wanna be remembered as a happy guy that loved being out in nature, and loved his family and friends even more. And hopefully I inspired a few kids along the way.
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Photography: Matt Doheny dohenyphoto.com @dohenyphoto Model: Erika Jayne @erikkajayne
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Tank Top – Hurley hurley.com Bikini Top – Volcom volcom.com Shorts – Hurley hurley.com Sunglasses – Vestal vestalwatch.com
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â&#x20AC;&#x153;We spent over 100 hours en route, traveling 3900 miles by train.â&#x20AC;? 92
Photos & Words: Bob Plumb Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s insane for me to think about the places snowboarding has taken me. If you told me 10 years ago I would spend a month in Russia, I would think you were crazy. This is exactly what we did. Myself, Keegan Valaika, Forest Bailey, Jonas Michilot, Pierre Minhondo and Brock Nielson flew to Moscow to take the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We spent over 100 hours en route, traveling 3900 miles by train. We traveled from Moscow to Perm to Irkutsk and then on to Ulaanbaatar. The longest train ride we went on was just over 54 hours. The train acted as a window to enable us to see and feel the real Russia. The living condition of the people in the countryside was jaw dropping. Small wood house that looked abandoned would have smoke coming form their tiny chimneys. People were standing in minus-30-degree conditions selling frozen fish at each stop in hopes to make literally one dollar. Artem Smolin, who was our guide/ translator/snowboarding inspiration for the trip, described to us how poor these people are that live in the countryside. These sights made me realize how much we take for granted here in the States.
Jonas Michilot
The snowboarding over there was incredible. We got kicked out of only two spots the entire trip. This is unheard of. Most people were genuinely interested in what we were doing. With SOCHI going on at the time, it made explaining what we were there for a bit easier. The traffic in the cities was insane – it was the equivalent of LA traffic everywhere you went. You don’t need to take driving classes there, so it felt like you were in a video game. After one day I realized the sketchier you drive, the safer you are. The towns were full of heroic monuments of Stalin and Lenin, monuments depicting their triumphs in World War II. It is a very proud country. Yet, with the way the government is currently being run some of the friends that we made let it be known that they feel the youth has had enough of their corrupt government. They are ready to rise up to fight for their freedoms, willing to die for their cause and be rid of Putin and the corruption that comes with him and government. Half-built buildings scour the landscape. The government will give their friends money for building projects, only to have the people stop construction and take the money. It’s only one of the ways their government and friends of the government steal money from the people. To get to experience all this firsthand makes you realize how fortunate we all really are.
Keegan Valaika
Forest Bailey Keegan Valaika
Forest Bailey
Snowboarding has changed a lot over the past five years; the money that was once there is no longer. It seems to snow less and less each year. Most snowboarding companies have only four months to make enough income to support themselves for the rest of the year. Money aside, we need to all just take a step back and realize how fortunate we all are for what we have now. We are not going to get rich off of snowboarding. The opportunities it presents to us, however, are priceless. We get to travel and see so many different cultures. Our life education due to these opportunities is rare. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know one person who has been to Russia outside of snowboarding. So thank you Adidas for making this trip possible. Words canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t express how grateful I was to be a part of this trip. It was amazing and life changing. What follows are the photos documenting our trip to Russia. The video from the trip is available on the Adidas snowboarding website. No more words, just photos. I hope they inspire you to go out and see what the world has to offer.
Words: Pat towersey On July 6th, 32-year-old lifeguard Ben Carlson passed away while making a rescue off of 16th street on the Balboa Peninsula. His passing had a profound impact on the community of Newport Beach and beyond. Ben was the first lifeguard in the department’s 100-year history to die in the line of duty. The paddle out in his honor was surely the largest public demonstration in the county’s history, with roughly 10,000 people in attendance. On Sunday, March 8th, they named the lifeguard HQ’s in honor of Ben, a true American hero.
Foundation at its photo/art show held at the Hurley campus in Costa Mesa, California. Photographers Tom Cozad, Robbie Crawford, Clark Little, Dirk Dallas and Ron Romanosky all donated images, which were printed on the walls and sold out within the first hour. The money raised is going toward a statue of the heroic lifeguard, which will be located at the base of the Newport Pier. Ben Carlson Foundation member and Ben’s brother-in-law, Jake Janz, has been spearheading the statue initiative as well as other great programs that will benefit the ocean community. Go to BenCarlsonFoundation.org to donate to the statue or the other programs the foundation is working on.
On February 28th, 300-plus people came out to support the Ben Carlson
#RaiseUpForBen
1. Jake Janz (Ben Carlson’s brother in law), Bronson and Brody Janz, Pat Towersy and Stephanie Janz (Ben’s sister) 2. Skeeter Leeper, Jake and Pat 3. Ari Marks and Sarah Daly, Hayden Paul, Carly Christian, Nathaniel Sfreddo and Evan Hochwald 4. Clark Little’s photography on display 5. The crowd enjoying a wonderful night 6. Images from legendary local photographer, Ron Romanosky. 7. Raise Up for Ben 8. Robbie Crawford’s photos never cease to amaze. 9. Ben would go, Ben did go.
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DANIEL ESPINOZA SWITCH 5-0 180 OUT A C T I V E R I D E S H O P. C O M
PHOTO: ACOSTA
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Words: Todd Proffit A snowboarding rail jam in downtown Las Vegas? Yep, that is exactly what went down under the neon lights on the corner of Fremont and Las Vegas Boulevard this past month. Keith Phalier and Shawn Darling, along with the whole Park Fab Crew, did an unreal job with a super-gnarly setup. The contest was open to 30 invited riders who all threw down in a chance to make it to
the super final. In the end it would be Matt Shaffer taking the win and $3,000, with Drayden Gardner coming in the runnerup position and pocketing $1,500. Best trick went out to Ricky Crilley for a back-lip down the kinked rail, earning himself $500 and a season pass to Mountain High. A special shout out goes to Keith Phalier for putting the event together. Good times and snowboarding in Downtown Vegasâ&#x20AC;Ś what more can I say? Well, not much because everyone knows what happens in Vegas...
1. Zack Foster always doing it with style 2. Matt Shaffer nose pressing his way to $3,000 3. Brandon Schroder, frontboard 4. Duncan and winners 5. Trever Haas board slide through the kink 6. Getting some 7. Keith Phalier has dough
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Words: Spencer Pirdy Spring was already clearly in the air but somebody had to make it official. And, as luck would have it, someone planned a raging party to jumpstart the season. Friday, March 20th saw the Cutlass crew hosting Lido Live, A.K.A. the infamous Lido Theatre in Newport Beach, for a night filled with acoustic rock, ska and reggae, all courtesy of The Snakebit Drifters, The Originalites and Seedless. Anytime you plan an event of this magnitude with such positive hype surrounding it, problems can arise. This time around it came by the way of the Newport Beach Police Department getting word that The Snakebit Drifters lead man Tim Willis had a knack for giving the crowd his signature ‘Whiskey Baptismal Shower,’ during shows. They, along
with Lido Live, didn’t really care for that. So, the security was beefed up and police presence was heavy. But, you can’t keep a good crowd down, and where there’s a will, there’s a way. The crowd flocked in and people let the good vibes roll. The Snakebit Drifters were the first to take the stage, giving the crowd everything they could want (aside from a whiskey shower) in the form of rocking out and getting everyone fired up. Then came The Originalites with their sounds to change the pace a bit while keeping the crowd enthralled. Last, but not least, was Seedless to absolutely send it into spring 2015. In the end, the final score was Cutlass-3, NBPD-0. Cutlass won, spring sprung and everyone who attended awoke the following day very hung over. Thanks to Cutlass and all three bands and we’ll see you for their summer kickoff party!
1. Zack Foster always doing it with style 2. Matt Shaffer nose pressing his way to $3,000. 3. Brandon Schroder, frontboard 4. Duncan and winners 5. Trever Haas board slide through the kink. 6. Getting some 7. Keith Phalier has dough
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The Tampa Pro is a highly coveted event that’s guaranteed to surpass itself year after year. It has a lot to do with the amount of talent on hand but also the venue itself, in how well kept and updated the Skate Park of Tampa actually is, which shows in how much riders enjoy skating there. This year saw some familiar faces skating at high levels that we’re used to seeing, including 2014 Tampa Pro winner Nyjah Huston and 2014 runner-up Chaz Ortiz. But to say that it was the usual suspects who stole the show wouldn’t be completely accurate. Kelvin Hoefler, Luan Oliveira and Trevor Colden were in the mix all weekend with Nyjah and Chaz. In the end it came down to the final runs with Nyjah and Kelvin in the top two spots, but it was Brazil’s Luan Oliveira blowing up beyond belief on his third run that sealed the deal. In a showcase of flawless technical lines that couldn’t
be one-upped, Luan ran away with the 20 grand. The country of Brazil had a great showing in the event, with Kelvin coming in third and Felipe Gustavo coming in sixth, giving them both spots on the Street League World Tour. It was another Tampa Pro for the books and we’re already dying to see what next year will bring! Results: 1. Luan Oliveira $20,000 2. Nyjah Huston $15,000 3. Kelvin Hoefler $10,000 4. Trevor Colden $5,000 5. Chaz Ortiz $4,000
1. Tampa Pro 2015 champion, Luan Oliveira, with a smile worth every bit of the $20,000 payday. 2. Nyjah Huston defended his 2014 title like a true champ but came runner up this year around 3. Kelvin Hoefler sliding his way to the 3rd place 4. Trevor Colden had the backside tail-slides on lock 5. Chaz Ortiz is no stranger to the Skate Park of Tampa 6. Brazil’s Filipe Gustavo made his presence known 7. Shane O’Neill nose-grinding up the hubba 8. Crowd favorite Greg Lutzka doing what he does best 9. Ishod Wair absolutely destroyed this rail 10. Manny Santiago knows how to nose-grind 11. And the podium shot – all champagne and smiles 12. The blonde hair beauties kept the crowd all wound up
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Words: LJ o’Leary “You and a couple of the guys want to head off and test some of our Spring 2015 collection before we launch it?” asked Mike Quinones, Creative Director for ourCaste. “It can be anywhere you like really. As long as there is a series of altitude and climatic changes that you can test in, along with zero chance of electricity, spoken English, running water, cell phone service or any of the daily amenities that may make you feel Americanized. The collection is meant to endure the elements and make you look good doing so. Just want to make sure it works before we release it for spring. You all in for a trip?” We all quickly said “Fuck yes!” and with a few hours of planning, swell tracking and few days of preparation, we were off for deep Mexico. The plan was to chase a swell that was going to make a cameo way down south and we knew it would be quite the adventure getting there. In fact, the journey would likely be the highlight of the trip and every one of us was looking forward to it. The crew consisted of Forrest Minchinton, Cal Lathrope, Gage Fisher, Sterling Foxcroft, Steven Stone and myself. We were hoping to get straight after it, early in the morning (3:30 a.m.) and drive all the way through the day with aspirations of making camp by sundown… Sounded good. A broken dirt bike hitch kind of shattered those dreams by about six hours. We drove straight through all of the fun waves and newly peaking swell of Northern Baja in search of something
more – a place outside of our comfort zone and far from the American border. It was nearly impossible not to stop at any of the hundreds of empty surf breaks we passed on our way down. We needed to get as far south as we could because once those paved roads turned to endless sand trails without any street signs or lights to guide us, we’d be in for trouble. The paved roads are sketchy down there. The dirt roads and Baja trails are notorious for leaving stranded gringos on the side of the road waiting for the cartel or Federales to come by and collect. “No. No stopping to surf,” we had to keep reminding ourselves. Unfortunately the broken hitch demanded otherwise. We had to navigate some of the most narrow, off-road paths to find our little slice of solitude. We cracked a thousand beers and jokes the whole way down. When the sun came up the swell had filled in across the right points, and at that moment we knew the long daunting road was all worth it, as it was all smiles from every last one of us. Each day we were there we grew more and more content without having the luxuries of home and wanted to be consumed by them less and less. When you’re with a group as good as the one we went down there with, it’s hard to say goodbye. We have a group chat going that we cleverly named “Si Caballeros,” which I think means “Yes Gentleman” in French. We go on there often to remind us of how much fun is awaiting just across that border and none of us can wait to get back out of our cozy little comfort zones and into the wild again. Till next time, Mexico!
Photos: Steven Stone 1. “Si Caballeros” aka LJ O’Leary, Cal Lathrope, Gage Fisher, Moffles Amigo, Forrest Minchinton & Sterling Foxcroft getting the hitch repaired 2. Gage Fisher at a spot deep in Baja 3. Say your prayers 4. All of us about to get fogged out – LJ O’Leary, new friend, Gage Fisher, Cal Lathrope & Sterling Foxcroft 5. We said, “Por Favor” 6. No paved roads, perfect: Cal Lathrope & Forrest Minchinton 7. Tortas – before this we had no tortas: Cal, Gage, Forrest, LJ & Sterling 8. The flip pack has millions of advantages – Forrest getting the report for us 9. Just us and we ran out full speed 10. Spitting fire, telling lies and starting rumors around the campfire: Gage, SterFox, LJeezy, Indo Cal & Forrest Tree 11. Testing of the ourCaste spring range in the field 12. Our special little place – we lived there with no running water, electricity, bathrooms or fucking cell phones for a few of the happiest days of our lives
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Carve
Interview & Photo: Max Ritter Must be BRGRTV! We sent a little email correspondence to our buddy Steele O’neal while he was out filming at SXSW. Steele produces the infamous BRGRTV along with Jack Sample. Describe a little about what you do and how you started doing it? Burger got me and Jack together. He had done a documentary on them called Between The Two Buns and I had been shooting the Cosmonauts. How long now has burger TV been running? Two years.
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What episode are you most proud of or which is your favorite? I always like the most recent one. It’s pretty amazing that you guys release an episode every week. Is that hard to keep up with? It was fun to keep up with but this year we’re just going to put together one a month. There’s a lot going on every night and the Burger world just keeps getting bigger every week. If I don’t film I feel guilty and don’t make any money. Why do you like what you do? I like showing people cool stuff and maybe show them
something that is hard to see. Documenting so many shows and traveling a bunch you must have seen some crazy stuff, yeah? What’s the nuttiest thing you’ve seen out there filming? In New Orleans a lady punched out her window because we were being loud outside. You’re currently at SXSW filming for Burger. How is SXSW these days? What are the good and the bad elements? This is my second year; it’s like summer camp. Last year it was hot, and this year it rained but no one cares. Some cops chewed me out for jaywalking, that was the only bummer.
What was the best show you saw at SXSW? Uncle Funkle, his Queen cover at Weinermania. What are you looking forward to working on in the coming future? Music videos and the Burger Bandstand Show with Jimmy. You guys have some pretty sweet BRGRTV shirts now. Where can they be purchased? Etsy.com/shop/burgerrecords or pick one up at one of the Burger shops. Are you related to Shaq? Don’t lie! That’d be cool. Watch BRGRTV online, kids!
Q U E N T I N S
C R E AV I T E X N I H I L O M C M X C V I I V E S TA L W AT C H . C O M
Review: Max Ritter
no. 2 No Memory Jackpot Portland’s Jackpot Records is giving the long-out-of-print No. 2 debut record No Memory a much deserved vinyl reissue treatment for this year’s Record Store Day. Before Elliot Smith became Elliot Smith he played in his first band called Heatmiser with college buddy Neil Gust. No. 2 (appropriately titled) is Gust’s second band after Heatmiser disbanded. The album, which was mixed and played on by Smith, is kinda damn underrated, to say the least, and will be remastered with some included demos recorded by Smith at his home… Schwing.
Lightning Bolt Fantasy Empire Thrill Jockey Doing my Macaulay Culkin Home Alone face, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
thin Lizzy Fighting Some Major Record Label Rippingest band ever. Pioneers of the twin guitar harmony sound and Irish people in general. Reissues of pretty much every album are here, finally! R.I.P. Phil Lynott.
Cheena Cheena 7” Sacred Bones “Did I Tell You Last Night” = Hammer. NYC ‘70s country punker with some slide guitar, gotta love it.
WAnD Marine Room Tavern, Laguna Beach, CA March 10th, 2015 Review & Photo: Max Ritter
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Eye spy LA’s WAND ripping at Thalia Surf Shop’s Wax Ball at the Marine Room. The band’s latest LP entitled Golem is mental and available from In The Red. See them.
#SOHIPITHURTS
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Age: 7 Hometown: Costa Mesa, CA Sponsors: None Favorite Skaters: Jay Adams & Danny Way
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Photo:Â Maddog
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Age: 15 Hometown: San Clemente, CA Sponsors: Fox, Electric, G’Day & …lost Surfboards, Blackline, Bubble Gum Wax & Sea 7 Tech Favorite Surfers: Clay Marzo & Bobby Martinez
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