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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
TOSSING PRODUCT
EXPERIENCE SUMMER
14 22 30 39
. . . . . . . . . . . . ANTHONY VAN ENGELEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RICHARD
AVADON
R A N G E R O M D NEE
GNAR M A G A Z I N E
IN YOUR LIFE ? STEVEN SOLIS
O
ur goal as GNAR magazines is to deliver the heaveiest and Gnarliest things there is to know about travel, fashion, art, and skateboarding! GNAR magazine is passionate and true to our lifestyle. We give you what you want and skip the bull$%^!!!
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Letter FROM THE
EDITOR
S E I H C N U M l e v a r T e r u t l u Food C
Sushi Delight!
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E V R E OBS l e v a r T e r u t l Food Cu
Windows into the Surreal
FIDM’s 5th floor windows celebrate the surreal work of Elsa Schiaparelli BY Hamish Bowles “Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word ‘genius’ is applied most often,” Time magazine wrote of its cover subject in 1934.[1] Coco Chanel once dismissed her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” (To Schiaparelli, Chanel was simply “that milliner.”)[2] Indeed, Schiaparelli—“Schiap” to friends—stood out among her peers as a true nonconformist, using clothing as a medium to express her unique ideas. In the thirties, her peak creative period, her salon overflowed with the wild, the whimsical, and even the ridiculous. Many of her madcap designs could be pulled off only by a woman of great
substance and style: Gold ruffles sprouted from the fingers of chameleon-green suede gloves; a pale-blue satin evening gown— modeled by Madame Crespi in Vogue—had a stiff overskirt of Rhodophane (a transparent, glasslike modern material); a smart black suit jacket had red lips for pockets. Handbags, in the form of music boxes, tinkled tunes like “Rose Marie, I Love You”; others fastened with padlocks. Monkey fur and zippers (newfangled in the thirties) were everywhere. love of trompe l’oeil can be traced to the faux-bow sweater that kick-started Schiaparelli’s career and brought her quirky
style to the masses. “Dare to be different,”[7] is the advice she offered to women. Pace-setters and rule-breakers waved that flag through the sixties, the seventies, and beyond. Photocredit Portrait: Irving Penn Windows: photographed by Carlos Diaz
EXPERIENCE Food Culture Tr avel
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R P G N I S S TO TRAVEL ITEMS
1
3 5 2
4
T C U D RO 6
7
8 9
1.Camping Tent,
Build a relationship with Mother Nature. 2.Music, Have the right tunes for the right times. 3.Skateboard, Always be prepared to shred the Gnar! 4.Camera, Capture the right moments. 5.SketchBook, Dont forget to take note or sketch down ideas. 6.Water, The most simple but the most important. 7.Snacks, When you have the munchies on the road. 8.SwimGear, Never be afraid to get wet. 9.SunGlasses, Keep cool and protect your eyes.
INTERVIEW
That was the only time I’ve ever seen a skater break the ground. Twice.
Dude, that was so gnarly. And then he wanted to move the tile and I told him to just stop. He was over it.
wanted to make sure that when it was over I looked back on it and knew I fucking wrang the towel out on it, you know? Sucked every bit of juice that I could out of the body so I can look back and I’m stoked. So I don’t know—I did my best with what I had.
What are some danger signs that it’s time for you to pull the plug and bail out of a skate trip?
Excellent. What did junior filmer Cody Green bring to this experience?
Back-to-back fucking rain. Rainy days. We did that in Taiwan. That was fucking horrible. I think we were three days in and we bailed. ‘Cause it rained and we were just, like, “Even if it wasn’t raining this place sucks, let’s get out of here!” And that was crazy because that was one of the rare times when Greg was, like, “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” You know, usually he’ll push through fucking anything!
Did you leave Paris because you kept fucking up those boiled eggs?
I left Paris because my heart was broken. I was going through a breakup. I flew out there, I was, like, “I got this shit,” then I got out there and just had a full fucking meltdown, like, “I’m out of here.” You get there and you haven’t slept for a few days and you realize that the person you spent seven years with is gone. You’re, like, “Oh that’s weird, there’s the Eiffel Tower, get me out of this, what am I doing to myself?!”
Speaking of getting back together, breakups and reunifications: how is it to be back with Dill full blast? Back with Dill? We never left. We never left each other!
He’s back in the video, you’ve got a hit board company together— goddamn it, you’re on top! Yeah, things are fuckin’ doing good. Who would have fucking guessed, right? I wanted to retire three years ago. We were sitting on a curb with Greg in downtown LA and I was, like, “I think I’m done.” And he’s, like, “What are you gonna do? There’s nothing to do.” I was, like, “I know.” I started looking at woodworking trade schools online and shit.
So how did this video turn out? Is this your best performance? I mean, I could say that for me I consistently worked on it and really
Cody brings a lot. Cody rules. He’s a great filmer. He’s a great skateboarder and he’s also a comic genius by default. He doesn’t even know it. He brings a lot to the table.
What was one of your favorite Cody Green memories?
Oh my God. Which one was a good one? There’s a Cody Green moment every day really, you know.
You’ve said he’s kind of like a bird—he just wakes up every day and has no memory of the day before, right?
Yeah, the mistake that was made yesterday, there’s no mental recollection. I’m kind of the same way. He’s the guy that you room with him and he leaves a dump in the hotel toilet every morning because he doesn’t want to flush and make the shower run cold. And then you discover it and you yell at him and he’s, like, “Dude, I’m sorry.” And then he does it again the very next morning. He’s awesome.
What does a responsible, serious, sober adult do to celebrate the end of a five-year ordeal? What are you gonna do to celebrate tomorrow?
Oh my God. What I’ve done is construct a whole structure of anxiety! I’ve invited my ex-girlfriend and my mom and dad will be together in the same room, which I’ve never witnessed that in my entire life. So that’s where I’m at so far. And then threw a barbecue in the mix so I’ve got to prepare.
Fantastic.
Yeah, if you see me walking around with a beer don’t be surprised. Actually, that’s not gonna happen.
So is this the third video you’ve worked on with Greg Hunt? Yeah, this is number three.
Have you guys reached a real professional rhythm at this point? Yeah, I guess.
You must like working with him, right?
Totally, totally. Anybody he’s working with, he helps enable them to do their best. He’s always there ready to do what needs to be done. So he’s great.
I could drink and party and go crazy and not skate for two weeks and do that over the course of three years and still put out a video part, these days I eat a fuckin’ piece of cheesecake and I can’t skate the next day!
Do you still break boards and smash shit up like you did in the intro to The DC Video?
No, I don’t think so. Definitely not. I was real angry when I was young. I still definitely have a degree of anger but it’s way more controlled.
What’s the most outlandish mission you went on to get a trick for this video?
Are you guys super tuned in to one another’s personal- Most outlandish mission? I went to Oklahoma City on a trip and I wasn’t able to get a trick that I had fantasized that I ity quirks at this point? I’m sure. I feel like everybody—you know how it is, Mike. We probably all share the same quirks. It takes a successful psycho for all of us to do what we do. There are similarities in all of us, when we’re all on a trip and not much is happening— GH is gonna be grumpy, Burnett’s gonna be grumpy. You know, it’s how it is. You gotta go with the flow.
Definitely. How has your approach to making a video changed from The DC Video to today?
I think my approach now is different because I’m grown up and I’m older and it takes a lot for me to get something done. I have to be a lot more focused and on it consistently throughout the whole thing. So where with DC
could do, so I flew back two weeks later, just me and the filmer, and got there and realized it was still a complete fantasy! I ended up filming something else and it actually took me, like, three days to get it and there were tornado warnings. It was so ridiculous and it was just a manual trick. That was the skate spot we went to where Big John kept breaking the ground, right?
Yeah, Big John broke the fucking ground. Oh, we had to move those tiles around when I got there and I had all the skaters out in OKC fuckin’ moving thousand-pound marble slabs around for me to do my fucking stupid manual trick—literally people could have lost fucking hands! It was so stupid. But everyone has their fingers still and I lived to manual another day.
Were you a good kid?
I was pretty good. My parents… I think they did shittier things to me than I did to them, but I don’t know, man. It’s hard to say. I guess I used to fuck with my mom. It was hard for my mom because she would get pissed and kick me out of the house when I was around fifteen/sixteen. And at the time I had the means to survive. I got free boards and clothes and I could go and sell that shit. So it was like, “Oh, you’re going to kick me out of the house?” and then I’d disappear for two months. That was pretty shitty, looking back, you know? Like, I could be gone for that long and survive and not call and just be gone. So I guess that was kinda hard on her. But then she kicked me out, so I don’t know.
What brought you and your mom back together after you grew up? Was it when you hit the skids?
No, I think once I was out of the house and self-sufficient and shit, it wasn’t like that typical relationship you have when you’re growing up with your parents. It’s like, I was out of there; I was on my own. Then we formed a relationship that was more of a friendship. Looking back at it now, she was young. She was 18 when she had me so she was like a kid. I trip on it when I look back at how old she must have been when certain things were going on.
She was thirty-two when you were telling her to fuck off and leaving for months at a time.
Yeah, and I think about myself at that age. I’m thirty-six right now and I’m still a selfish psycho! It’s crazy. And I think how young she was, man, and what she was going through. It was just crazy, man. She was a kid. Although shit may have been crazy at times growing up, she has become my best friend and I don’t know what I’d do with out her.
they’re doing pretty good. Once I went off the rails I was definitely a lot more all over the place. But some of them are still really young, so I worry about them.
Yeah? Have you found yourself stepping into the adult role with the kids?
Yes and no. I mean it’s a fine line. It’s skateboarding, you know? It’s wild and you have to let it do its thing. But yeah, I try to respect those boundaries and when it kinda seems like someone wants some advice or help then maybe I’ll give it, but I don’t know. Fuck. I take it as it comes.
I’ve kinda gotten the impression that you guys were looking for kids for your team who are kinda wild, like kids who weren’t so nerdy about the skate industry and getting sponsored and all that. The rad thing about what we’ve got going on is there’s nothing that’s contrived or that was thought out. It all just naturally occurred. I think just naturally with me and Jason, who we are, we’re going to attract a certain kid and if people think that they’re crazy or whatever I guess that’s what we attracted. All these kids were just kids that hung out at the shop, at Supreme, you know? They were around and skated and ended up on sessions and then ended up getting good so we’d give them some boards here and there. Some got on flow for Workshop, you know, and it all organically happened to the point now where it’s like, “Okay we’re gonna do this thing. Here’s our kids.”
I just know that probably when you were 15 there probably wasn’t a Japanese film crew trailing you and your friends. Yeah, no. There was not. Fuck. These kids, they’re definitely growing up right in the middle of a lot of shit. It’s fucking crazy. That’s why I trip on their age and stuff and I look at myself and they seem to handle it better than I certainly did.
The kids that you’re around now, are they That’s what always strikes me—most of the kids making it in crazier or more jacked than you and your skateboarding are really pretty savvy and cool and sophisticated. buddies were at that age? I would have been Chad Fernandez out there at that age. Did you Our kids—I feel like they’re wild and shit have any good mentors growing up but, dude, compared to how I was, I feel like in skateboarding?
What was the whole thing with Ted Nugent? I just fuckin’, I don’t know. It was his music. I mean, I still like his music. I don’t really stand by all of his fuckin’ political views but, whatever, he can play the guitar.
Didn’t you do a meet and greet with him? You went out to his ranch or something?
No. Fuck no. I went to a Ted Nugent show and I met him backstage or whatever and that was it. It’s so funny, but whatever, you know? The Nuge.
I had a gap between when I knew you as Jason’s little buddy and then next thing I knew it you were the guy in cowboy boots and long hair and partying with Ted Nugent. It made me think, “I don’t even know who that guy is.” It looked like fun, but I had no contact with that whole DC scene—René René and the Canadian humor. I had a hard time following it. Yeah. I’m not Canadian, for the books.
So when was it clear that Jason was back? Dill?
It’s been like four or five years now, right?
Yeah. Right. I think certain things in his life kinda came to a head and the road got narrow. No matter how much I fuck up or he fucks up it seems like, no matter how much you try to fuck up the good shit in your life, like skateboarding and the things that it brings, we somehow just get pushed back into it when there’s nothing left. I think that’s kind of what happens to us all the time, where it’s like, “Well, maybe I should ride this thing again.” Like love and whatever else is out there in the world, I’m not really too good at that, so maybe I should just jump right back into riding this fucking piece of wood again. So that was like, yeah, four or five years ago. He burned himself pretty bad with booze and couldn’t do that anymore so, then he ended up at my house for a year.
And you treat skateboarding like an athlete these days. You seem really serious about it. You’ve got a lot of prep work involved. Like, what’s the deal with all of the tape on your feet? I’ll look over and you’re like half a mummy wrapped up in tape.
Yeah, I still have a pound of tape on my foot. I have bone spurs in my big toe joint and I’ve gotten a lot of cortisone in there. But I had a miracle cortisone shot a year ago where I was basically looking at my last shot going into surgery and I went to a different guy who put the shot in. I don’t know what happened, but there was a snap and a pop and it hurt really bad and he said that was the spur, so I was like, “Okay.” Then he said, “I’ll see you in three months for the surgery.” But it’s been almost a year and a half since that last shot and it’s manageable with the tape. It just restricts the bending of that joint. It kind of keeps it rigid and straight so that spur can’t hit the joint when it bends.
Have you always been super-disciplined about skating, or not even disciplined, have you always been maniacal about it? Like you gotta do it, gotta do it?
No. But I’ve always been an obsessive person and I think that before I had a lot of other things to obsess about like drugs, alcohol, women or whatever the fuck—some things that I could take to the extreme. Even with skateboarding I think that there was, at times, just a bigger variety of things that I would put my focus on. And then as I got older, obviously a lot of those things just weren’t really working for me so that same obsessiveness definitely gets put into skateboarding.
I’ve noticed your obsessiveness taking you in some bizarre directions at times. I’m thinking about those boiled eggs and the coffee. Where else do your obsessive tendencies take you? I mean, you name it, man. You name it and it’s there. Balance is a very hard thing for me to find. Yeah. Fuck.
How many hardboiled eggs do you put back a day?
Well that’s Europe, man. You know how it is eating there, like the free buffet at Ibis.
A Portrait of an Artist
Fahey Klein presents a major retrospective of the photographers work. by Kely Smith
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“All “All photographs photographs are are accurate. accurate. None None of of them them is is the the truth.” –Richard truth.” –Richard Avedon Avedon
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hat do Jean Genet, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne have in common? They were a few of the many personalities caught on film by photographer Richard Avedon. For more than fifty years, Richard Avedon’s portraits have filled the pages of the country’s finest magazines. His stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects’ characters has made him one of the premier American portrait photographers. Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject. As Avedon’s notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disci-
plines. Avedon’s ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits. More than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs. Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both.
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eyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans. Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943, Baldwin and Avedon were friends and collaborators for more
than thirty years. For all of the 1970s and 1980s Avedon continued working for Vogue magazine, where he would take some of the most famous portraits of the decades. In 1992 he became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker, and two years later the Whitney Museum brought together fifty years of his work in the retrospective, “Richard Avedon: Evidence�. He was voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular Photography magazine, and in 1989 received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. Today, his pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous.
Avedon died on October 1st, 2004.
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HAROSHI RECYCLED SKATEBOARD SKULPTOR INTERVIEW BY
KORDUROY
Tell us a little about your hometown and when you first got into skateboarding. In the city where I was born there is a Park famous for skateboarding, because a lot of people skated there. Looking those people I decided to start skating with a childhood friend. What led you to start crafting sculptures out of old skateboards? How’d you come up with the idea? At the beginning I would cut from the skateboard position as a plane surface and made different things. Then I thought that sticking skateboards together and making three-dimensional stuff would be really interesting. So I started creating objects. Just the thought of it was so interesting that I was completely swallowed into it. Can you describe the process involved in creating one? What are all the steps required? I simply look for decks with curves that match well together, stick them and then carve. That’s it! How long does it generally take you to finish a project? Which step would you say is the most difficult or time consuming? It depends work to work, it takes about 1 month to create one work. If it’s long, then it will take from 3 to 4 months. Carving also takes a lot of time, but thinking of what to create also takes even more time.
On your site it says that you bury a broken off or damaged piece of metal in each of your sculptures, giving them a distinct sense of life or soul. Why is this act important to you? That’s a distinctive trait of Japanese people! Parts you don’t see are the most important. That’s so mysterious, isn’t it? Before starting on a new piece, how do you decide which image you are going to sculpt? Of course I create stuff that I want to create! When doing works you don’t feel much interested into, that will bring to make out not so good stuff. If you want to create good things it’s important for your work to be interesting! How did you learn to build such beautiful creations? Is it a continual learning process or did you have a mentor/craftsman to look up to? I have no mentor at all! I create at all my strength every day, I think a lot, and that’s fun for me. And I keep raising and raising the quality of my works. The same thing goes for skating. Do you have a particular piece you are most proud of? I am really emotionally involved with DUNK. That was special! And for me it was quite a topic to get better than that! I’m fully satisfied with works presented at DLX x HUF x HAROSHI, I think with those I surpassed DUNK’s level. What’s next for Haroshi? I won’t say what I’m going to create. But I’m doing to create even better works than this time! Just look forward to it!!
When did you first start exploring art as a medium for communication? Do you feel that being Japanese has had a heavy influence on your work? When I was a kid I had a poor health. So at that time what I could use to express myself was things I used to draw myself. There was nothing more than that, which could stand out. I also drew a lot Dragonball characters. In my opinion art is a communication tool. But at that time I didn’t think about it as art. At that time I would think that Japanese like stuff was uncool. More then shrines, Buddha statues and so on, I used to think that Coca Cola’s logo was much more cool. Because you don’t wear a T-shirt with a Buddha statue printed on it, don’t you? I really thought is was for losers. But when I came to my old 20s I was finally able to understand Japanese traditional things. Maybe because I started going abroad. After that I was much more able to see and understand it. Now I can say I have been affected by the fact of being Japanese, or more precisely by being a human being grown up here. Because all my tools are here. How did you first realize you could use skateboards for your art work? Originally I was producing accessories as a job, but I felt bad about it. I had to produce things perfectly the same one to another in large quantities, so when something used to come out differently I would spring out to my frets because of inspections. Because even if I thought making all different things was much more interesting I had to produce things all completely the same one to another. Because I thought that more than making something as a machine, making something by my hands that was completely different to each other was much better. So that is why I thought of starting something on my own. That is when my partner looking at old skateboards piled up in an angle and told me “how about you make something from that?” From that I have been producing stuff from skateboards for 10 years.
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