SLIDE PROTOTYPE GRID LAYOUT Conceptual Design Documentation
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#23
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LOST AND FOUND
TERRY MARTIN + ASHLEY LLOYD KENAI FJORDS + CESAR ANCELLE HANSEN + PITOJAT MYSTERIOUS
NOVELTIES + NOOSA + HOW SOON IS NOW?
Ashley Lloyd’s
Story by Cori Schumacher Photos by Nikki Brooks
The old man decided some time ago to look for someone to pass his knowledge of tool and trade on to, since his son had shown no an interest in the art. He had found the young men who came to him wanting. They desired the glory that came with the knowledge without the commitment and hard work building the skill required. He decided to shift his search. “Doing this,” he considered, “would be rather unique.” The old man cast his incisive eyes slowly, over time, gazing into and past the floral frames of those around him. He was looking for something he could recognize, something his peers might overlook given the exterior casing. He looked for agile, capable hands, a depth of character, willingness to get dirty, creativity, and the patient tenacity an apprentice would need.
>>Raul Hernandez, in the tornado funnel.
>> Ashley Lloyd carefully inspects a custom double-stringer log.
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Six months after the old man began his search, he stepped up behind a young couple in the Jack-in-the-Box across from Malibu Point in 2001 and found himself wondering, “Could this be her?” The young woman was an accomplished, stylish surfer and had grown up surfing Malibu. She was crafty, a talented musician and songwriter, and was an accomplished and beloved presence on the longboard club contest circuit. He struck up a conversation, and, before long, asked “Would you be interested in shaping?” She paused and glanced at her boyfriend. The silence settled as she turned her sparkling, ocean blue eyes back to the old man. The smile that is her constant companion widened. “Why, yes!” And with that, Ashley Lloyd took her first step toward embracing Dan Tarampi as her “shaping sensei.” The actual apprenticeship emerged organically within a twohour conversation, during which Dan discussed his own influences, including his mentor, Carl Ekstrom. This took place in a “surf shack” over a balsa wood blank in a tiny, converted garage at the top of Topanga Canyon. Dan had invited the couple up to his shaping room directly after Ashley expressed her interest. The nagging question “Is she the one?” was finally quieted when Ashley picked up a planer the next time they met. She grasped it firmly and pushed the tool down the length of the blank, following Dan’s instructions precisely. ‘Strong hands,’ Tarampi thought, nodding. He saw that her work was good.
>> Ashley, inserting the nose concave.
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>> Malibu roots run deep in Ashley. Here, she jams with music mentor Denny Aaberg while one of her favorite surfers, George Carr, enjoys the duet.
>> Ashley planes along an early-summer south swell on the eastside of Santa Cruz.
Ashley absorbed everything Dan taught her, from which tools to use for each stage of the process to his admonitions: “Don’t ever let them make you a production shaper.” She loved the sounds of the sanding block and the planer on foam, the smell of the resin, and the foam dust. She delighted in the curls of wood the block planers produced. The scents and smells recalled memories of the time her father and brother had reshaped boards that had flown off the roof of their car. But it wasn’t until Ashley shaped her first board at Wilderness that she surrendered to the art. Ethan, her boyfriend at the time, bought Ashley a blank for Christmas and introduced her to the crew at Wilderness. She was intimidated, at first, but determined to learn all she could about this new skill. The run down, horseshoe-shaped house in Santa Barbara was legendary. It was founded in 1966 by George Greenough and, in 2002, was the home of a motley crew of Peter Pan Lost Boys who spent their days listening to heavy metal, surfing, and skating the pool and ramps on the property. Tucked among the skirts of Catalina cherry trees and a huge rubber tree, the walls of the shack oozed its history in ancient dust, ink, and paint. Wetsuits circa the ’70s hung on the walls, caked in thick layers of dust. John Peck had left an old, brown note tacked to the wall and across from this was one of Pat Curren’s old “Boat Building by Pat
Curren” business cards. It was here, in the womb of Bob Duncan’s black-walled shaping room, that Ashley carved her first board. She lost time to the rhythmic sounds of the skaters on the ramp just beyond the wall. The Blue Otter Pop, as the first log was christened, was finished in April of 2002.
On the stringer, Ashley drew a small butterfly, its delicate pinions unfurled next to the words: “Show me your wings”. Ashley opened herself up to the knowledge of those around her. She picked up tips and skills from anyone who was willing to take the time to teach her something, like Eden King, who showed Ashley how to glass. Some of the boys who worked at the Al Merrick factory, who wanted to escape from the production mode of that robotic environment, would use Duncan’s shaping room at “Wildo.” It was a feral place of chaos and creativity; camaraderie, music, art, and inspiration oozed. “I was at the right place at the right moments, and people were so giving with their time,” recalls Ashley. Yet Ashley hungered for her own space, a room of her own within which she could immerse herself in the shaping process.
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She convinced her mother to let her build a shaping room beneath the patio of their Thousand Oaks home. She and Ethan cleared out the space and then raided a nearby construction site for discarded scraps to build the room. They built it with a corrugated tin roof that chattered loudly when it rained. She was submerged in and surrounded by every aspect of the art. Dan’s words seemed to whisper through the rain: “If you have the thought, execute it. Keep the thought in mind. Don’t let the original get diluted.” She walked miles up and down the lengths of foam, intently following the lines of shadow and light. Pushing past the craft of shaping, itself, she experimented with glassing, laminating, and color: tints, opaques, art upon shaped-art. She would call Dan to ask questions once in awhile, but he would tell her she was doing it, that she had all she needed. Dan watched as his student stepped up and bought her own blanks, resins, and colors. Her creativity and unique style flourished. When her family moved out of the Thousand Oaks home and she lost her shaping room, she shifted her shaping center to Santa Cruz, a place she had grown to love since moving there from Los Angeles in the mid-2000s. It was here that Michel Junod shared his shaping space with Ashley until she built a room next door. He would route the finboxes for Ashley’s blanks, as he did with other shapers at the shop, and give advice. “I’d offer little technical bits and pieces, like how the rails should look for the glasser. It was cool to see her shaping progress through the years,” Michel says.
>> Acid splash squeegee treatment. Ashley tints one in her old Thousand Oaks shack. [Matt King]
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It was in Michel’s shaping room that Ashley’s section of the 2009 movie Dear and Yonder was filmed. Michel observed of her shaping, “She really has her own style and has built up a clientele of both guys and gals.
The shape of her boards have flow and are smooth...it’s art! She shapes like she surfs.” She also surfs what she shapes. This has allowed her to experiment with design through becoming the living expression of her creations. Her habit of constantly pushing limits and her passion for imagination and innovation breathe life into her surfboards. The source from which this breath rises is the fused center of her music and surfing. One of the defining moments in her musical history was watching a Nat King Cole Trio show about improvisation. She gravitated toward this spontaneous style, both in her music and in her unpredictable style of surfing. Michel sees this honest spontaneity threading throughout her life: “She lives life much more than she plans life. It’s not like you have to ask her ‘What’s happening?’ [when you see her]; she is happening!” Ashley is constantly in the process of unfolding, and she expresses this openly while riding both liquid and sonic waves.
>> Ashley’s hand-shaped quiver. It’s all here: from 5’8 to 9’7; foam to EPS, some bio materials; pintails, square-tails, diamond-tails; with one, two, three, four, or no fins.
“Both surfing and creating music are the same for me. They are both individual expressions of the self. Music is the expression of self through sound, while surfing is an emotional expression, art through the body,” explains Ashley. She even associates her favorite musical chords with shapes that are “wavy lines,” each with different size wavelengths. When Ashley describes the “optimistic” A minor 7 chord that underlies most of her music, it is indistinguishable from a description of a spring or summer windswell. The “dreamy” E6 that occasionally appears in her songs, she verbally paints like a hazy, early morning vision of a winter groundswell. These are the chords that make Ashley’s heart hum, and this hum, radiating from her love of riding waves, is constantly flowing around her. Friends and associates of Ashley, when asked to describe her, used words such as “magnetic,”“natural,”“open,” “genuine,”“good,”“humble,”“real,”“talented.” Ashley evokes honesty and loyalty from people, along with a sense of protectiveness. The underlying shape of the words and emotions of those who know Ashley perfectly emerged one day while speaking to Michel. It’s an overused, overhyped concept these days, which is probably why no one came right out and said it, but the simple truth is, Ashley is “authentic.” It isn’t until you are actually in the presence of a true, spontaneous, authentic life that you realize it
>> Ashley’s unique surfing instruction process often begins in her backyard. [Neal Casal]
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transcends words. Instead, we talk around it, using descriptors like “grace,”“style,”“flow,”“smoothness,” and “elegance,” because these are regal words that have an Old World, understated feel to them. I had the chance to experience Ashley’s humming spirit while spending time with her in Hawaii a few years ago. In the spring of 2009, I traveled to the North Shore of Oahu to surf in an ASP Women’s World Longboard event at Pipeline. Leah Dawson was kind enough to allow me to stay at her home during the event. When I arrived, I was surprised and delighted to find Ashley sitting on Leah’s couch, strumming away on her guitar. I have known Ashley for years, but this was the first time I really got to hang with her for an extended period of time. For the next couple of weeks, we were in each other’s company constantly. I listened to Ashley sing sunbeam blues and watched her ride mountains on the special boards she had shaped for the trip. To this day, I will never forget Ashley taking off on an overhead set at Backdoor during her heat, gracefully pumping down the line, carving into a floater over the shallows, then landing skillfully, all while riding switchstance.
The shortboard judges had no idea what to do with her: too smooth, too graceful, too elegant. As Travis Reynolds says of Ashley’s surfing, “The things she can do on a longboard...things that only she can, blow my mind. [She is] effortless, smooth, and solid.”
>> Ashley swings it home on a 1966 Gordon & Smith HY-1 during a classic board contest near home. [Howard “Boots” McGhee] >>Raul Hernandez, in the tornado funnel. 114 ¤ SLIDE ¤ ASHLEY LLOYD’S LIQUID AND SONIC WAVES
>> Malibu Sisterhood: (l to r) Julie Cox, Ashley, Carla Rowland, and Margaret Yao Calvani.
>> Flow sanding a freshie.
Ashley’s grace conceals a tenacity informed by a desire to constantly push herself beyond her comfort zone. The day before the contest started, the surf grumpily woke to an unreasonable size. We had driven around looking for a place to surf the stormy, mixed-up swell before finally parking at Sunset Beach “just to take a look.” It was big and nasty. We sat in silence, watching the windswept ocean. “Are we going out?”“Nah. Just watching.” I slid down in my seat, relaxing. Then I heard the door latch on the right click and Ashley was out of the car, gazing out to sea. “Well, I’m going out,” she said, determination laced in her voice. I caught Leah’s eyes in the rearview mirror and we both heaved ourselves out of the car. “Ah! Guess we have to go, too!” Before paddling out, we grasped hands at the water’s edge – a silent promise to watch out for each other in the tempestuous seas. Ashley had never surfed Sunset and I had only surfed it a couple of times on a gun when I was younger. It was rough. Leah’s leash snapped right away and she was dragged across the inside reef. I went over the falls twice on one wave. Ashley was pushed so deep on one wipeout that she hit the bottom. She swam through a sea of black before finding her way to the light green surface. After the session, just as the sun was setting, we dragged our nine-foot longboards up the beach, and Leah and I couldn’t stop shaking our heads: “Ms. Ashley Lloyd!” Ash was just beaming. Ashley throws herself at each new challenge with the same determination she illustrates in her surfing. Between
surf events, surf instruction, shaping, and playing gigs, Ashley continually finds herself pulled in multiple directions, and often finds herself wondering how she will make rent. The most stable source of income for Ashley has been surf instruction. She has taught people to surf since she was 17 and found that, in doing so, she often takes on the role of surf therapist. She holds a safe space for her students as they overcome their fears and push past blocks in their lives. “Learning to surf changes people’s lives,” she explains. “I see a constant parallel with surfing and things that are going on in my students’ lives. Surfing helps people overcome their fears.” Though she loves teaching surfing, she says it can be exhausting. Ashley is constantly in motion, and, in the mid-2000s, felt she needed to choose one skill over the other for practical reasons. This was a source of stress for her. “Shaping was more work than making music, which didn’t feel like working at all, but it was a stable source of income.” Stability was starting to take center stage in her life: “Surfing used to be my only motivation, with its nomadic lifestyle, but I was shifting to desiring a more stable life.” It was in the midst of this tension that a Bing Surfboards/ Ashley Lloyd alliance emerged. Ashley was excited by the prospect of riding for Bing, but she also wanted to continue riding and producing her own boards. This turned out to be an auspicious problem solved by the addition of the first female shaper to the Bing legacy, and an Ashley
>> Trading planer for a six-string, Ashley captivates a Japanese audience. [Takashi Tomita]
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Lloyd signature model. As Margaret Calvani, general manager of Bing Surfboards, explains, “When Ashley came onboard, she added a very unique dimension and made a great contribution to the legacy of Bing Surfboards.
She was the first female shaper to join the ranks of the many great craftsmen (and now craftswomen) to shape under Bing Surfboards, including... Donald Takayama, Dick Brewer, Dan Bendiksen, Mike Eaton, and the Campbell brothers. In keeping with that philosophy of innovation and forwardthinking, Matt Calvani (present day owner and operator of Bing Surfboards) felt it made perfect sense for our generation to include a female shaper and surfboard designer into the fold. She was also our resident musical artist, songwriter, and vocalist, which added yet another unique dimension to our family of riders. Ashley was a perfect fit.” Ashley is shaping all varieties of surfboard these days, from singlefin noseriders to her current favorite – the midlength egg.
>>Raul Hernandez, in the tornado funnel.
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She loves the versatility that this shape offers, and her customers agree. Ashley’s natural commitment to improvisation in her life and in her creations has allowed her to rapidly shift to meet the needs of the surfboard market. As Dan notes, “She has the vision to project to the next phase,” and the skills and talent to shape remarkable, exciting, fun designs. In embracing her role as a truly custom shaper, she has created a novel way of getting to the core of what her client wants through an immersive interview process. This process is largely an outgrowth of her years as a surf instructor. “I think teaching has helped me with my format of building someone a board with the intention of it suiting their needs, as well as with an eye toward how they will progress with their new board,” Ashley notes. She doesn’t just ask about the technical dimensions, although this is a part of the exchange, she seeks to know more about the character of the person for whom she will be shaping. She may even ask her client to give her a music selection so she can surround herself in their sounds as she shapes their board. During the last couple of months, the tension Ashley has felt between the competing aspects of her life has eased. “The constant struggle in my life is balance,” says Ashley. “But I realize that I don’t have to choose between music or shaping or...I am learning time management!” Her laughter sounds like sunshine. This newfound balance is a blessing, since her time now, more than ever, is constrained by many projects.
>> Tidying a collaboration board Ashley created with Serena Miller at the Bing factory. [Eric Warner]
>> Ashley, tilted toward 10 while testing a design at Pleasure Point.
>> Japan had never seen a woman shape a surfboard until Ashley Lloyd’s May 2012 visit to Tokyo. [Tomita]
She is shaping custom orders for a growing list of clients, and her new band, The Shapes, in which she has teamed up with fiancé Alex Thompson, has lately released its Americana-infused freshman album. Ashley has also recently returned from Japan, where she attended the premiere of her collaborative art exhibition for Ron Herman Japan. Six female photographers, including Kassia Meador and Liz Lantz, had photographs glassed onto six of Ashley’s timeless shapes. While in Japan, Ashley also demo’d her shaping and played music on the road. The ever present hum of Ashley’s creative heart is radiating and expanding globally, through her music, her shaping, and in her every interaction.
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