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Fall 2017 - Spring 2018 MFA Illustration Practice Maryland Institute College of Art
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................... 1 from a miniature
................... 5 learning from others
................... 15 cut, glue, compound, sand, paint
................... 71 a place to stay
................... 85 break it down and rebuild it
................... 105 on the road?
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I created a fictitious skateshop in my first semester at MICA. The process was particularly enjoyable because I was creating a narrative in my head while making each object. I would ask questions to myself. Is this a shop that is dedicated to the local skateboarding community? If so, what kind of products would they carry? Would they have flatbars and funboxes for kids to skate? Cuddy skateshop, at one point, had an indoor skatepark in the back. It is now closed due to financial reasons. This process of creating and building a narrative at the same time felt exciting, and I wanted to do something similar for my thesis project. But something lifesized.
Cuddy Skateshop Acrylic on cardboard
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Left Los Angeles, CA circa 2005 Right Bonita Skatepark, CA circa 2005
I’ve been skateboarding for more than half of my life. Skateboarding is not like other activities where you go and do it for an hour or two and go home - get on with the rest of your life. You spend hours and hours skating, and come home to watch more hours of skate videos. Then you download some songs from the video you just watched. Its something that most skateboarders think about 24/7. Back when I started skating, none of us picked it up because it was cool. There were only about five of us in my high school. We were the social outcasts - we didn’t go to high school prom or football games. We didn’t have fun throwing balls around or going to parties. We liked standing on a plank of wood and trying the same damn trick over and over. Jocks would yell at you while driving by.
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Most of the memorable moments in my life were related to skateboarding. I met my first girl friend at the skatepark. I was on a board when all my high school friend did tweak every night and while singing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” at the top of their lungs. I was on a board when a twelve year old pointed a gun at me. I was on a board when some other kid blew his whole goddamn hand off with a bootleg firework. I was on a board when desperately searching for a loved one that I presumed was lying bleeding on a sidewalk. Skating has shaped my life ever since the first moment I stepped on it. It’s something that I obsess over everyday. For my thesis, I wanted to make something personal - something about skateboarding.
Chillin with the Homies Skate sessions in Los Angeles from high school years to now
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YouTube Skate Shows Skateline Free Lunch The Weekend Buzz
My YouTube feed is mostly skateboarding. I watch skate videos while eating, listen to skate sound tracks while showering and listen to skate talk shows while doing work. The Nine Club is a skateboarding Podcast that I listened to every week. Various professional skateboarders or filmers or photographers come on and chat about how they got to where they are now. A popular topic for a lot of the guests is how skateboarding was then versus how it is now. 5
The evolution in technology has immensely changed skating. Social media (at first YouTube, now Instagram) has completely redefined how the content is shared. Before, you would wait years for a specific video to come out. Now, there are clips being uploaded everyday by any and every skater. It has made the watching of new footage trivial and forgettable. People used to memorize every trick in a new video. Now I can’t remember the last thing I saw.
Top The Nine Club Podcast a weekly skateboarding talk show Right Skateboarding will be featured in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Skateboarding has also become a lot more popular, and is no longer really considered an outsider activity. It has become integrated in to mainstream culture through various reality TV shows like Viva La Bam, Jackass, Rob & Big, and Life of Ryan. The biggest surprise to skateboarders was when skateboarding as a Olympic sport was announced for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Now skating has become just another advertising opportunity for cereal boxes and sports drinks. 6
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Right before starting on this project, I got to check out Lucy Sparrow’s “8 ‘till Late” exhibition. The show was an installation based on a typical bodega. Every object in the space was made out of felt. The viewers were encouraged to walk around and simulate a shopping experience. Lucy and the others working there were all dressed up in “8 ‘till Late” work clothes. What stood out to me was that one of the workers was on the floor, wiping up something that had spilled. I started wondering if this had been planned, to simulate the bodega experience even more. It made me think about what else I could add to my installation.
Close up of felt objects from Lucy Sparrow’s “8 ‘Till Late”
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Top Left Lucy Sparrow - 8 ‘Till Late Top Right Souther Salazar and Monica Choy The Trading Tortoise Bottom Left Yoshitomo Nara Yogya Bintang House Mini Bottom Right Clayton Brothers I Come From Here
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Photoshop Mock-Up Visualizing the installation
The installations that I found the most intriguing were the ones that really made you feel transported out of the gallery space. The white walls start to fade away, and you get pulled in to this new world. I got to see the Clayton Brother’s “I Come From Here” house in person. The building had painted exterior with snippets of words spread across the walls. The painted mural started to create a narrative. The inside was plastered with framed paintings that had the same sort of image & word play. In the background, you could hear a recording with vague hints of distant conversations.
I also found Souther Salazar and Monica Choy’s “The Trading Tortoise” inspiring because of its portability. The two traveled across America, and set up the installation at various stops. They traded stories and artworks along the way. I started to have a general idea of how I wanted my own installation to look and feel. I measured all the available areas within the Sheila and Richard Riggs Gallery, and took photo of all the possible spaces to house a shed. I quickly sketched out a photoshop mock up of my installation. 10
House Searching Small homes from various parts of Los Angeles
I wanted the installation to feel like a California home specifically in Los Angeles. It’s where I grew up skating, and it’s also considered the Mecca of skateboarding. The type of neighborhoods I was thinking of were places like Inglewood, Hawthorne, East Los Angeles and Long Beach. It’s where a good chunk of my friends live, because of the cheaper rent. The houses have similar color schemes. The exterior is generally painted in pastely tones. A lot of them have gated windows. The lawns are not in the greatest shape. 11
During my visit back to California, I took some photos of small homes while driving through or skateboarding. I continued my research in Baltimore, by looking at Craiglist postings and Google Street View. A lot of my friends live in skate houses. Its where a bunch of skaters pitch in and rent a place together. Sometimes, there are more people than there are rooms, so the living room and the kitchen become bedrooms. It’s pretty common to see a couch surfer staying over at these pads.
Homie’s Pad Documenting the interior space of a skate pad
Back when I was in high school, I had a friend who was seven years older than me. He didn’t have a job, lived in his parent’s house, had a beat up car that was always on empty, and ate off the McDonald’s dollar menu everyday. But I remember idolizing him. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. He was sponsored, which meant that he received monthly packages of free skate products. His main source of money was hustling these products to kids at the skatepark. He would hit us up all the time, because he knew we were good for gas money.
He was living the romanticized skateboarding life. You make ends meet somehow, but you keep skating everyday. This is the sort of character that I wanted to portray with my installation. The typical skate rat. People move to Los Angeles from all over America (even other countries) to live this idealized life. Some people couch surf and some pan handle. Some hustle and some trash dive for food. But, they all skate at the end of the day.
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Stix Rideshop Interior Reference photos of posters and banners
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Used Board Collection Some boards collecting dust in my garage back home
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The project in total was about 8 months long, which isn’t too much time. I figured I’d use cardboard and paper mache because of the time limit. This also kept the cost down by a lot. A good chunk of the cardboard was picked up from Artist and Craftsman’s trash. After working with powdered paper mache for a while, I found another material - modeling compound. It did the same job but made the drying and sanding process much easier. Materials Cardboard and Modeling Compound
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VHS Tapes Speeding up the process by making all the objects at the same time
VHS tapes were some of the most prized possessions for skateboarders in the 90’s and 2000’s. If you were to go to a skater’s house, you wouldn’t really see any blockbuster hits. You’d see rows and rows of skate videos. We would watch these religiously. If we weren’t skating, we were watching skate videos. I remember watching “Flip - Sorry” every morning before going to school. It would get to a point when you’d memorize every trick to every beat of the music. So, these were one of the first objects I started to make. The form was really simple, so it felt like a good starting point. I decided to use paper mache to cover up the corrugation on the cardboards.
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Since I didn’t have any of the physical copies on me in Maryland, I resorted to looking them up on eBay as reference. I was tempted to buy a big collection of 411VMs during the process. These were “video magazines” that you could subscribe to. I couldn’t convince my mom to subscribe to 411VM so I generally watched them at my friends’ pads. Each video had an intro with the same song - a very recognizable tune for any skater from the 90s. This section had a couple of tricks by various skaters that summed up the rest of the video. Each trick was a “banger” - something that really stood out. Getting an opener for these bi-monthly videos was a huge deal.
411VM Collection Stylizing the covers and removing the skateboarders
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Cutting Insert Adding a slight interactive element to the VCR
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Of course with all these VHS tapes, I needed a VCR. I got the measurements from a scanned manual of an old model. After building the main box shape, I realized that I wanted the tapes to be able to go in. The inside of the box had supports glued in, so I had to do some rough cutting with a box cutter. I then made a little insert that would cover up the inside.
The VCR was one of the first objects where I started to mess around with two dimensional and three dimensional elements. Some of the buttons raise up like a real VCR. Some, however are just painted to look three dimensional. The juxtaposition of the two elements seemed more intriguing and less like a mere imitation of an object.
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Image Harvest Displaying the VHS tapes at the Fox building
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Above Photograph of actual cameras
Making Cardboard Cameras Simplifying the form of the Sony VX 1000 and the Canon GL 2
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Skateboarders have a need to document. Most of us start by using whatever family cameras may be around in our, or our friend’s house. Once you start getting more serious about it you’d get either a Sony VX 1000, 2000, 2100 or a Canon GL 1, 2. Since skaters don’t have too much money, you’d normally get one of these on eBay or Craigslist. Its a lot of lunch money, because you need both the camera and the ultra fisheye lens (aka death lens).
You’d sometimes find both on sale together. These were sometimes sold by other skaters, which meant be careful - the camera might have been dropped or the lens scratched. Other times it was sold by people using it for “weddings”, which most likely meant they actually used it for filming porn. Amateur porn filmers used the same equipment because they were also broke, and the ultra fisheye let them get really close to the action.
I remember getting my VX2000 from a craiglist posting. We met at a 7-11 parking lot. I brought my camera savvy friend over so he could check to see if everything seemed functional. The seller seemed sort of shady and definitely was not a skateboarder. I wiped down the whole camera when I got home.
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Making Furniture Simplifying the form of cinder blocks
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Painting Milk Crates Making different varieties of milk crates
Skaters don’t have the best furniture. So milk crates come in pretty handy. You generally make do with things that you find on the streets. Sometimes you’d find decent throw away furniture outside on someone’s lawn. There was an Albertson’s near my pad that we used to skate at. It had a decent ledge in the loading dock area. You’d sometimes find a couple of milk crates lying around. They’re pretty fun to mess around on. You could ollie on to one going at a decent speed, and the milk crate will slide on the ground. After messing around for an hour or two, you’d throw a crate in the trunk and bring it to the next skate spot. At the end of the day, you got yourself a nice, but sort of beat up furniture for your room. 27
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Cardboard Television Creating a case with a lid to house an iPad
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Cardboard AC Unit Testing out a different way to create in inside support
A pretty important part of the house is the AC unit. It gets pretty hot in Los Angeles. I remember one summer there were a bunch of fires happening at the same time. The sky was orange and looked like hell on earth. On top of that, it was over a hundred degrees for days. So an AC is a must. 31
This one was modeled after one of the units I had back home. It’s one of the cheapest ones you can get - but it gets the job done. Like the VCR, I was playing around with using both two dimensional elements and three dimensional. Painting all the holes in the vent was quite a doozy.
Reference A business building in downtown Los Angeles with a hole in the wall to house the AC unit
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Generator and Work Lights Working with more complex geometric shapes
Night skating was a big part of my life. During the day, you would get kicked out of most spots. At night time, it’s a lot easier to get a session in. So, we would hop the fence sometime after 11 P.M. and light it up. If you’re lucky the neighbors don’t hear any of the skate noise, and don’t call the cops. Some of my favorite memories are from gas stations, getting junk food and hanging out, while filling up the generator. My friend Erick had all the equipment. He got all of it from a local Home Depot. The work lights were the cheap kind. It wasn’t too great at lighting, so he eventually upgraded to studio lights. 33
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Funboxes References of skater built ledges for skating
Good ledges are hard to find. When you do find one, the spot’s a bust and you can’t really skate it. Or the ledges have been skate stopped with little metal knobs. So it’s sometimes easier to just build your own ledge. Most ledges are made with a couple of two by fours and found plywood. You slap a piece of angle iron on it, and you’re good to go. The fancy ones have “butter bench” material (polywood) on top. These are a lot harder to come by and more expensive, so it’s easier to just steal one from a park or a business area. It helps if you have a friend that drives a truck. It’s not the lightest thing to carry by hand, all the way back home. 35
Unskateable Funbox A little nod to the crew in Garvanza, California
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Top Using my bed for reference Left Using some honeycomb cardboard for extra support Right Process of making the bed and layering more cardboard
I was trying to figure out a way to make a cardboard bed that could support a person’s weight. I wanted the viewers to be able to interact with the furniture if they were daring enough to. What good is a bed if you can’t lie on it? One day, I saw some honeycomb cardboard in the hallway, about to be thrown out. I grabbed all the pieces out of the trash bin, and started cutting. There wasn’t enough for the size of the bed, but it was better than nothing. With enough glued on to flat pieces
of C flute cardboard, I carefully lied down on it. There were slight creaks but it seemed to hold up pretty well. I reinforced the rest of the empty space with rows of regular C flute cardboards. It was strong enough to support me standing up. My bed was used as a reference while painting it. The bed is rarely made and since I roll around while sleeping, the sheet gets loose. It usually has blood stains from random cuts. 38
Cardboard Hydrant Figuring out a more complex geometric object
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Cardboard Shoes Figuring out how to create more organic shapes
Shoes were a lot harder to figure out than the rest of the objects. I started by tracing the bottom of my shoes and cutting out two copies. I cut random small shapes, then bent and glued piece by piece. I experimented with different methods on the first few, and found that bending smaller pieces worked a lot better. The cardboard structures were rough and had lots of odd bumps and holes. This was the point when I made the switch from paper mache to modeling compound. Modeling compound was used to fill in all these gaps and smooth out the basic structure. Sanding helped fix the rest of the imperfections. 41
Shoes play a big role in skateboarding. It determines how you feel the board, how you absorb impact and how you flick the board. If you skate everyday, you could go through a shoe in a couple of weeks. Some people use Shoe Goo to fix the ripping suede and make the shoe last longer. You can super glue the stitchings to make them stiffer and harder to rip. Regardless, you go through shoes really fast. Depending on your stance, one side of your shoe gets worn out more than the other. I’m regular and my close friend is goofy, so we used to trade shoes once the shoes got worn out.
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Cardboard Shoes Emerica - Ellingtons Emerica - Johnsons Es -Koston 1 Es - Accels Lakai - Manchester Emerica - Reynolds 2
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Cardboard Hat Imitating the real object by folding cardboard
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Jack and Smokes Working with smaller objects
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Coffee Can Ashtray Adding a little nod to MICA and Vu Skateshop
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Pabst Making both full cans as well as crushed cans
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Drinks An accurate depiction of an average skateboarder’s diet
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Cheap Take Out and Arizona The staples of my diet
Microwave and Fridge Installing lights and turn table
I wanted the microwave and the fridge to be more than just the cardboard exterior. I found some cheap LED lights at a local hardware store, and cut out inserts for both. They were battery operated, so I made the lights detachable for when they needed recharging. For the microwave, I wanted the inside plate to turn. I found some display turntables on Amazon (usually used for displaying toys) and installed it on the microwave. It felt a little slow, but it did the job. On top of the plate, I placed a pair of shoe - a little nod to bad shoe technology in the past.
Skate shoes were made by mostly skateboard companies. Big corporations like Nike and Adidas were not able to infiltrate the market (though they tried) in the 90s. So the technology was pretty bad. All the shoes were unnecessarily bulky and stiff. Since skateboarding is so dependent on feeling the board on your feet, the first few days in new shoes were terrible. To speed up the break-in process, me and my friends used to microwave our shoes. I honestly do not know if it worked, but you can still find YouTube tutorials on microwaving your kicks. 54
Wall Boards Making and painting multiples
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Additive to Mimic Subtractive I painted graphics on each board, then painted scratches over them
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Cruiser Board Cruisers are generally for transportation or filming
I collected old boards. Some people throw them out or break them after they are done. Some of us like keeping them for memory. I kept around one hundred boards before I had to start throwing some out. Each graphic had a different story. There was a board for when I landed my first kickflip. There was a board for when I skipped graduation to go skate instead. There was a board for when we got jumped by a bunch of guys swinging around belt buckles in Barcelona. Some people like having clean new boards on their walls. I personally prefer the used ones because of the memories. 59
I wanted this sort of wall decoration for my shed. Each board had a personal tie to my own background. I created replicas of preexisting boards, then painted over them with scratches and scrapes. When the boards were installed on the shed’s walls, they were accompanied by little plaques that described the time and place these boards were ridden in. Along with the wall boards, I also made a cruiser board (something for transportation and not tricks). I’ve had this Vision Gonz reprint board for maybe six years.
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No Skateboarding Kids used to buy stickers with the letter “G” to change the sign to say “Go Skateboarding”
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Stolen Signs These metal signs are perfect for placing over cracks on the ground to skate over
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Creating a Narrative Paintings that describe the skater’s own personal stories
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Skate Mags Skaters are avid readers
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Left Top Shoe boxes Left Bottom T-shirts and flannels Above Framed video premiere ticket
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PS-2 Used for Tony Hawk Pro Skater games and to watch skate videos on DVD Pain Killers A nod to J-Kwon Orthodontics, a famous skate spot
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I thought about building the exterior with cardboard. I was figuring out ways to reinforce each piece so that they would stand. I also calculated the cost (I would need to buy cardboard in big sheets rather than using found boxes). After careful consideration, I decided against it - mainly due to safety reasons and lack of time. Afterwards, I looked at ready-made sheds at Home Depot and Lowes. They were way too expensive and not built the way I wanted. So, in the end, I decided to build my own wooden shed. There were more trips to Home Depot than I would have liked. Not having access to a truck, I had to borrow a U-Hual for transporting the 2x4s and plywoods.
Notes to self Figuring out how many pieces to buy and cut
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Planning the Shed Guidelines for cutting and building
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Planning the Installation Visualizing the room and the gallery space
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Figuring out the room Using cardboard and tape to visualize the space
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Building the Shed Creating detachable walls for easy install/deinstall
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Painting the Shed Taking inspirations from pastel-y houses in Los Angeles
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Applying Cardboard Walls Using cardboard rather than wood made it feel more cohesive
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Installing the AC Unit I cut a rectangle out of the shed wall to fit the AC in
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Cardboard Door It was impossible to find the right sized doors, so I built my own
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Finally, the day of install. Time to disassemble the shed and transport everything to the gallery. By this time, I had installed rain gutters to the shed. Each gutter had to be unscrewed, as well as the two doors and some of the cardboard pieces. I separated each wall and moved them one by one. (Thank you to Olivia, Hayley, Lu, Tina and Minjoo for the help!)
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Invitational Flyers A stack of 4.25” x 5.5” flyers were handed out around town
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Collaterals The postcard was designed to look like a gallery postcard
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Helping Hands Hayley, Lu, Tina and Minjoo holding the walls in place
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Building it Back Up Reinstalling the rain gutters and hiding a beer inside the frames
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Finishing Touches Adding all the wall decorations and installing the TV set
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Opening Day Some people stay by the doorway, while others get close to the objects
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The response from the show was very positive. Some people came up to me and said that the installation looked just like their room back when they were younger. Some were unsure if they could enter and lingered in the doorway. Some did a double take when seeing the shoes spinning inside the microwave. What now? The exhibition is over. What do I do with an 8’ x 8’ shed filled with cardboard furniture? Some friends on Instagram had asked if the installation would ever make it out to California... Evicted Deinstall felt more like moving out of a home
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Roll On Thru Grant proposal for graduate research development
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Taking the Shed on the Road Mapping out places that I could travel to with a U-Hual
During the making of Roll Thru, I applied for the MICA Graduate Research Development Grant. I received $500 to do what I proposed to, which was to take the shed on the road. The building would be set up near various locations related to skateboarding (skateparks, skateshops and galleries). By interacting with visitors, I would be able to trade stories and observe local skate cultures. I first thought of doing a cross country trip down to California, stopping multiple times along the way. This turned out to be way too costly.
I checked the nearby places I wanted to go, and how much the grant would cover. The $500 could cover two short trips - one local and one out of state. I decided the local spot could be Vu Skateshop, which has a large park across the street with a skate park. The out of state had to be close, so I thought about Nocturnal Skateshop or Space 1026 in Philadelphia. At the end of February, I received an e-mail congratulating me for receiving the grant. I hope to learn from the two trips and try to find funding for a longer trip. 108
Potential Contacts Richard Heller Gallery, CA Paradigm Gallery, PA Space 1026, PA Jonathan LeVine Gallery, NJ
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Potential Contacts Giant Robot 2, CA Joshua Liner Gallery, NY
The next step is to reach out to galleries. There are certain galleries that I am really excited about contacting. Galleries such as Richard Heller, Joshua Liner and Jonathan LeVine show a lot of illustrative fine artists. Space 1026 and Paradigm are galleries in Philadelphia that exhibit works
similar to my shed. Giant Robot 2, in California, is a gallery that has shown interest in skateboarding culture. I am currently in the process of contacting these galleries, as well as researching others. I’m also looking into other lines of work related to my installation. Two possible fields
are set design and window display. I am hopeful and excited about the future of my skate shed. As I begin the final stages of my Roll Thru project, I look forward to whatever lies ahead in my professional career.
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A special thank you to Whitney Sherman and Kim Hall, who helped me so much along the way. Thank you to skateboarding and all the homies along the way. This project has been my little ode to skating. Thanks Jer, Karl and Uncle Tony for being skoot buds. I had so much fun in my two years here at MICA because of the amazing cohort. Special shout out to Laila Milevski, Olivia Fu and Hayley PTK. And thanks to my family. And Cubby.
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