This section is a visual survey of skateboard graphics featuring skateboards from a variety of Rochester-based collectors. Spotlights include board graphics as art of protest, a look at the role of local skateshops in the community, and a dive into the screenprinting vs heat transfer process.
Let’s be fair, most folks don’t read these things. I’ll be honest, I barely do. But I realized this show deserves a little bit of backstory.
I got my first skateboard in 1987 – a little blue plastic banana board – for my 12th birthday, and a (so-far) 37 year obsession was born. After working my way up to a “Back to the Future” wooden skateboard, I would pore through Thrasher magazine looking at the ads and all the board graphics, searching for my first “real” board for my next birthday. I quickly decided on Mark Gonzales first pro board (you can see one on the top row of the main skateboard wall), and I was over the moon when I finally got it.
The middle school and high school years rolled by, and I fell deeper in love with skateboarding. As I learned more about the culture, I paid more attention to the graphics. Coming of age in the 90s – often referred to as the “Golden Age of Skateboarding Graphics” – I was obsessed with all the graphics coming out at a rapid pace. Edgier than the years before, the graphics were irreverent, filled with biting wit, inside jokes, obscure references, winks and nods, a healthy dose of potty humor, and ever-pushing boundaries. It would spark a love of graphic arts and lead me to RIT and Rochester in 1993 to pursue these fields. It would also connect me with like-minded creatives pushing themselves in their own fields, many of whom make their presence known throughout the show.
But I digress. The wall of boards before you is filled with just a sliver of the creative folks that have put their talents into creating graphics over the last few decades of skateboarding’s lifespan. The artwork is meant to amuse, entertain, and challenge us, or even, at its most basic level, catch our eye just enough to get us to buy the product. Oversized and overwhelming, the board wall evokes a young person’s first time entering a pro skateshop and choosing their first board out from a wall of possibilities.
This specific chunk of the wall is filled with “shop boards,” largely price-point offerings that skateshops create to advertise their own brand, their city, or their local creators that are a budget-conscious alternative for the skater in need of a new board. Additionally, thiss wall features boards designed by some of Rochester’s own local artists as well as friends and “familia.” Filled with inside jokes and references, these boards become momentos and artifacts of specific points and places in time as well as an affordable point of entry for collector artwork by your favorite artist.