If Wishes were Windboards

On the second Sunday of June, I noticed an announcement in a local entertainment weekly: An exhibit of hand-painted skateboard decks was under way in a neighboring city. The exhibit had opened on Friday and would end on Sunday at 4 p.m. It was noon, and I had no transportation.

An exhibit of hand-painted windsport boards would have been vastly more interesting; but as there was no such exhibit, I decided that I absolutely had to see those skateboards.

After begging rides from friends, relatives, employees of an art gallery and skateboard shop, proved ineffectual, I pulled out my wallet and got to the exhibit via a combination of train and taxi.

(Had I simply phoned ahead to the gallery, I would have been informed that the show would not actually come down at 4 p.m., and an appointment would have been arranged at a more convenient time.)

The exhibit, "Make Art or Die" at A Bitchin' Space Gallery in Sacramento, consisted of about forty decks hand-painted by invited artists -- none of whom had previous experience with this format -- plus a sculpture, an installation, three decks from one of the sponsors, Legend Skateboards, and about forty vintage decks, most from the collection of John Soldano of the Toyroom gallery.

Among hand-painted decks, one of the more interesting approaches was that of artist Gail Hart, who cut up, painted, and reassembled several decks. The most memorable reassemblage featured a cartoon rodent bracketted between scuff marks.

More than a contributor, Gail was the mastermind of the exhibit, A Bitchin' Space Gallery merely being the name that Gail attaches to her studio when she chooses to exhibit art rather than create it.

Primordially striking was Jeff Christenesen's "Firebelly", a half-human infant bellowing a fireball from the interior of a volcano.

Paleontologically striking was Elliott Rogers' untitled deck, decorated a relief of an archaeopteryx-like fossil.

Thoroughly striking was Sandra Cappelletti's deck, displayed together with a portfolio of her drawings.

Ghoolishly striking was Linda S. Fitz Gibbon's ceramic construction of a skeletonized skateboard tagging a rock.

Stiking in a difficult to describe way was Kim Scott's "Fresh", a raw slab of eyeball-equipped steak bathed in condensed water dropplets and lounging on a blue rectangle. I will venture neither an aesthetic nor a psychoanalytic interpretation.

Among the collection of vintage commercial boards were graphics by artists Dalek (Space Monkey), Skinner Davis (Blood Wizard), Shepard Fairey (OBEY), Vernon Courtlandt Johnson (Rip the Ripper).

Well, I could go on, but I suppose that going on would only underline the point that this was an exhibit of skateboard art, not windsport art. It didn't seem to me that these images whould have much appeal to windsport athletes, and they provoked me into wondering all the more what comparable windsport images might look like.

The following Tuesday, I was seated in a cafe when just such an image strolled past my table, an image of a fish that seemed to be a part of the board it decorated. The board, of course, was not a windsport board but a longboard, a kind of oversize skateboard for cruising downhill. To view the board, click here.

The manufacturer was Arbor, the overall pattern was Arbor's tree logo, the wood was Hawaiian koa, and the fish itself was koi. The board's owner explained that koi are a symbol of faithfulness because they mate for life and die if they lose their mate.

According to legend, koi swim upstream to surmount rapids and transform into dragons. Thus, koi also symbolize triumph over adversity. Consequently, koi would be an appropriate image for a windsport board, because to mount an exhibit of windsport art one would have to swim against the current and overcome obstacles, but if one succeeded, the resulting art — compared to skateboard art — might be an aesthetic dragon.