An Installation about Skateboarding                          by Paul Fujita

   What this is about is skateboarding, boiled down to the basic visual component of the deck. The markings on an old deck have a uniform tendency. Sometimes an old deck is just cool. All through history, skaters have drawn and painted on decks. I think that this is an element of visual communication that has influenced a lot of things. Color, mark-making, collage, scribbling, and a sense of destruction and wear is the language that has sprung from skateboards into the mass media repertoire. But once upon a time, it was just some crazy pictures on a skateboard. What we are trying to get back to is the old school notion that art and images have the power to change the world, not merely sell a product. Remember the forbidden feeling of glee you had when you were actually able to find a skateboard or a skate mag? Remember when the graphics on skateboards were so good that they became a subterranean form of media communication and identity in their own right? I didn't think so.

    This is the third version of our Skateboard Installation, with the big difference being that twenty-four artists were involved. You may remember the first one - it was a ramp that totally filled the Martial Art gallery space, and the first rendition of my portrait collection installed on the walls as well as on skateboards. Years ago, I salvaged about 2000 polaroids of skaters who signed up to skate City Skate Skatepark. At the time I had been saving broken boards for Portland's original skateboard artist, Ben Kaufman, who makes chairs and other more exotic sculptures out of old decks. So I decided to put the images of the skaters onto the decks. I didn't really know what the hell I was doing other than that I had to save these photos because they commanded a weird fascination in everyone that saw them. The following year we did a new version of the installation that included a ramp, closed circuit TV, wall of decks, wheel collage, paintings, prints and photography. This exhibit had a major contribution from Dan Ness and Tucker Glasgow.
  
   This time at Zeitgeist I enlisted Noah Goldsmith to set up a screening of the Cut and Paste Skateboarding Film Festival ( www.cutandpastefilmfest.org ). He created a special edit of the flicks and we had it going on three TVs. It was the first time any of the films were shown around here and people were blown away. In the meantime I put the word out to skateboarders near and far to contribute some stuff. The requirement - if it wasn't on a skateboard, it had to be about skateboarding.  I then took all of the art, plus everything I had, and hung it all in an aesthetically pleasing way. Mick of M&M Skateboards donated a box of trimmings from the skate factory floor as well.

Well, a few of the decks migrated to Astoria for a surprise appearance at the AVA gallery.

According to the local townspeople, this was the best gallery in Astoria. I didn't take photos of the main exhibit but it was tight. There was also a room with an installation of text and photos and the whole place is connected to a cool coffeeshop that also has tons of different art pieces. We're in the random area with a variety of stuff that was generally quite good.

Clockwise from bottom left: KLUTCH, Tucker Glasgow, Tyler K./Keith R., David Beacom, Karyn Shearer, Dan Ness.

Special Thanks:
M&M Skateboards
Virginia Ulrich
Dogs Dig Vegetarian Deli
Jim Archer
Susan Muller
Cal Skate Skateboards

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