skate art

When I began doing research for my film I wanted to look at the root of skateboard art. The best source for this was a book of skateboard deck art called Disposable by Sean Cliver. It has everything and it's really amazing to see just how far deck art has progressed.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with skateboard art. I'd collect all the ghetto stickers. I used to beg my mom for any new Powell Peralta boards when they came out. I think I was finally lucky enough to own a McGill and a Lance Mountain sometime in my youth. My favorites were the Ray "Bones" Rodriguez boards. Even as a kid I was really attracted to the high contrast images with the sparse use of color. It's a simple visual tool that I still use today in a lot of my artwork. In Pepperland I'm adding small amounts of red to certain shots. Sometimes for purely aesthetic reasons but in some cases it's simply used to bring the audiences attention to something in particular.

Looking at the history of skate art also helped me with my decision to use punk rather than hip hop in my film. Punk, metal, hardcore and hip hop all have strong roots within skating. But in D.C. its always been more about the hip hop. I'm just a slightly reformed punk making a film so I'm sticking with what I know. Plus I did some tests with various types of music and for pacing purposes punk works much better. It moves a viewer through a 9 minute flick quickly. I was pretty happy when I came across these Misfits boards because I'm working on getting the rights to Where Eagles Dare for a section of the film. I'm also hoping to get rights to 2 Fugazi songs. I'd really like to get some homegrown music in the film. I know Ian McKay is still really involved with the local music scene so I'm hoping the subject matter of Pepperland will help get the rights to the Fugazi songs.

Cliver, Sean. Disposable. Ontario: Concrete Wave Editions, 2004. 14-197.