Skater-Aid 2011

Here are two process images from the skate-deck that was submitted today for the local cancer benifit next month.  Big changes this year, one of which is that an online auction will take place for a month before the event Sunday September 25th when bidding will continue, for more info check skater-aid.net

This year's project differs from last year in scale, color-scheme, theme and format.  Luckily some of my skater buddies unearthed used decks to donate after I griped a lot about having to buy a new board for last years event. Entitled 'Missing Piece' this landscape format is influenced by mural work, an ode to Alvarez, full of fun in contrast to the darker current events piece from last year, 'Broken Levee Hermit', on the plight of sister cities Port du Prince and New Orleans.

Missing piece is a reference to one of my favorite children's books, not because the board is broken. In that story a circle(with a missing piece) wanders the world unhappy, trying and failing to find the right match that fills its void properly and of course eventually finds its missing piece, living happily ever after.

Frog vs Robot, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, a dream upon waking or a vision of the future; you're free to guess.  From an elaborate thumbnail for mural ideas this piece grew and changed living in a fluid state before submitting to the substrate.  Materials; primed board, on the grip-tape side, watercolors and FW inks, which can be tricky not all colors mix well between mediums.  FW inks are great for highlights especially the pearlecent inks, used in the frog eyes and bolts of energy.  Played with cubism and symbolism to up the comparison of a futuristic take on the chaos of 'Guernica.' Notice the alight, yet unplugged light-bulb presiding like an eye over the battle below.

The blue robot has a void in its torso-section and is trying to unlock this replacement bionic heart which is defended by a massive, energy-wielding frog.  I hope to see the world mended in my lifetime but if climate change continues unabated all amphibians like frogs will become extinct due to the quality of their environments, land, air and water.  If one has a pot of water at boil a frog will jump out went placed in, but if the frog is placed in a pot of water gradually warmed to a boil it will stay put and die.  Humanity could suffer the safe fate from its chosen path of inaction. So in the future frogs wont be there to help us, maybe they'll exisit like Norway's doomsday seed-bank, buried deep into the side of a mountain complex for posterity.

Is this social commentary on the apathy liquid love and technopoly have created by blackening our hearts towards loving all aspects cold and in-human like convenience and efficiency?  An interconnected globe is a digital illusion, one severed with a simple power outage or complex solar flare.  Humanity can build machines for a better tomorrow but treating the dynamic human spirit like a technical manual devalues our organic nature by substituting emotion, intuition and imagination for the cold rational of data; such is the era on the instant.  Each of us has a void that all of modernity can't fill, this heart-ache is that of your soul repressed to a state of reaction and not creation.  The danger is that we rewire our perspective which feeds your perception and warps the brain's ability to create as opposed to react effecting all facets of life such as morality, education, relationships and opinion making. Our human experience cannot be quantified by experts who preside over polls it must be lived without restraint so that the inner sanctuary of Self sings through the worst maelstrom of adversity, powered onward by the fury of passion not aided by the ballast-stones of materialism.

How far have we evolved with old world habits and new world toys?

Unplug.

I figured since I have produced several pieces based on recurring dreams that I have, perhaps it's time to start logging these ideas somewhere where it's easy to keep track of them (like the blog). Is it depressing that my favorite moments are the ones when I'm asleep?

A massive bomb was discovered to be in route rushing toward the earth... said to hit somewhere in or around a town that seemed much like Odessa (in my mind), and wipe out all of existence as we know it ...a weapon so massive, that it could not be stopped, penetrated or even put a dent in by even the most advance weaponry created by man. An 'Explosions in the Sky' lyric comes to mind, spoken in a calm, collected voice of an old man... "This great evil... Where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? Who's doing this...?" Soon... oblivion will rape the planet and destroy what took millions of years in the making to become. As the saying goes, "It's easier to destroy than to create."

The townspeople accept their fate. They uphold what little spirit they have left and celebrate their last moments at a high school homecoming game. Every resident of Odessa gathers at the field, nearly blinded by the stadium lights... watching the boys play their last game on earth. There is no animosity between opposing players... only love and admiration... as they realized it should have always been. The roaring and cheering of the crowd is loud like a storm. For the first time in history, everyone was holding hands... laughing together... crying together... cheering together... embracing one another... and it took a bomb... the inevitable 'end of the world' to force this on us. How ironic.

The boys pray a short prayer at every huddle before and after every play as the cheerleaders watch and cry from the sidelines. Beside the field, confetti paper falls from the floats and covers the asphalt. The ladies and gentleman of the homecoming court look like kings and queens dressed in black. They await halftime so they can grace the field with their presence. The guys all have their pickup trucks parked halfway up the sidelines, but who cares enough to scold them at this point? Standing in their trunks, the girls all look pretty, dressed in buttoned plaid shirts, rolled up and tied at the bottom to show their belly buttons, with faded, torn jean skirts and ribbons in their hair... as all small town girls would dress.

It takes one little girl in the stands, holding her teddy bear, to look up first... And then one after the other... every face looks toward the starlit sky at the blinking red light headed toward the earth. It's the bomb. No one screams... There is only the sound of gasps. Everyone joins hands. Their faces do not turn away from the sky. In moments... everything will be dust.

As the faces focus on the object, a young man walks toward one of the trucks parked halfway up the sidelines with one of the girls in sight... the one with the red plaid shirt and her hair up in locks with ribbons, sitting on the foldout flap of the trunk. He pulls her hand from her and kisses the back of it as if to say, "I've had a crush on you all year, and I haven't had the courage to come up to you until now... until this..." Only these words are not actually spoken. Yet they are understood. Given the circumstances, she does not treat his actions with hostility. He walks onto the field. Looks back at her. She looks at him. The bomb gets closer. The only two people making eye contact at this point... until... he crouches slightly. The ground beneath him starts to rumble... and then he shoots up into the sky faster than the blink of an eye. Only a trail of dust rings is left from the souls of his shoes. The gasps from the stands become even louder? How did he do that? Is he headed toward the bomb?!

Up high in the atmosphere, the young man can see it clearly now... the clouds are separated by the massive steel object with the pulsating red light that is plummeting toward the earth. It's bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. And he's flying directly in its path. He knows he can stop it, but there's just one catch... A millisecond before he hits the object, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, but he's not afraid...

The crowd watches as a flash of light spreads in the distant sky. No one knows whether to celebrate or to cry. So the silence remains... as it rains small bits and pieces of metal. The girl in the back of the truck presses the hand he kissed tightly toward her chest. She keeps her tears to herself, but realizes that she's fallen for someone who's long gone.

That was the last anyone ever saw of the young man.

This is very rough of course, but it's based off of a dream. So there's not much I can do about that... Sorry. It's almost like a stream of consciousness piece that needs to be cleaned up so that it's more coherent and sensible. But I feel like it's something that I would like to storyboard for practice, because I think it's too much to capture in anything other than a sequential format.