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.
