"The boards I made are titled “Softboard #1” and “Softboard #2” and essentially exist in opposition to each other."
Surfers certainly consider the boards we ride to be art, but fancy culture rarely considers them such. No surfboards, for example, hang in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art nor Paris’ Louvre. Surfboards are seen as cute or fun kitsch but not serious art. Never to be thought of in the same vein as Matisse nor Rubens.
Never, maybe, until now.
San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, up Central California way, is currently hosting the show “Whose Waters?” in which “nine artists, some who surf and some who don’t, offer their experiences, reflections, and criticisms of all that surfing is and can be.”
Included amongst the tintype photography and investigations into queer imagery using repurposed wetsuit neoprene are two additions by wildly talented local shaper Shea Somma that “play with how specific surfboards signify expert or beginner experience in the water, engaging an exploration of class and privilege in surf culture.”
One appears to be a Wavestorm dangling from its leash plug in undiluted Costco glory.
The other presents as a progressive thruster with wild rails.
Somma declares, “The boards I made are titled “Softboard #1” and “Softboard #2” and essentially exist in opposition to each other: a hand shaped, traditionally built board that looks like a softboard, and a (very)soft board that at first glance appears to be a high performance shortboard. The commodification of surfing, and surfboard manufacture, the shifting culture and demographics of surfers, the conscious and unconscious judgments we make about other surfers vis á vis their equipment, and the processes by which we make these objects were some of the themes I had in mind while making the pieces.”
What emotions do they evoke?
Art, like most things, is best witnessed live and show will be running through Oct. 20.
Speaking of art, though, the great surf filmmaker Joe G. and I once decided that any girl named “Sloan” is a 10 (see above). I think it still holds.
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This caused my first laugh of the day.
I hear voices…
One should enjoy vagina, not become one!
I’m so mad this exist and that someone wasted their time to make it and that I can’t unsee it and that Chas wrote about it and I read it and how these few minutes of my life are gone forever and art and surfing and adjacency.
Ahh yes, Soft vs Hard. The juxtaposition is striking, one gets the job done, one simply does not because it cannot, and yet that which is soft, hangs proudly erect and vertical. Art.
Also, wtf is up with the nose rocker on the “hard” board? someone got a bit carried away with the old eleco planner.
The wacky rocker is due to the shape being made of cast foam rubber, rendering it floppy like a… well you already get the idea 😉
Goodvibes was art. This shit is interior design
Nice touch putting the thruster with a “hang ten” backdrop
Trump wanted to hang five, or at least, send them to the chair or something.
Oh I see. The ‘softtop’ is actually glassed hard, and the thruster is all floppy.
Truly a symbol for our times.
Or something.
Literally couldn’t have said it better!
Over my head. Like I love it.
DJ fisher’s favourite board belongs in a museum
Is this a Saturday Night Live skit?
did you get your charge to safety after his homies labelled him a traitorous fuck?
now museum…
now you don’t.
“The commodification of surfing, and surfboard manufacture, the shifting culture and demographics of surfers, the conscious and unconscious judgments we make about other surfers vis á vis their equipment, and the processes by which we make these objects…”
This made me vomit, shit my pants, blow my load and cry all at once.
scoot over, I need that porcelain bowl as well.
I stopped at the vomiting…
Pussy, lol 😂
Wish we had you at the opening!
Naw, sweet xx
Chas did you know when your friend asked to borrow your board it’d end up hanging by its leash plug in a lame ass surf art exhibit?
I’ve seen that board! I was taken out by a VAL of even lesser skill than I while riding my Billy Tolhurst designed board. When the cunt’s leash tangled with me that board hit me in the back of the head. I bet the nose is dented!
All of this juxtoposition brings up the age old debate…is water wet?
Maybe Hunter Biden really is an artist.
Few can match his back door artistry and white line skills. Some call him a gagger extraordinaire!