*Editors Note: Seales name was edited from Van Ellison-Seales to Van-Ellison Seales on 05/04/16
With a block of carefully carved wood, some wheels and a will, one can fly. They can Casper slide, Christ air, crooked grind, dog piss, curb cut and alley-oop.
But a skateboard is not just a means of mayhem and movement, at least not at the Art Decko Skateboard Art Show. Skateboards became canvases and artists carved, chopped, inked, painted, sawed and sanded boards to their liking.
Over 90 skateboards were on display and silent auctioned at Sulfur Studios Friday, April 29. All skateboards started at a biding price of $50, with proceeds going toward the construction of the Savannah Skate Park.
Other local business owners, such as Alfredo Martinez & *Van-Ellison Seales from 13 Bricks and AJ Perez from Sulfur Studios, teamed together with the founder of the Savannah Skate Park, Ben Mahers, to put on the show.
“It started off as a conversation between me and AJ a long while back. I had some skateboards I had drawn on, he had some and we were like ‘man if we just got a few people together we could have five artists and do a skateboard show. That’d be kind of cool right?” asked Martinez.
Each artist ranged in experience, age and education. A couple of the artists shared the concept behind their boards.
“I wanted to do something that was indicative of Georgia. I definitely fell in love with the landscape when I moved here almost two-years-ago and so when I was thinking about what to do for the board I wanted to do something that portrayed the environment that we find ourselves in every day,” said Nea Hanna.
“For one thing, I wanted to since it is art and skateboarding bridge that gap. So [I] represented an artist on the skateboard. But I also just had a show of celebrity portraiture and Frida is just so popular that I thought, why don’t I recreate it in on the skateboard and hopefully it’ll get a lot of attention and raise a lot of money for the skatepark,” said Juliana Peloso.
“I was born right at the start of World War II. I’ve always been fascinated by the people that went through World War II and got us on the right track and defeated the bad guys. It just came to my mind, I want to do a Kamikaze Japanese pilot,” said Thomas Luper.
“I always associated skulls with skating. It’s like a standard for skating,” said Vicgoria.
“I went on a study abroad trip to the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Inside joke – fire bread power is from the movie Smoke Signals and we ate fire bread every day. And I bought a sticker with fire bread power on it, so that’s been on my mind for like a month,” said Elizabeth Rhaney.
Written by Asli Shebe.
Photographed by Angie Stong.
Asli Shebe is a senior writing major from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She began working for District in 2014 as a staff writer, then copy editor, A&E editor, Chief Assignment editor and finally, Editor-in-Chief in 2017. Asli currently holds the record for obtaining the most job titles during her time at District. When she’s not writing for District you can find her biking around the Historic District of Savannah at odd hours of the day.
