A person who appears to be ambling aimlessly, but is secretly in search of adventure.

5.14.2008

Surf/art culture


The New York Times reports on "soul surfing" and the beauty of the longboard.

“When you head out to surf, you’re going to church out there,” he said. “It’s your arena, and it’s your place to become one with nature. It’s an incredible feeling and one hard to recreate anywhere else in life.”


Beautiful Losers celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural movements of a generation. In the early 1990’s a loose-knit group of likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the “establishment” art world, this group, and the subcultures they sprang from, have now become a movement that has been transforming pop culture. Starring a selection of artists who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories…speaking to themes of what happens when the outside becomes “in” as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today’s youth.


Thomas Campbell is a beautiful loser.


These are his works from The Thread Is the Line show at the Ellipse Art Center in Arlington. Mines the top middle. Floater. Gorgeous.


Also, DC's very own Cynthia Connolly, director of the Ellipse, is a beautiful loser. See her work in a traveling exhibit called Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture. You can buy limited edition prints created by the beautiful loser artists in this show for as little as $150. An excellent start to a great art collection.


Surfwise, the movie.
Like many American outsider-adventurers, Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz set out to realize a utopian dream. Abandoning a successful medical practice, he sought self-fulfillment by taking up the nomadic life of a surfer. But unlike other American searchers like Thoreau or Kerouac, Paskowitz took his wife and nine children along for the ride, all eleven of them living in a 24 foot camper. Together, they lived a life that would be unfathomable to most, but enviable to anyone who ever relinquished their dreams to a straight job. The Paskowitz Family proved that America may be running out of frontiers, but it hasn’t run out of frontiersman.


From Kala Alexander, in the New York Times:

“WAVES are just a little part of surfing,” the big-wave surfer Kala Alexander said last week as fat cumulus clouds drifted through the sky above the North Shore and an ocean both brilliantly turquoise and yawningly flat.

“You have to understand what it means to be a waterman,” he added. “You have to understand the way of life. You have to have respect.”

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh, man. I just came back from a short surfing trip to Puerto Rico. So good. Not too much into longboards unless paddle boarding way out in the sea. I see the benefits of having a longboard since you can catch any size wave but I'd rather stick with a gunner.

Thanks for posting the link for Beautiful Losers. I can't wait to see it. I read a short interview with Harmony Korine the other day. He was talking about his new movie and nuns falling from the sky. I'd have to say one of the best Letterman moments is with HK. That, and Crispin Glover.

1:11 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

DC's Cynthia Connolly is in the Beautiful Losers traveling exhibit. You can check out her work, and all the others at www.iconoclastusa.com

5:28 AM

 

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