L'Art Pour L'Skate: Skateboard Graphics And Design

By: Moujeck Cabales/Photos by: Moujeck Cabales and Crist Espiritu/Article 6 of 7

Due to the sparked interest in the skateboard subculture during the late 70s, quite a number of photojournalists like Craig Stecyk documented various groups of skaters, most notably the legendary Zephyr Skate Team from California. A fresh yet unusual quality of aesthetics can be seen in the photographs of skaters they took, where they exhibit ground and midair tricks. It somehow elevated skateboard into an art that's more than just an extreme sport; but the finer and deeper visual candy is in the wooden board, because it has become an artistic medium itself.

It is like mixing Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and skateboard. Instead of canvas, oil and acrylic is applied on the skateboard deck. It is like putting a work of art on a nondescript block of wood, though with a much deeper notions of imagination. The sport’s embodiment of the punk and rowdy attitude are graphically expressed. When one flips about the street, people would be awed at how cool his skateboard is.

The Aesthetics Of Being Cool

Skateboard graphics, is using the wooden surface of the skateboard as an artistic medium. As art is expression, you put on wild, colorful images to cater in that rebellious and youthful attitude. From devils, skulls and dragons, to cute little monsters and modernist abstractions, board graphics has a wide selection of designs skaters can choose from. The designs are nothing anywhere near Picasso, Michelangelo or that high art stuff, but rather much like graffiti, pop art, underground comics, hot rod, etc. The highbrow Renaissance style wouldn’t fit on such medium.

California is where it all began. Because lowbrow art and the skateboard hype both originated from there, the former has become sort of visual symbol of the latter; and the latter a medium of the crude artistic movement. Yes, skateboard has its own art. In Sean Cliver's book Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, the author portrayed board graphics made by hundreds of artists/skaters’ influenced by California life, punk culture and surreal fantasies. They were mostly self-taught painters and illustrators, including Sean Cliver himself, and yet produced a unique kind of aesthetic style in the West Coast. Colloquially termed ‘lowbrow’, art historians rather call it ‘pop surrealism’ or ‘post-modern surrealism’. Quite the new spawn of Max Ernsts, Joan Miros and Salvador Dalis.

Pinoy Lowbrow Artist

For the Filipino painter and skateboard graphics artist, Crist Espiritu, his own insights about the psychological aspects of our modern-day living are expressed in his art. Having his own style of pop surrealism, he refuses his skateboard art to look like ‘high art’ even though they are seemingly profound. A 28-year old Fine Arts graduate from Far Eastern University, Crist Espiritu is a resident artist of Hampaslupa Skateboarding, an all-Filipino board company. He designs skateboards with horrifying and out-of-this-world images. From the mind of the artist, these include dog-headed ladies, multi-eyed monsters and netherworldly human beings. Unlike most lowbrow painters who are practically self-taught, Espiritu went to an art school.

Because skateboard is seen as rowdy, punky, rugged and outcast, he says that its corresponding visual art is therefore what is perceived of the extreme sport. “When lowbrow started it was punk influence, sort of. They were rebellious.”, he said. Skateboarding then became in confluence with other such forms of low culture like rock music. When asked if he is rebellious, he laughed and answered yes when he was in his teens. But the adolescent angst mellowed out as he became more intense and passionate about his art.

Espiritu got hooked on skateboard during the late 90s, the time when the skate scene in Manila was at its peak. There were events and competitions here and there, and he was already learning some tricks and stunts. Like many skaters, punk and metal heads at their teenage years, his was full of angst and rebellion; which would profoundly influence his artistic style later on. Espiritu’s passion with art came in when he realized he didn’t like engineering at all, so he shifted to a fine arts program. His peers told him to give it a shot, because they saw he had a talent in drawing.

Aside from doing professional skateboard graphics, he also does paintings for several galleries within the Metro. Espiritu’s own style of pop surrealism is also carried on to the canvas and paper, like his lowbrow exemplaries ‘My Heart Pumps Neon Acrylic’ and ‘Fabulous Filth’. “I like Dali, Warhol, Basquiat, Robert Crumb and many more.”, he said when asked who his influences were. But when it comes to local artists, he admits doesn’t have much except for the surrealist Kiko Escora.

Aside from making art, Espiritu also plays his skateboard during free time. He is also a disc-jockey on some wild weekend nights. He believes that, in every artist, a certain degree of playfulness and child’s wonder must never be lost. “To be a good artist, kailangan hindi mawala yung childishness sa ‘yo (the childishness within you should never go away). That will keep things interesting and exciting.”, he said.