Work

Review from ‘THE SURFER’S JOURNAL’

 
Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing By Bolton Colburn, Ben Finney, Tyler Stallings, C.R. Stecyk, Deanne Stillman, and Tom Wolfe
Designed by David Carson LAM/Gingko Press; softbound: www.lagunaartmuseum.org
 
260 pages: $ 39.95
My review hopper runneth over. Suffering through a mini-boom in surf-book publishing, the wire rack I nicked from the dumpster is exploding with camp, kitsch, funk, and dross. I could return most to the Slush Pile Gods and do us all a favor. Exaggerating? You’re denying the existence of a 32-page saddle-stitched pamphlet on the deodorization of wetsuit booties? A 340-page coffee-table book on the history of Newport’s Echo Beach era? Permanent Wave: Surfer Hairstyles? The unexpurgated Filosa?
Welcome to my world.
But there was a diamond in the slag; Bolton Colburn had forwarded a copy of the catalog for that smoking Laguna show (“Mana Overboard”TSJ 11.5) and it’s over the top. We’re talking way better than it needed to be. Rather than a laundry list of items in the show, it’s a deeply vigorous look at the art history and pop interface of surfing. Like the show itself, you don’t want to miss a drop of it. Carson is all up in this thing, so it’s a vibrating eye feast of bent graphics. What, you aren’t running to the phone yet? -S.H.

SURF CULTURE: THE ART HISTORY OF SURFING
Laguna Art Museum with Gingko Press

 
Containing everything from doodles on scrap paper to ancient Peruvian surf imagery to magazine covers of yore and kitsch plastic sculptures, this book tells us something about our own art, how we perceive it and how the outside world sees it. For one thing, despite surfers’ self-percieved image of underground rebelliousness, outsiders consistently seem to see surfing as a symbol of sheer joy, freedom and good health, often useful for selling completely unrelated products.

Among the numerous key players behind this are known geniuses Craig Stecyk of Skateboarder magazine and recently Dogtown and Z Boys fame, and designer David Carson, formerly of Surfer magazine. Carson put the book together and it has to be said, despite every image being covered with its own caption text, it still makes a lively visual feast, a piece of art in itself. from Surfer’s Path