Art of the skateboard

Terra Brown has been into art since she was little, but a few weeks ago the Ridgetop Junior High School ninth-grader’s art got exposure for the first time.

“I’ve never actually had anybody recommend my art,” she said. “I’m always used to my art staying with me.”

Terra drew an eye and laid it on top of a black-and-white checkerboard pattern for a skateboard design in David Cassel’s art class at the end of the first semester. Now hers and 15 other students’ life-size cardboard skateboards are on display at The Northern Wave shop on the corner of Bucklin Hill and Mickelberry roads.

Recently, Cassel took the designs — which had been in display at the school — to the skateboard shop and asked manager Ryan O’Leary if he would be interested in displaying a few.

“He was really cool about it,” Cassel said. “He took down a big display and put the kids’ skateboards up right away.”

While Cassel and O’Leary were arranging the students’ art designs in a large window, a group of fifth- and sixth-grade boys came into the shop with their mom and thought the skateboards were new designs that would go on sale, Cassel said.

Since then customers have been commenting on the 16 student creations, some incredulous that junior high students authored the creative designs, the store manager said.

“There’s a fair amount of those that could definitely slide in between some of these other decks,” he added.

The Northern Wave prints its own designs with the shop’s logo and O’Leary is considering a design competition or some other opportunity for students’ art to end up on customized boards in the future.

In the meantime, some customers have confused the display for the real thing already.

“A couple of kids said, ‘Are these boards you guys are going to be making?’” O’Leary said. “I thought it was cool a teacher picked a project like that and I thought I’d support that however I could.”

The store’s display has helped Cassel’s cause of exposing students to real-life, applicable art forms.

For seventh-grader Christian Santos, the validation of his work was a welcome surprise.

“I just made a company which is called ‘Bull Boards,’” Christian said. “I’ve never thought of my art being in a skate shop and I thought that was pretty cool because nothing like that’s ever happened (to me).”

His red skateboard with a white bull skull hangs on the display. Just across from his is the “Hot” board with flames that seventh-grader Kimberly Malone drew using chalk.

“I was surprised (mine was on display) because there were some really good ones,” she said.

Kimberly explained every students had to sketch five designs and then the class voted on their favorite. Then the selection was replicated into the life-size cardboard skateboard.

Kimberly was one of the students who had to work on a design that was not necessarily their favorite, she preferred her heart and arrow drawing.

“It was interesting for them that sometimes their favorite one wasn’t the one everyone else responded to,” Cassel said.

That was just one of the lessons he wanted to teach his students. Another was working within the odd-shape that a skateboard provides as an artist’s canvas. Both vertical and horizontal designs emerged from the seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade classes.

“They used the space really well,” Cassel said. “They had so much built-in knowledge about it they jumped right in.”

The project was an example of art from the real world, not just classroom creations, he explained. The idea came to Cassel when he stumbled upon a book by Sean Cliver titled “Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art.”

There is an emerging trend where people in their 20s and 30s are purchasing old skateboards for their artistic value and displaying them in their homes, Cassel said, “treating (them)

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