"How We Roll" Exhibition At The California African American Museum
Attention skaters and skate enthusiasts! The "How We Roll" exhibition, featuring African Americans in skateboarding and surfing, is opening Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at the California African American Museum (CAAM), in Los Angeles. The official press release promises "an historical step-by-step fantastic voyage of how surfing evolved into skateboarding, the kinship with roller-skating, and how “The Roll” created a cultural revolution that has influenced every corner of popular culture over the past four decades". Check it! Visit www.caamuseum.org for more info.
Lou C-D
More info from CAAM:
"The How We Roll exhibition opens one week before ESPN X-Games 2010; and, both events are located in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. Viewers and participants will benefit from the close proximity of these two extraordinary affairs, and will experience a high-energy visual and physical extravaganza that is guaranteed to delight and engage.
How We Roll showcases a legendary list of skateboarding pioneers and their accomplishments, from the late ‘60s and ‘70s, including Marty Grimes and Alan Scott (first generation Dogtown), Steve Steadham (participating in X-Games), Chuck Treece (first black skater to appear on the cover of a major skate magazine, Thrasher), Ron Allen, and others who laid the foundation for core achievements in skateboarding with their extreme tricks and artistic expression. They paved the way for the newcomers of successive generations in the ‘80s and ‘90s, like Stephanie Person, Ray Barbee, Kareem Campbell, Karl Watson, Rodney Smith, Chris Pastras (owner of Stereosound and television host for FUEL TV - Fox 24-hour extreme network), and Stevie Williams, who took the sport to a new level of competition and entrepreneurial possibilities. This groundswell of popularity has
transformed skateboarding into a respected sport where today’s athletes – Terry Kennedy, Paul Rodriquez, Nyjah Huston, Theotis Beasly, Malcolm Watson and others – have celebrity status and lucrative business ventures.
transformed skateboarding into a respected sport where today’s athletes – Terry Kennedy, Paul Rodriquez, Nyjah Huston, Theotis Beasly, Malcolm Watson and others – have celebrity status and lucrative business ventures.
When entering the museum, viewers experience an eye-gasm of artwork galore in an 11,000 square foot enclosed modern courtyard. The 5,100 cubic feet of wall space allows the skateboarders (who are also the artists, photographers, musicians, and much more) to create beautiful, large-scale installations. These massive installations, by Chris Pastras, Pep Williams, Atiba Jefferson, Brett Cook, Alex “Duce”
Rodriguez (owner of Maintain skate shop in Hollywood, and a well-known graph artist), and Keith “K-Dub” Williams (founder and producer of Hood Games), are nicely lit by CAAM’S 34-foot high ceilings with domed skylights, as well as day windows for people to see as they pass by and enter the building.
Rodriguez (owner of Maintain skate shop in Hollywood, and a well-known graph artist), and Keith “K-Dub” Williams (founder and producer of Hood Games), are nicely lit by CAAM’S 34-foot high ceilings with domed skylights, as well as day windows for people to see as they pass by and enter the building.
Starting with 17th and 18th century historical documentation of surfing in Polynesia and Africa, photographer, artist, and historian Paula Lauren Gibson has developed an illustrated history of Black Surfing in the United States, and its roots. Surfing influenced skateboarding in its early days, in many ways, including maneuvers, fashion, and attitude, to the point that skating was called “sidewalk surfing.” First generation Dogtown skater and artist Alan Scott (also a member of the first Pepsi team) has designed a mural that honors surfing icons, and shows the evolution from surfing to pool skating. “Godfather of Skateboarding”, Jeff Ho, who helped define the direction of the relationship between surfing and theDogtown/Zephyr radical style that burst onto the scene, consulted the exhibition early on.
Central to the exhibition is a Skater’s Gallery featuring action pictures, personal stories, skater bios, magazine covers, decks/boards, and artwork from many of the legendary skateboarders on the list. Famous ‘old-skoolers’, like Steve Steadham (performing in X-Games) and Chuck Treece, are creating mini-installations that show their amazing careers as skaters and musicians. Many photographers who have documented the scene contribute images as well. They include Glen Friedman, Grant Brittain, Jim Goodrich, Lance Dawes, Atiba Jefferson, Neftalie and more. Also, How We Roll will spotlight, for the first time, how girls have crossed gender and color lines, and rolled their way into a sport dominated by the guys. This section features and tells the amazing journey of Stephanie Person, the first and only professional black female vert-skateboarder, who made a living competing in America and Europe for 15 years. “I was just ‘one of the boys’ skateboarding in the 80's and 90's”, says Person. “Now I am a woman, proud to be the very first black pro girl skateboarder, and excited to see a legacy of the many more to come.”
Other sections of the exhibition expound upon the influence of musical genres such as punk rock, hip hop, jazz, and reggae on the industry and culture; the importance of the skate shop as the core or hub of the culture, featuring FTC (For the City) in San Fran-cisco, ZooYork/Shut Skates in NYC, and three local shops in Los Angeles that service inner city youth; and, the ‘green’ consciousness in today’s skateboarding businesses, i.e. the manufacturing of bamboo boards, using recyclable plastics to reduce the deforestation of maple trees which are commonly used to make skateboards, and a new trend of using organic and natural
fibers for skater apparel.
fibers for skater apparel.
Programs, workshops, screenings, appearances, conversations, and other special events, such as our Fourth of July Target Sunday and August Target Sundays, will be dedicated to How We Roll. Please visit the website -www.caamuesum.org - for updated information. Admission to the California African American Museum, and all museum programming, is free to the public."
Marty Grimes (photo credit: Glen Friedman)
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