Playing With a Full Deck

A “deck” is the part of the skateboard you stand on or leap up from in the course of apparently impossible maneuvers — like the midair spin called (of all things) “the impossible.” Skating is sport, art form, lifestyle and obsession rolled into one defiant package, melding with pop subcultures and even flipping into alternative visual-art venues. Shows featuring deck décor have long been commonplace at hip coastal galleries.

On view at Lakewood’s Pop Shop, the exhibit Deckwreckers marks the gallery’s fourth anniversary and the opening of its new annex
space “(Art)ificial.” On display are more than 50 standard-size decks
(like shoes, they vary according to the skater’s feet, but roughly
8-inch-by-31-inch is average). The hardwood-ply boards are used as
surfaces or supports for a wide range of styles, materials and
messages.

The show was curated by American Greetings artist Keith Corcoran, a
native of Brooklyn who ended up in Ohio four years ago following a
decade in the Army. The Desert Storm veteran was a graffitti writer as
a teenager but had no fine art training. When Uncle Sam figured out he
could draw, they reclassified him; he spent the last few years of his
stint as a Multimedia Division artist, doing renderings for four-star
generals.

Deckwreckers is mostly a remix of a recent in-house show that
Corcoran put together for American Greetings. The majority of the
exhibit’s artists are his coworkers, though a few New Yorkers and Los
Angelinos slipped into the mix. Noted local and national artists on
view include Chuck Wimmer, Bob Peck and pro-skater Mike Frazier,
as well as Pop Shop owner Richard S. Cihlar. Most works are priced to
sell, but California’s Massa Homma “wrecked” a deck that’s marked at
$2,500 and, for the labor involved alone, ought to be worth its weight
in platinum records. Homma’s miniature replica of Eddie Van Halen’s
guitar is accurate down to details like scars and cigarette burns on
its famous neck.

(Art)ificial’s walls sport rebuilt boards that will never see
another “ollie” performed on them, if only because there’s nowhere left
to put your feet. One includes a gas mask, another has been converted
into what looks like a Victorian scientific instrument, with copper
piping and a mysterious gauge. Then there’s the black furry one with
teeth; it’s sort of cute, but I kept my distance. Glowering
heavy-metalish designs, collaged gothic horror-film personalities and a
painted, slightly goofy feminine vampire alternate with quaintly sweet,
funky and overtly comic images, like a column of
see-no/hear-no/speak-no evil monkeys in stocking caps, the last with
duct tape X’ed over his mouth. On her website, participating artist
Claire Mojher, who contributed a craft-oriented “Seaside Skatedeck”
depicting a woman in antique bathing costume, says her own work
involves a “mingling of the endearing and the dreadful” with a sense of
humor. That describes Deckwreckers as a whole pretty well, and
the energetic, death-defying, everything-goes pop culture that inspired
this enjoyable show.