Listen to Shepard Fairey…
“Skateboarding saved my life! As both an activity and culture, skateboarding blew the doors open for me to see how creativity, fearlessness, independence, and style could let me paint my own story. To paraphrase Charles Bukowski, everything, worth saying or doing, dull or dangerous, is better with style. I learned the importance of style from skateboarding, but I apply style to my art and pretty much anything else I can. My friend Blaize Blouin, the only pro skater from Charleston S.C., where I grew up, used to say, “trendy tricks come and go, but the need for style is constant.”
Juice Magazine has been a voice for core skateboarding, music, and art for over 25 years. They did their first feature on me in 1998, and we’ve worked together many times over the years. Running a print mag is always a tough business for love, not money, but is especially challenging during a pandemic. Juice is in financial distress, and I want to help and pay my proper respects to style in skateboarding, but also paying my respects to authentic voices in skateboard culture who chronicle the past and the future. This past week I released art with proceeds to help Juice stay in business and there is a GoFundMe you can support to keep Juice in print.
When I picked up Hugh Holland’s Silver Skate 70’s book I was enthralled by all of the photos, but especially gripped by the shot of an unknown kid doing a stylish backside carve at the Kenter Canyon School banks in 1976.
That backside carve photo viscerally reminded me what the essence of style in skateboarding looks like (and feels like). That style in skateboarding is timeless, and once you’ve learned it, or at least witnessed it, you always pay your proper respects.
This letterpress print collaboration with Hugh Holland, called “Styles Change – Style Endures,” uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) to represent the full spectrum and diversity of styles and flavors in the skaters palette that also opens minds for the possibilities in life.
“Styles Change- Style Endures” is not just my way of paying my proper respects to style in skateboarding, but also paying my respects to authentic voices in skateboard culture who chronicle the past and the future.
Styles Change-Style Endures, 4 colorways: Black, Magenta, Cyan & Yellow. 14.5 x 19 inches. Letterpress on cream cotton paper with hand-deckled edges. Original photo by Hugh Holland. Signed by Shepard Fairey and Hugh Holland. Numbered edition of 115. All prints SOLD OUT on June 18, 2020 with a portion of proceeds going to Juice Magazine to help Juice stay in biz, but they also have a GoFundMe you can support to keep them in print. Thanks for caring!”
-Shepard Fairey
JUICE MAGAZINE WOULD LIKE TO SAY THANK YOU!
“Since day one, Shepard Fairey has been a pioneer and his art continually evokes emotion and reflects his unique style. Skateboarding has always been a driving force in his life, and skateboarding, like art, encourages freedom of expression. Just as the parallels of skateboarding and art exist, so do the parallels of Shepard Fairey and Juice Magazine. Our devotion to skateboarding, art and music were both sparked in the Carolinas, stoked in the Northeast and fired to a full blaze in California.
While Shepard pursued his natural instincts to intertwine skateboarding and punk rock into his art, Juice set off on a journey to provide a platform for those voices most crucial to the roots of skate, surf, music and art culture. Our time in Los Angeles has given us both access to the long revered birthplaces of surf skate style and honored us with the opportunity to work with the innovators that drew us here.
During our adventures here in the Wild Wild West, timeless truths have been discovered and re-discovered: ‘History repeats itself.’ ‘Style is everything.’ ‘If you fall, get back up.’ During the challenging times of the COVID 19 pandemic, the reality hit that Juice might not weather this storm. Thankfully, our skate family has stepped up and offered us a chance to save the day.
We would like to thank our good friend and skatepark advocate, Shannon Smith, for setting up the Help Save Juice GoFundMe and we would like to recognize and send our appreciation for the commitment of the skateboarding hardcores that have always had our back. We want to thank you all for your donations and support over the years.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to Hugh Holland for this timeless image that captures the idea that “Styles change. Style endures.” Lastly, we want to say a very special thank you to Shepard Fairey for his inspiring art, his kindness, his unrelenting fight for what is right and his contributions to the Juice cause.
With the help of our skate, art and music family, we will continue to spotlight pivotal moments in skate, surf, art and punk rock and celebrate the thrill inherent in the simplistic motion of carving a schoolyard bank on a wooden toy.”
– Terri Craft, Juice Magazine
Help Save Juice GoFundMe link
https://www.gofundme.com/f/juice-magazine-could-use-your-back-up
STYLES CHANGE. STYLE ENDURES.
Exploring A Connection Between Skateboarding and Art
by Terri Craft – Juice Magazine
Since day one, Shepard Fairey has been a pioneer and an innovator as his art continually evokes emotion and reflects his unique style. Skateboarding has always been a driving force in his life, and skateboarding, like art, encourages a freedom of expression. Just as the parallels of skateboarding and art exist, so do the parallels of Shepard Fairey and Juice Magazine.
Since 1993, Juice Magazine has been devoted to documenting skateboarders, surfers, musicians and artists that have dedicated their lives to their passion. Independently owned and based in Venice, California, Juice provides an authentic spotlight to these subcultures, while paying respect to the pioneers and innovators that influenced the roots of skate, surf and punk rock.
Shepard Fairey and Juice Magazine both started their creative adventures in the Carolinas – with Juice being born in Wrightsville Beach and inside the walls of the Mad Monk rock club in Wilmington, North Carolina, while a few hours south, Shepard grew up skateboarding with East Coast powerhouse, Blaize Blouin, and making sticker art and stylized punk rock t-shirts in Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1988, Shepard attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where his side gigs at The Shed included making bootleg Misfits t-shirts and stenciling stickers to make enough money to build a 16-foot-wide halfpipe in his backyard. During that time, soon to be pro skateboarder Eric Pupeki was staying at Shepard’s apartment and, when Eric said he wanted to learn to make stencils, Shepard looked through the newspaper for a picture he could use to make a stencil from. He came across an ad for Andre the Giant wrestling at the Civic Center and said, “You should make a stencil of this!” The result was the “Andre The Giant Posse” sticker which quickly went viral, fueled by D.I.Y. scrappiness, and a new art rebellion began…
By the mid 90’s, skateboarding had evolved to an all-encompassing creative culture, in which art played an integral role. Inspired by the rise of the many key artists who made a profound impact on skateboard culture, Shepard Fairey, Blaize Blouin and Alfred Hawkins created a skateboard and apparel company, that they coined Subliminal, highlighting collaborations with those artists. The first exhibit curated under the Subliminal name was in late December of 1995, at a deli in South Carolina.
After Juice transitioned to New York City, in 1996, and began helping out at Andy Kessler’s 108 Riverside Skatepark, Brian Lentini did Juice’s first Shepard Fairey interview in 1998 while Shepard was wheat-pasting Andre the Giant posters around skate spots all over the city, for his first solo show at C.B.G.B.s.
After Juice moved to Los Angeles in 1999, Shepard also soon ended up in LA, where he found roots for Subliminal Projects, a multi-functional project space and gallery established by Shepard Fairey and Blaize Blouin in 1995 as a way to introduce skateboard culture and design to the art world.
Putting down roots in Venice, California, Juice often witnessed Shepard’s work going up on the legendary Venice Art Walls, which are all that remain of the famous Venice Pavilion, home to wall rides and some of the earliest street skating innovators in Los Angeles.
As Juice established its headquarters on the Westside of LA and fought for a public concrete skatepark in Venice, Subliminal Projects emerged as a gallery that championed emerging and marginalized artists, as a center for the community to spark dialogue about art, music and activism.
Now located in the historic neighborhood of Echo Park, Subliminal Projects continues to offer a platform for artistic exploration and innovation, while Juice Magazine continues to persevere as an independent print platform committed to focusing on the underground heroes deserving of credit all over the world.
Over the years, Juice has featured Shepard’s art on multiple occasions. In 2004, Juice Magazine had the opportunity to print an interview with Shepard Fairey by Skateboarding Hall of Fame inductee, Steve Olson.
In 2011, Juice spotlighted Shepard’s artwork in the Museum of Contemporary Art showcase “Art In The Streets”, which was the first major U.S. museum exhibition of the history of graffiti and street art, featuring 50 of the most dynamic artists from the graffiti and street art community.
In 2016, Juice was on hand to cover “Sons of Pompeii” featuring the work of C.R. Stecyk III Shepard Fairey and Chaz Bojórquez curated by the late great art champion, curator, publisher, writer and icon, Greg Escalante, at the Gregorio Escalante Gallery West.
Juice was front and center, in 2017, at opening night of the California Locos “Masters of Style” at Eastern Projects Gallery in LA featuring the work of Shepard Fairey, Mister Cartoon, Estevan Oriol, RETNA, SLICK, Robert Williams, Chaz Bojórquez, Dave Tourjé, John Van Hamersveld, Norton Wisdom and Gary Wong, curated by one of Shepard’s inspirations, pioneer of East L.A. Cholo style lettering and graffiti, Chaz Bojórquez. This extensive exhibition showcased these legendary SoCal artists whose compelling art offers an essential viewpoint of our beloved subcultures of surfing, skateboarding, graffiti, lowriders and music.
In 2017, Juice was thrilled to work with Shepard Fairey and Glen E. Friedman for a behind the scenes look at a special collaboration print featuring the surf skate style of one of the godfathers of Dogtown and the Z-Boys, Zephyr founder, Jeff Ho.
Photo by Arto Saari
That same year, Juice Magazine printed a Surf Skate Style edition, which explored the connection between skateboarding and surfing style and the influence of the early days of skating schoolyard banks.
Here are just a few words that speak to the legacy of style and its relevance to skateboarding…
We started skateboarding at the local school, which has really good banks. Once in a while, we’d get our parents to give us a ride there. As far as we knew, we didn’t know of any other skateboarders in the world that existed. We’d go to these places and there would be no one else there, but we were a pack. We’d skateboard at nighttime at the schools because we’d get kicked out so often in the daytime. That’s a part of my skateboarding history that I’m so proud of. We loved it so much that in order to do it we had to make it happen ourselves. – Stacy Peralta – JUICE MAGAZINE #68
“For me, style is everything.” – Shogo Kubo – JUICE MAGAZINE #55
“The school banks were common knowledge, so we would ride Kenter, Paul Revere and Bellagio. That was the epitome of what skateboarding was at that time… We had all these school banks we were riding, and there were some guys in other areas that had little banks here and there, but they didn’t have the banks that we had.” – Jim Muir – JUICE MAGAZINE #72
“We just checked in at the shop on certain days of the week and Skip would send us off to go skate Kenter or Revere. Then we’d all meet there and skate together. We just wanted to be skating banks… I didn’t really think much about being the only girl. I really just had so much fun skateboarding. Watching these guys and skateboarding with them, and going to the schools like Bellagio, Revere and Kenter. Kenter was my favorite.” – Peggy Oki – JUICE MAGAZINE #54
“There were no skateparks. Kenter Canyon, Bellagio and Paul Revere were like the first skate parks.” – Shawn Stern – Youth Brigade – JUICE MAGAZINE #55
“Style is where art meets skill. Anyone can acquire the skill. Style is intangible. Either you have it or you don’t.” – Solo Scott – JUICE MAGAZINE #75
“Style came first, then you learn the tricks, then you do it all on the concrete and in the ocean.” –Laura Thornhill Caswell – JUICE MAGAZINE #75
“I think we came up with a natural progression of skating with a surf style. Skating just emulated surfing and we would skate anywhere, driveway, hills, banks… it didn’t matter. The reality is that style is everything and the legacy speaks for itself.” – Marty Grimes – JUICE MAGAZINE #71
The connection between skateboarding and art has inspired this print based on a photo that Hugh Holland shot at the Kenter Banks in the ’70s, which has been transformed by Shepard Fairey to communicate the idea that, “Styles change. Style Endures.”
As humans, we are in a perpetual state of becoming. We are constantly interacting with change and being changed by everything around us. This is the same for skateboarding and art, as both constantly go through transitions.
As the challenges presented by the COVID 19 pandemic have caused financial strain for Juice and many others, we must adapt and find ways to roll forward by asking for help and finding solace and support from our friends and skate, surf, music and art family.
For more than a quarter of a century, Juice Magazine has maintained an uncensored voice for skateboarders, musicians, artists and surfers worldwide. With your assistance, Juice will continue to fight and share the enduring printed word into the future.
In skateboarding, when you fall, you get back up and try again. Skateboarding is all about constantly adapting to change and progressing. Nothing speaks more to this mantra of progression and continuity than Shepard Fairey’s art and compassion, for which we are so grateful.
Shepard’s love for skateboarding and art, as well as his philanthropy and fight for social justice, set a standard to which we can all aspire. Through his work, he takes the CMYK building blocks of 4-color process printing and creates revolutionary art with styles that are constantly changing and a style that will always endure.
Styles change. Style endures.
——
Help Save Juice GoFundMe link
https://www.gofundme.com/f/juice-magazine-could-use-your-back-up
Thank you!!!
