Lines Converge: Manuel C. Caro’s Prismatic Path
Interview: Andrew Smith
M.Caro Portrait: Jay Watson
Shaping Bay photos and Art Direction: Ed Fladung
Hand drawn type: Beth Fladung
Drift has a new feature up, Andrew Smith interviews Manuel Caro of Mandala Custom Shapes and it’s a barn burner. Amazing read. Mani Caro simply and beautifully illustrates how the dharmic knowledge of handmade surfboards is silently transferred from older generations to new generations of shapers, ensuring that surfing retains its soul and karmic traditions. If you have any interest in surf culture beyond potato chips and competition results, click on over and read Mani’s piece.
When I was up in North County SD over the holidays, Rob70 and I paid a visit to Moonlight where Mani has his shaping room. I was fortunate enough to be able to slip in for a few minutes to take some photos. Unfortunately, Mani was home sick with a cold that day (I think). I was instantly drawn to Mani’s tools, shaping room detritus and wall decorations but the thing that struck me most about the shaping room was his profound collection of hand-foiled fins and template curves. A geometric collected history of surfboard shaping. I felt kinda guilty oogling his curve collection with my camera, like staring at someone else’s girl. But I knew I’d kick myself twenty years from now if I didn’t take the time to at least briefly document what I saw.
Like most Drift features, this article formed like Voltron: Andrew Smith put together the transcendent interview with Mani, Jay Watson took Mani’s portrait, my sister Beth hooked up the hand drawn type, I added my shaping bay photos and hooked the photo editing and art direction and of course the folks at Drift provided the stoke.
Go check it out.
Concept Crafts
Ryan Lovelace of Point Concept Surfboards adds a chapter to the Santa Barbara shaping tradition.
Words: Chris Preston
Photos: Morgan Maassen
Art Direction: Ed Fladung
There’s a huge new feature up on Drift, Chris Preston interviews Ryan Lovelace. Morgan Maassen hook’d all the photos and I laced the Art Direction.
Ryan Lovelace makes beautiful boards, he’s been specializing lately in hull making. His hulls have been making a lot of waves, lately. Chris Preston did an amazing job on the interview, it’s in-depth, entertaining and really gets in to what Ryan is doing, and how different that is. Morgan Maassen’s photos speak for themselves (kid has skillzzzz). And well, me? I just tried to make everyone look their best, like a nice jacket and tie. The pull-quote color blobs are a derivative of Ryan’s shaper mark, that appears on all his boards.
Posted in projects | Also tagged drift, interview, surfing |
Bodhi Oser has some beautiful skate/surf/snow tinged work. Art-Direction, Design and Photography are his domain and he does it inna fine style. His portfolio site is shortnsweet, exactly as it should be. His work appears effortless and minimal, deceptively so.
You’ll probably recognize Bodhi’s work from the Surf Life 32 to 02, Ron Church CA/HI 1960 to 1965 and Ron Church Surf Contest books published by Tom Adler’s book imprint. As well as work for Gravis, Quicksilver and a bunch of action sports related brands. Dude is heavyweight.
Further, I’ve written about Tom Adler before, his series of books are responsible for helping alter my perceptions of how surfing-related imagery can be presented. His approach to the subject has helped elevate surf photography to a high art level. Bodhi is a part of this process, these guys should be winning awards for their work.
Go drool, now.
A American Family Man: Re-Design: A Reader Poll
Vincent Skeltis was asked, informally, to re-design Foam (a surfing mag for girls). Skeltis has posted the brief, current/projected readers, the latest cover and a few of the covers from his re-design process. He’s asking people to comment on what he’s done so far (with the disclaimer that the logo is still very rough). Skeltis is letting us all in on his process, which is awesome. It can also be a double-edged sword, so in that sense he’s being very brave (and silently hoping no one skewers him, anonymously, in the comments).
Skeltis has some amazing photography and art-direction over at his portfolio site. I’m sure that whatever designs he ends up presenting, regardless of how they’re eventually implented (or not), his art-direction will be top-notch.
[via APE]
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Update: It seems that Foam had Skeltis pull down the blog entry. understandable. well, I guess i’ll leave this up for posterity sake.
gato heroi? we believe in hand making product ourselves applying our personal taste and flavor, putting an emphasis on color and design
I’ve seen the name “gato heroi” floated around the interwebs recently and didn’t really think anything of it. i guess the off-beat name just kinda bounced off the soft-tissue deflector shield. Last night I happened upon the website for this semi-faceless crew of shapers/boardriders. I was pleasantly suprised. I’m digging their whole aesthetic. low tech, intentionally vague and mumblingly wordy. I can’t speak on the boards, but I like the artistic direction they’ve chosen. It’s always nice to see someone pushing in a different direction.
