VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA.- The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia presents “Skate Culture: The Art of Skateboarding,” on view through October 12, 2003. Co-curated by Los Angeles-based Marsea Goldberg, of New Image Art and CAC’s Brenda LaBier, the exhibition features art about and within skate culture. Goldberg has pioneered the genre. Featuring skater-artists including Jim Houser and Ed Templeton, Skate Culture provides a sideways look at the elements of skating that have Skate Culture: The Art of Skateboarding is providing insight into the creative art works of skateboarding subculture. The time frame of our focus begins in the early 1980s and continues to the present day. Skate Culture sheds light on a huge amount of raw, passionate, yet innocent artistic energy practiced with little or no expectation of financial reward. 

For the past several years, skateboarding, like never before in its fifty-year history, has grown exponentially. Skate Culture explores how skate art (of the past two decades in particular) has thus influenced mainstream culture in myriad ways - from street. Skate Culture also gives a nod to the wealth of pure creativity that has been floating up from the streets and into the galleries recently. Many skaters of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s forged a partnership that is still influencing a new generation of young artists like Barry McGee (Twist), Chris Johanson, Evan Hecox, Rich Jacobs and many more.

Most of the artists involved in Skate Culture share a common string: a need to exist creatively ina world full of "business as usual". The do-it-yourself approach and non-team effort of many skateboarders made it possible for this spontaneous explosion to thrive in times and bland environments. These individuals took the initiative to make it all happen for themselves simply because they wanted to-and had to-have fun and express themselves.

Several of the featured artists such as Neil Blender, Garry Davis, Todd Swank and Andy Jenkins self-published photocopied ’zines in the 1980s full of skateboarding, art, music, reviews, interviews, etc. Painting, taking photos, playing music working by day at major skate magazines to survive and support their personal artistic endeavors. Fun and self-expression was (and still is) the order of the day. Skate Culture offers a brief overview of yet another pocket in the vast universe of artistic creation and proves that youth is not always wasted on the young.