ARTISTS
VCJ Vernon Courtland Johnson 
Matt French Volcom family member Matt French was, to the best of my knowledge, born at an early age. From there, he got older. At the age of 13, after borrowing friends' boards for some time, Matt was able to scrounge up enough loot to buy his own skateboard, with 8 bored holes in it. Upon plugging up those holes with rolly-thing attachement devices, Matt discovered a route...a Northwest passage of sorts...by which he could skate the intergallactic snake-run into the year 2008. These days, when he's not flying through the air, or rolling on the not-air, he's spending time with his family. Additional time is rendered from dark-matter and angel hair using a secret technique of alchemy called: "nonsense". A fair share of that time is used to develope skate graphic ideas...most of which are just clay pigeons for "the man behind the pistol": Chicken. The rest of the time is divided up like a cherry pirate, into semi-triangular art servings for Lib Technologies snowboards, Super Rat cycle mantlers, and in a big way: Volcom.
-written in the 3rd person by the 1st person in like a second
The year is 1988; I’m a fresh faced, virginal twelve-year-old who loves skating more than life itself. My banana board has been cast aside and I am on the real thing, grip tape and all. Mum shells out cold hard cash for the latest edition of Skatin’ Life, and Lee Ralph is on the cover.
The year is 2006; I am a slightly weathered man with a receding hairline. I still love skating. I am staring an Australian skating icon in the face. His name is Lee Ralph, and it dawns upon me that it has taken me 18 years to get to this place in time. What is most refreshing about this intimidating looking man is how nice he actually is. What I thought I knew about Lee Ralph, and what I actually found out about him are two very different things. He is living proof to never judge a book by its cover.
JD: You were a hero to an entire generation of skaters in the 80s and an Australian skating icon, but you seemed to go quite underground for the past decade, what have you been up to?
LR: After I stopped doing so much skating I moved into doing a lot of drinking. The reason being, I stopped skating and I had always skated my whole life. I started skating when I was about seven and so I started doing things I had never done before. I was straight edge until I was 22 years old, I didn’t drink alcohol and had never tried marijuana or anything like that so I caught up on a lot of that which took a couple of years of hard flogging. Then I found that I was getting a bit empty because it didn’t fill the void that the loss of skating had left behind. Then I started to focus my attention of wood carving and got into the arts through the wood carving …
JD: Wood carving, wow …
LR: Yeah my dad was a wood carver; I have been around wood carvers since I was born. Since before I was born my father carved traditional Maori woods.
JD: What’s the major focus of your wood carving?
LR: To date it has been Polynesian and Maori. Learning about their culture, or my culture, as I am a cross breed of Irish, Scottish and Maori and a few other blood lines. The ones that I have come to learn about through the family tree are the Irish and the Maori.
JD: How long has it taken you to graft your skills, it’s really not an easy thing to learn?
LR: It’s such a deep question because art is never ending. It’s not like skating where you can look back and say ten years ago I could grind this far (uses hands to indicate about 40 cm) and then ten years from now say, well I can grind this far (stretches arms as far as he can). Sometimes I will pull off pieces of art that I personally think are awesome, but other people might not be satisfied by them. You can satisfy yourself in art with a low level of so-called skills, where as in skating you can’t do that. You have to have a high level of skill in skating to get that satisfaction but with art even a beginner can pull off something that makes them feel completely whole about what they are doing and that they are on track to becoming good at it. With wood carving though you have to have a lot more skill. With painting you can really slap paint on a wall and call it something. You can’t do that with wood, you have to actually… well there are all these defined rules …
JD: There are no mistakes with wood …
LR: Yeah.
JD: Would you say that art is your biggest influence now and is there anything else outside of art and skating that you do?
LR: No, there isn’t really … Well music is quite a big part …
JD: What kind?
LR: I play a lot of instruments, like bass and guitar. I find playing music similar to my other interests. The skating was the first thing that encouraged me to be really open minded to things. My skating is quite open minded. It’s really that open mindedness that leads you to other things in life that are equally about being open minded. Like art. There’s a really strong thread there.
JD: We heard that you have been overseeing Globe’s new creative project up in the Gold Coast called the Loft, what have you got planned there?
LR: I didn’t go in there with any plans. Peter and Stephen Hill who run Globe, I have known for a very long time and they really look after me well, asked me to move some of my art into their space and I said that would be great. I went and had a look at it and it got a really high presentation level. It looks really cool … How do I explain it …? It’s like for people who like collecting dolls and stuff like that, like trekkies and stuff like that …
JD: Like Amos toys and designer vinyl …
LR: Yeah exactly, like that. There will be a lot of super-cool dude names displaying their work there like Natas Kaupas and Mark Gonzales and I am really excited about it. There are a lot of fellas that I haven’t been in touch with. I’m quite lazy and like to sit in my house and do my art.
JD: Tell me about Natas. I never thought that he would have gone into art as well as he did. I remember him back in ‘Wheels of Fire’ and then all these years later I started seeing some of his designs and layouts and thinking shit he’s really good …
LR: Yeah, he is good. He’s a really good bloke, a really hot surfer …
JD: He always used to look like a surfer…
LR: Exactly, the way he used to skate. I never used to like his skating but I can look back now and say it was cool. At the time I used to think it was way too rough, you know the foot hangers; it was totally surfed out but not like Christian Hosoi or someone. You see Christian Hosoi can’t surf, he is not a surfer. He’s got the most surfed out style in skateboarding in my opinion, and a lot of people would agree, but the thing is he doesn’t do surfing so his surfing style doesn’t come from surfing. It comes from living in Venice Beach, growing up at Marina del Rey skate park with the first breed of skaters, and falling in love with it and being unable to move away from it because he didn’t want to. So he stuck with it and he was the most stylish pro around.
JD: It was so religious back then …
LR: Yeah and I fail to fall short of saying that it is exactly the same now. I don’t think that skateboarding changes. I get in rooms with guys, and I always try to be positive, that’s not why I am saying this, but I get in a room with the older guys and they say ‘these guys now don’t know what it was like …’ Well that’s just fucking insane, what sort of mad man would say that? You would not have to know and understand what your skateboard is about to say that. Skateboarding is riding your four wheels around. If you have picked up the thing and played with it, it’s grabbed you and taken you into its world. You can’t start claiming that you have a greater affinity to it than other people around just because you are in a new time or another time.
Roy Gonzalez A self-described "rebel with a pen", Roy Gonzalez has created brilliant, mind-blowing art since his youth on the cutting edge of extreme sports. Championship surfer, freethinker and fashionista, Roy has fused satirical commentary into a world where the music, waves and politics collide.
Vivid and humorous, Roy represents the best of the underground art world that inspired him as a kid growing up in Southern California. In addition to the Surf Crazed comic book series he created in the 80's, his artwork has graced the surf, skate and snowboards of the legends of these sports as well on award-winning CD covers for Etta James and a host of rock and blues musicians.
Roy's travels and long residences in Hawaii and Latin America and longtime surfing experience have given him a unique perspective into the global surf culture, its traditions and roots. He lives the life of a true artist, which isn’t always easy. So if you see Roy Gonzalez at a club, make sure to buy him a drink-be a patron of the arts.
Roy now resides in San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico where he continues to live the surfing dream of warm water and good waves and working daily from his ocean view studio.
