I've been surfing a lot recently. This fall season has been stellar for surf in the Bay Area, and one of my 2020 resolutions was to get pitted for the first time. I made it, today at the storm drain at Vicente in San Francisco! Thankful for the small personal victory.
I've been switching boards a lot recently, too. I have a 7'6" Bonzer, and 6' quad fin, a 9' performance longboard, and now, thanks to Callil, a 9'4" log. I've taken each out in the past month or so. I've been casually looking at other surf vehicles too, noticing a few folks out on surf kayaks in the lineup—a relative novelty—and investigating mat surfing. There's friction between folks who choose different vehicles: the surfers hate the boogie boarders, and the surfers have the stand-up paddleboarders, too, goes the stereotype. The foil boarders are the worst—they can catch the waves so early! And I'm sure everyone hates the surfers too. (The real purists are the bodysurfers—shoutout.) Really, it's mostly just annoyance at people choosing to do something different, some small meaningless beef between people all fighting for the same wave. Even between short and long surfboards there's a world of difference in approach.
But mostly I've been riding my 7'6" board. I'm 6'2" and despite having a 6' board, the 7'6" which feels like the closest to the proportions of my body. For various reasons, I've named the board "Buddy"—it feels like a second version of myself when I'm out in the ocean with it. (It's also the board that I push the hardest, as it is built best-equipped for intense conditions: a true partner in hard times.) I made some repairs to the board recently, and I thought of performing surgery on a human body.
These thoughts and the recent flurry about this obelisk in Utah reminded me of John McCracken. While I was a docent for the RISD Museum in college, one of my tours included one of McCracken's canonical "plank" pieces—a Grey Plank that lived in the modern wing of the museum. The Plank was a hard object to make engaging for a casual audience: it can seem so simple and stupid. Part of my spiel on the Plank was to note that it is about the proportions of an "average" human, in width and height. And, by resting on the floor, it interacts with other human bodies in its presence rather than existing as a monument, up on a pedestal, outside "human space." He's playing with historical associations with sculpture and bodies, I thought. What I found most engaging about the Plank is how a seemingly inhuman object—rectilinear, polished to perfection, mechanical grey—can feel human in its proportions, casual position in space, and reflection—acting as a mirror to the viewer.
Surfboards are not quite reflective, but they are much the same in their construction. The museum's description even mentions that the construction of McCracken's Plank is similar to that of a surfboard: layers of resin, polished smooth. The association between surfing and the Light and Space artists isn't new; Robert Irwin drew associations between his work and the particular perfect shine of polished cars and surfboards in the Southern California light.
In all this, I wonder if a gravitation towards surfboards is because, out of the various surf vehicles, they seem to be the option closest to the size of the human body. And we're built to be attracted to body-esque forms. Or, if not that, perhaps I just like seeing the waning sunset reflecting off the wet board surface; the intoxication of that cool, smooth resin.
Parked at Great Highway & Wawona,
Lukas
I've been switching boards a lot recently, too. I have a 7'6" Bonzer, and 6' quad fin, a 9' performance longboard, and now, thanks to Callil, a 9'4" log. I've taken each out in the past month or so. I've been casually looking at other surf vehicles too, noticing a few folks out on surf kayaks in the lineup—a relative novelty—and investigating mat surfing. There's friction between folks who choose different vehicles: the surfers hate the boogie boarders, and the surfers have the stand-up paddleboarders, too, goes the stereotype. The foil boarders are the worst—they can catch the waves so early! And I'm sure everyone hates the surfers too. (The real purists are the bodysurfers—shoutout.) Really, it's mostly just annoyance at people choosing to do something different, some small meaningless beef between people all fighting for the same wave. Even between short and long surfboards there's a world of difference in approach.
But mostly I've been riding my 7'6" board. I'm 6'2" and despite having a 6' board, the 7'6" which feels like the closest to the proportions of my body. For various reasons, I've named the board "Buddy"—it feels like a second version of myself when I'm out in the ocean with it. (It's also the board that I push the hardest, as it is built best-equipped for intense conditions: a true partner in hard times.) I made some repairs to the board recently, and I thought of performing surgery on a human body.
These thoughts and the recent flurry about this obelisk in Utah reminded me of John McCracken. While I was a docent for the RISD Museum in college, one of my tours included one of McCracken's canonical "plank" pieces—a Grey Plank that lived in the modern wing of the museum. The Plank was a hard object to make engaging for a casual audience: it can seem so simple and stupid. Part of my spiel on the Plank was to note that it is about the proportions of an "average" human, in width and height. And, by resting on the floor, it interacts with other human bodies in its presence rather than existing as a monument, up on a pedestal, outside "human space." He's playing with historical associations with sculpture and bodies, I thought. What I found most engaging about the Plank is how a seemingly inhuman object—rectilinear, polished to perfection, mechanical grey—can feel human in its proportions, casual position in space, and reflection—acting as a mirror to the viewer.
Surfboards are not quite reflective, but they are much the same in their construction. The museum's description even mentions that the construction of McCracken's Plank is similar to that of a surfboard: layers of resin, polished smooth. The association between surfing and the Light and Space artists isn't new; Robert Irwin drew associations between his work and the particular perfect shine of polished cars and surfboards in the Southern California light.
In all this, I wonder if a gravitation towards surfboards is because, out of the various surf vehicles, they seem to be the option closest to the size of the human body. And we're built to be attracted to body-esque forms. Or, if not that, perhaps I just like seeing the waning sunset reflecting off the wet board surface; the intoxication of that cool, smooth resin.
Parked at Great Highway & Wawona,
Lukas