Surfing legend Herbie Fletcher shares his lifelong passion for making art. Recorded in San Clemente, California.
Transcript
0:12 - We got a lot of different boards in here. This a Lance Carson. He’s from Malibu. This is a Greg Noll from Manhattan. And, we got a Wardy down here, he’s from Laguna Beach. And a David Nuuhiwa nose rider right here, he was like the king of the nose in sixty-, in the sixties. Always in Huntington Beach. He really came on strong.
Title: “Surf Art”
0:42 - I’ve always made art from ceramics, you know, when I was a kid, like whales, you know, looking out at the Pacific Ocean and seeing whales I was fascinated, you know, and I made whales. I always painted the mountains. And, so then I was right into making surfboards, and sculpting surfboards, and then glassing ‘em with colors, pin lines, and painting ‘em.
Title: “’Wave Warriors’ video”
1:11 - So I made the first surf video that was out for sale in stores. It wasn’t the surf video. Nobody knew what to do with it, and I told ‘em, “put it by the cash register, so when they come up to pay for their goods they can see a surf video…Mom I need that surf video.” And they’d get the surf video and watch it, and so it was a like a training tape. It was a rock ’n roll surf video, so they’d watch that video and then go surfing. And, so that was, you know, surfing’s my art.
1:48 - After I created the Wave Warriors, the videos, we took pictures every year of all these great surfers, and they’d become monumental. I started collecting all the broken surfboards, because when I looked out of my window, and I lived out of the third floor at Pipeline, looked down after a good swell I’d see all these broken surfboards all over my yard. And I went, wow, that’s fantastic. And so I started collecting them, then I shipped ‘em back here to California to my warehouse and saved ‘em for years, and then started putting them together.
Cutaway: “Wrecktangle Art Installation”
2:25 - Collecting all these surfboards you get to see everybody’s logo and all the art that they’ve done on it, the dings.
Title: “Art Shows”
2:35 - Lots of shows, museum shows, and just had a show at Gagosian in New York, on Madison Avenue, that went really great, and exposed the culture to a whole ‘nother world out there, you know. You know I do a lot on surfing, but a lot of abstract, you know, I love the abstract. And, It’s just, you know, water’s abstract, surfings…the waves with the sunset in ‘em, you know, blows your mind, sitting on the beach watching the palm trees blow. You know, having water in your eye, paddling out, looking at waves, you know, just crystallizes, you know, it’s just beautiful.
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