D*Face interview
HUCK talks to the renowned UK street artist about his new collaboration with Real Skateboards.
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Street artist D*Face has been daubing the walls of his native London with spray paint, stencils and posters for many years and creating pieces that routinely subvert cultural iconography and beliefs.
His work has included reimagining £10 notes, giving Queen Elizabeth a punk makeover and adding some Beastie Boys-style bling to a portrait of Jesus. In addition to this, he founded the much-celebrated Stolen Space Gallery in East London, providing a platform for other street artists to exhibit their work.
Coinciding nicely with the influence of skateboarding on his work, he recently collaborated with Real Skateboards on a series of three pro decks for team riders Peter Ramondetta, Justin Brock and Dennis Busenitz with each featuring some of the skaters' favourite things including zombies, Darth Vader and Colonel Sanders.
HUCK caught up with him to find out more about the project and talk decks, Jim Phillips and the skate influence of Back to the Future.
HUCK: How did the collaboration with Real Skateboards come about?
D*Face: Pretty simple really. I received and email from Jim Thiebaud at Real out the blue asking if I'd be interested in creating some graphics for them. I was more than aware of Real and had huge respect for them as a brand and their mentality. I was also more than aware of Jim and Tommy [Guerrero], the founders or the company, both of whom had been prominent in the skate scene when I was a young skater and skating more 'seriously'. I didn't need asking twice. I was 100% down.
Each deck in made up of a number of images. How did you go about choosing what to include?
Jim really liked the striped body of work that I'd produced. I explained that each of the pieces has a back story behind it. Whilst not immediately obvious, each tells a tale. It was perfect to create a 'portrait' or 'personality portrait' – a portrait made up of elements not just of the physical characters or that person, but also the mental, psychological elements of their personality. He really liked this idea and supplied me with things that each of the riders were into. I have to say he nailed it. So with each board, I started by drawing up the actual riders eyes – the eyes being the windows to the soul. So to expand, [Justin] Brock, for example, comes from Kentucky and has a little goatie beard so I used the KFC Colonels’ chin. Brock always skates with his finger pointing so I included a finger pointing on a broken arm. He also likes chasing women and strippers so I had a mushroom cloud breaking out his brain and forming a cloud of breasts – sex on the mind. He wears a plaid shirt so there's a panel of plaid with a puddle of jizz on it. Finally, he wears a beanie hat so there's a beanie hat atop the mushroom cloud. I know it's twisted but his 'interests' were given to me and it was left for me and my distorted thinking to interpret.
The Brock piece was turned in a ramp for him to skate. What went into that?
It was an idea I threw at Jim, I wanted to connect what Real does, the pro rider and what I do. I wanted the collaboration to have a physical foundation that cemented the project so I said to Jim why don't we build a ramp or I'll paint a wall and get one of the riders to hit it. I was actually angling for a trip out to SF to hang with all the Real crew but that became logistically impossible. However, Jim said if I can scout a spot, he'll get some guys to help build the ramp and he'd fly Brock over to session it. Within a week of this conversation, the ramp was built, I'd painted it and Brock was skating it. It was testament to the fact none of us just talk about ideas: we do them.
When did you get into skateboarding?
I was 11. I mean, I had a plastic board that I'd sit on and push around since I was a toddler, but I'd say properly when I was 11. I went to the cinema and saw Back to the Future. It was the first time I'd seen someone skating a 'wide' board on film. I came out the cinema and that was that, I had to have a 'wide skateboard'. I nagged my mum ‘til she buckled and on my birthday we drove to Surrey Skateboards in Woking. It was a hell of a drive but she didn't want to drive into London, so it was the next closest spot. Walking in that shop was truly amazing. The smell, the vibe and all the boards hung on the wall is a memory that will stay with me forever.
What was your first board?
Well, my parents had no money, so all the boards hung on the wall by Santa Cruz were well out of her budget. I remember seeing a Santa Cruz Ray Meyer freestyle board with the most amazing graphics – by Jim Phillips I much later discovered – and I really wanted that. The board alone was £40 which is about what they cost today, so back then it was a fortune. I had to get a 'shop special' called a Zig Zag which was basically a blank deck which they spray-painted zig zag stripes on and a variflex set up. In truth, it was shit, but at the time it seemed amazing. It was actually really good to have that board, because the graphics were non-existent so I painted that board over and over again until I saved up enough money for a pro board.
Were there any particular decks or skate artists that inspired you as an artist?
Out-and-out Jim Phillips. Unknowingly at the time, all the ads and graphics I saw in Thrasher that I thought were the sickest thing I'd ever seen were by Jim Phillips. He inspired me to draw and for years I wondered who got to create skate graphics. I just knew I wanted to do that. That first deck I saw as a kid - Santa Cruz Ray Meyers –I thought was so rad: the Rob Roskopp face, the Slasher logo, the Screaming Hand. Jim Phillips has created so many memorable graphics that just his line quality is inspirational.
Who are your favourite skaters and why?
As a kid, I always really liked Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerrero, Lance Mountain, Steve Alba and Mark Gonzales. I was lucky enough to meet and skate with Steve Alba last year. We jumped walls to skate backyard pools. Well, I watched and kept look out whilst he skated! The sort of thing I dreamt about doing as a kid, you know. He's still riding every day, finding pools and breaking in to bail the water out and skate them. He's got to be in his mid-40s with two kids and still completely rad and on point.
A lot of people refer to skateboarding as an art instead of a sport. Is that something you agree with?
I believe it’s an 'art form' without doubt. Obviously, it’s also considered a sport but it was never really seen as this when I grew up skating. It was outside of sport which is what makes it what it is. It's still something that straddles many worlds, at least not being commercial at the same time as being underground which it somehow does incredibly well. It's also spawned a ton of incredible artists, both on and off board.
See more behind-the-scenes photos from this project in Real's photo flip book.
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D*Face interview (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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