Free Friends & Families Drop-In Day: May

Craft in America Invites you and your young ones to participate in our Friends & Families Drop-In Day on May 16, 2026 from 1:00 pm to 5:30 pm.

On this special community day, participants will be guided to discover the history and craftsmanship behind the evolution of the skateboard in this hands-on, all-ages experience!

Get creative as you create your own skateboard designs, piece together inventive builds, and put your creativity, design, and craftsmanship skills to the test through mixed media deck art, scavenger hunts, crossword puzzles, word searches, and skateboard trivia!

We hope to see you this month for some fun mixed media, skateboard deck designing! The Craft in America Center (West Hollywood adjacent) is open Tuesday-Saturday, from 12-6 pm.

Free Friends & Families Drop-In Day: April

Craft in America Invites you and your young ones to participate in our Friends & Families Drop-In Day on April 25, 2026 from 1:00 pm to 5:30 pm.

On this special community day, participants will be guided to discover the history and craftsmanship behind the evolution of the skateboard in this hands-on, all-ages experience!

Get creative as you create your own skateboard designs, piece together inventive builds, and put your engineering, design, and craftsmanship skills to the test through mixed media deck art, scavenger hunts, word searches, and skateboard trivia!

We hope to see you this month for some fun mixed media, skateboard deck designing! The Craft in America Center (West Hollywood adjacent) is open Tuesday-Saturday, from 12-6 pm.

Opening Reception—Cowboy Craft: Traditional Art of the West

Please join us to celebrate the opening of Cowboy Craft, featuring artwork made by bonafide member of the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association. Founding member, saddle maker, and NEA Fellow Cary Schwarz helped to organize the exhibition and appears in the Craft in America WEST episode.

Top: Beau Compton, Cowboy Stein.

Opening Reception—Marques Hanalei Marzan: Entwine

Please join us to celebrate the premiere of Marzan’s solo exhibition on the mainland. He appears in the Craft in America WEST episode. The exhibition offers a rare chance to see his intricate work in person. Marzan will give an Artist Talk during the reception.

Online Artist Talk by Conceptual Skateboarder Abe Dubin (Orange Man) and Friends

Abraham Dubin, better known to the international skateboarding community as Orange Man, is a professional skateboarder for the Boston-based experimental skateboard troupe Fancy Lad. Dubin, who is the exhibition advisor to Vehicles of Expression, will speak about skateboarding as a world of pure imagination. Dubin will be joined by fellow artists, performers, and skaters Alice Hixon Kirk and Joe LeDoux who will also discuss their own work.

About Abe Dubin:

As a youth Dubin studied theatre, drawing and painting, and begrudgingly participated in team sports. Upon receiving a fluorescent green skateboard from the used sports store, a shift occurred in which suddenly self expression seemed to harmoniously infuse with rigorous physical exertion. Parking lots became stages for balletic performance, transforming the mundane modernity of suburban life into a playground of limitless potential.

Dubin has exhibited his skateboard artwork and made live demonstrations across the US from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston to galleries and skateshops in Pittsburgh, PA, Iowa, Las Vegas and Seattle. Abraham has collaborated on video projects for Adult Swim, Vice, Thrasher Magazine and Red Bull and premiered short films at the Vladimir Film Festival in Croatia.

As a husband and father, Dubin’s home studio serves as a woodshop and laboratory for abstract kinetic sculptures the he and his contemporaries refer to as “board manipluations.” Deeply influenced by the Duchampian ethos of the ready-made and Jim Henson’s warm rich world of play and imagination, Abraham’s practice is one of reinterpreting everyday objects and architecture and allowing his skateboard puppetry to organically flourish.

Alice Hixon Kirk is a musician and fabricator based in Western Massachusetts. She creates experimental skateboards to encourage speculation, improvisation, and play. She is passionate about using design to facilitate new strategies for exploring the world. Kirk has engaged with her local skate community through teaching skateboard design and fabrication workshops and fabricating custom park features for Skate Haven at MASS MoCA. 

Joe Ledoux grew up in Hubbardston, MA and received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Ledoux is a visual and performance artist who blends his three favorite artforms: sleight of hand, skateboarding, and painting. He is a member of the McBride Magic and Mystery School in Las Vegas and performed with Le Grand David, which held the Guinness world record for the longest running magic show. Ledoux has exhibited at The West End Museum and GBH’s Digital Mural. He performed at The Institute of Contemporary Art and was featured as a Polly Thayer Starr Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Please register to join the webinar.

Craft Circle May

The Craft in America Center has been holding a recurring Craft Circle gathering. This is a time to work on a smallish handwork project in community with others. Please bring a relatively mess-free project that doesn’t require a lot of clean up. Examples include: embroidery, watercolor, quilting, crochet, ceramic sgraffito, etc.

Free to all ages! Maximum of 15 attendees. Save your seat by emailing rsvp@craftinamerica.org.

Skateboarding the Canyons, Plains, and Asphalt-banked Schoolyards of Coastal Los Angeles in the 1970s

Pioneering skateboarders reacted to newly created subdivisions throughout Southern California in the 1960s and 70s. In their pursuit of new surfaces upon which to express bodily movement, they exploited a capital-intensive urban landscape to create a sport that today has tremendous economic, political, and cultural implications. This talk will focus on archival material drawn from Skateboarder Magazine from 1975 to 1980 to help situate the ways in which skateboards sought out particular urban spaces and responded to them in particular kinetic ways. The skateboarders and those who documented their emerging sport through photography and writing, expressed deep awareness and understanding of urban space. Topography and new suburban morphologies influenced their understanding of, and reaction to these spaces. The asphalt-banked schoolyards of Los Angeles in particular provided an unintended playground for skateboarders and served as a starting point for the modern-era of the sport.

Lorne Platt focuses on urban history, city planning, and cultural geography. Over the last few years, he has examined skateboarding and suburban development, alongside other forms of alternative movement and micro-mobility (including scooters and e-bikes). Another area of interest is the transformation of semi-natural landscapes into cultural/human spaces, including golf courses, university campuses, and sports stadiums. Lorne holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is currently a Lecturer in Urban Planning at UC Irvine and Geography at UCLA.

If you would like to attend in person, please send an email to rsvp@craftinamerica.org.

To attend online, please register. Times are PST.

Images courtesy of Hugh Holland (M and B Photo)

Build it and Ride it: How Skateboards Began

Todd Huber, skateboard historian and founder of the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame, will present a brief look into the handspun origins of one of the world’s most popular sports. From metal wheels and 2 by 4’s, stolen roller skates, and a plethora of makeshift materials and construction approaches, skateboards are rooted in the DIY, from how they are made and built, to a total outlook, philosophy, and culture. This talk will explore how sidewalk surfing and American ingenuity went from garages to the Olympics.

Huber is the Founder and CEO of the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame and a lifelong advocate for skateboarding culture. In 1997, he opened the world’s first Skateboarding Museum in Simi Valley, California, preserving the sport’s history and honoring its pioneers. Through the creation of the annual Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Huber has built one of skateboarding’s most respected institutions, attracting thousands of fans and industry legends from around the world. His leadership continues to elevate and celebrate the legacy of skateboarding globally.

If you would like to attend in person, please send an email to rsvp@craftinamerica.org.

To attend online, please register.

Creative Perspectives with Ferne Jacobs

This small group workshop will be for anyone who has taken beginning fiber techniques previously. Those who have learned weaving and off-loom fiber techniques from other teachers are welcome. The intention is for students to be working on a piece of their choice or starting one from scratch. The group will discuss creative approaches for pushing the piece forward and each person will receive individual attention.

Ferne will work with students for the day, advancing the skills from various techniques the students have already learned. Basic technique will not be taught. Discussion and exploration of the creative process and development of forms will be the focus, expanding the technical knowledge already gained.

Students will provide their own materials.

The workshop fee is $125.00. Limit of 9 students.

Parking: Since most of the parking in the area has a two hour limit, the most convenient option is to pay to park at the Beverly Connection less than a block west on W. Third Street. Handicapped parking is available behind Freehand.

Opening Reception—Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard

Celebrate with us as we open this playful and boundary-pushing exhibition about the development of the skateboard’s very structure. From its inception with cobbled-together lumber and rollerskate parts, to contemporary high-tech renditions, and cutting edge, eclectic, expressive variations—it’s all here!

Remarks by Abe Dubin (aka Orange Man), skateboarder and multimedia artist. Dubin will address the “why” that fuels skateboard innovation and how the melding of imagination with physical objects (and the altering thereof) is the essence of skateboarding. 

If you would like to attend, please send an email to rsvp@craftinamerica.org.