From repurposed wheels to shag carpet, a new exhibit looks at the origins of skateboards
Spectrum 1 News
By Tara Lynn Wagner
April 10, 2026
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Before they were a 3-and-a-half billion-dollar global industry, skateboards started with the humblest beginnings.
“They’re definitely tiny,” Emily Zaiden said, looking at two small handmade skateboards from the mid-1900s.
Zaiden is the director and curator of the Craft in America Center. Their current exhibit, “Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard,” sees skateboarding as a craft story — one driven not initially by artisans but by kids using repurposed wheels.
“[They] were detached from roller skates and attached to planks of all kinds,” Zaiden said. “Any kind of discarded wood, everything from old furniture that people would break down, and then nail those roller skate wheels onto them.”
Using so many nails.
“Beautifully spaced as far as those nails,” she said. “So there’s some craftsmanship involved in that, certainly.”
Over time, the wheels evolved from metal to clay to urethane. The shape and use of boards changed as Southern California became the epicenter of skateboard manufacturing and culture.
But what never changed, Zaiden explained, is the way skateboards were used as a way to showcase one’s personal identity.
“The idea of decorating the surface of a skateboard is something that was there all along,” she said. “It was this extra canvas, essentially, for expression.”
One from the 1960s, for instance, is actually covered in shag carpet. Zaiden can’t help but laugh.
“The creativity, the humor, the outlandishness and just total fun of what you can do with a skateboard,” she said. “And that was what we really wanted to highlight with the show: the range of creativity.”
Mark X Farina is one artist involved in the exhibit, which, in addition to skateboards past and present, also includes conceptual works of art.
“I think growing up, other than comic books, skateboards were my first intro into seeing art and art that was nontraditional,” he said.
Farina, a longtime resident of SoCal, actually grew up skateboarding in Western Pennsylvania.
“We would just find the largest hill we could and try to survive going down it,” he said with a laugh. “One of my first skateboards had California Dreaming cut out of the grip tape. It was destiny, maybe, that I made it out here to California to live.”
Farina still rides between his home and his art studio on the west side, where he creates what he calls unrideable pieces — attaching wheels to found, often natural materials like palm fronds or coconuts, even tribal art and taxidermy.
He’s not just fascinated by skateboards as objects, but also by the world around them.
“Looking at that culture and looking at the art that came from the streets and into skateboarding is really inspirational,” Farina said.
The free exhibit is open to the public, and Zaiden loves hearing from visitors about their own memories, which they happily share, caught in the nostalgia of the display, which includes many pieces on loan from the Skateboard Hall of Fame in Simi Valley.
What You Need To Know
“Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard,” currently on exhibit at the Craft in America Center, sees skateboarding as a craft story that began with kids using repurposed roller skate wheels
Over time, the wheels evolved from metal to clay to urethane, and the shape and use of boards changed as Southern California became the epicenter of skateboard manufacturing
Besides an array of vintage skateboards, many on loan from the Skateboard Hall of Fame, the exhibit also includes conceptual works of art inspired by skateboards and the culture around them
“Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard” runs through May 30
Original article here.
Craft in America exhibition shows expressive side of skateboards
Beverly Press/Park La Brea News
March 12, 2026
The Craft in America Center presents “Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard” from March 14–May 30.
The exhibition is among the first in the U.S. to focus on the crafted innovations of skateboards, from their inception in Southern California to contemporary, irreverent expressions from artists across the nation. Where other exhibitions have focused on deck art and visual culture of skateboarding, “Vehicles of Expression” focuses on the historical development of the skateboard as a constructed object – from rough-and-ready homemade inventions with lumber, nails and repurposed wheels to contemporary high-tech, ecologically-conscious uses of materials and conceptual works.
Through choices of materials and finishing approaches, artists imbue boards with style and meaning. Some skateboards are made to be cherished as gorgeous objects and others are made for artful performance stunts, departing radically from the sport’s competitive aspect. With skating’s spirit of undaunted exploration and ingenuity, the exhibition celebrates a diversity of approaches. The show expands definitions of craft, art and performance by presenting multiple vantage points on skateboards.
An opening reception with remarks by multimedia artist Abe Dubin will be held on Saturday, March 14, from 3-5 p.m. “Build It and Ride: How Skateboards Began,” an in-person and online talk by Todd Huber, skateboard historian and founder of the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame, will be held on April 11, from 3-4 p.m.
“Skateboarding the Canyons, Plains and Asphalt-banked Schoolyards of Coastal Los Angeles in the 1970s” with scholar Lorne Platt on the evolution of skateboarding environments in suburban developments will be held on April 18 from 11 a.m.-noon. Additional in-person and virtual talks by skateboard historians, makers, artists and performances will take place in conjunction with the exhibition.
The Craft in America Center is located at 8415 W. Third St. For information, visit craftinamerica. org/exhibition/vehicles-of-expression-the-craft-of-skateboarding.
Today on AirTalk: SoCal History: Skateboarding
LAist/Airtalk with Larry Mantle
3/9/26
SoCal History: A look at the origins of skateboard design
Southern California is the birthplace of a plethora of American inventions and innovations, chief among them: the humble skateboard. Four wheels, a plank of wood, and some metal bits to tie it all together, and boom: you have a mode of transportation that’s relatively easy to learn but incredibly tough to master. Skateboarding and skateboard culture began in Southern California back in the 1950s, and took hold of the cultural zeitgeist later in the century. Now, a new exhibit at the Craft in America Center in Mid City is exploring the creative, innovative, and sometimes wonky designs that have blessed Southern California’s sidewalks for decades. Joining Larry this morning for more on this exhibit and the history of skateboard design are Todd Huber, skateboard historian and founder of the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame, and Emily Zaiden, Director and lead curator of the Craft in America Center, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization founded in 2004 focused on original handcrafted work.
The Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard exhibition is running from March 14 through May 30 at the Craft In America Center in Mid City. More information is available here.
Craft in America announces skateboard exhibition, Vehicles of Expression
Woodworking Network
By Dakota Smith
March 6, 2026
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Craft in America, a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization founded in 2004 to promote original handcrafted work, is hosting Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard. The exhibit will be one of the first museum exhibitions in the U.S. to focus on the crafted innovations of skateboards, starting with their inception in Southern California and ranging to contemporary, irreverent expressions from artists across the nation.
Beginning March 14 through May 30, Abe Dubin, skateboarder and multimedia artist, 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.
Where other exhibitions have focused on deck art and visual culture of skateboarding, Vehicles of Expression focuses on the historical development of the skateboard as a constructed object; from rough-and-ready, homemade inventions with lumber, nails, and repurposed wheels, to contemporary high-tech, ecologically-conscious uses of materials, and ultimately, performative and conceptual works that perpetuate its mischievousness and spirit of continual exploration.
From its very inception the skateboard has been the product of MacGyvering things together, drawing from hockey, roller skating, surfing and go carts. This exhibition will be one of the very first to substantively present skateboards as material culture and as handcrafted objects of artistic expression. In terms of design, material, and construction, skateboards are some of the most common, widespread crafted objects in our world, yet they have generally been overlooked by museums. Skateboards can be artfully made and used for equally artful performative acts. Intended to show wear and tear as badges of pride, these carefully crafted objects exist in a state of potential ephemerality. This show will expand definitions of craft, art, and performance by looking at this beloved and familiar object. Arguably one of LA’s biggest cultural exports, the show will focus on the artistry and history of the handmade, handshaped skateboard.
Some skateboards are made to be cherished simply as gorgeous objects and others made for artful performance—stunts of deconstruction and midair transformation engineered into the boards—in each case, departing radically from the the sport’s competitive aspect.
With skating’s spirit of undaunted exploration and ingenuity, the exhibition celebrates its diversity of approaches—being both trickster and diplomat. Intended to show wear and tear as badges of pride, these carefully crafted objects exist in a state of potential ephemerality. This show will expand definitions of craft, art, and performance by presenting multiple vantage points on this well loved and ubiquitous object.
If you would like to attend, send an email to rsvp@craftinamerica.org
Original article here.
Craft in America Center’s tool exhibition extends through February
The Beverly Press
February 5, 2026
The Craft in America Center has extended the exhibition “Tools of the Trades: American Handmade Implements & Devices” through Feb. 28.
The exhibition is the first of its kind to highlight beautifully designed, hand-crafted tools made by contemporary toolmakers in the United States. It is the first in a series of exhibitions for Handwork 2026, a nationwide semiquincentennial collaboration celebrating the diversity of craft that defines America.
Artists, particularly craftspeople, rely heavily on tools in the creation of their work. Some processes might require implements that are very idiosyncratic to an artist’s process and that are not simply available at the hardware store. “Tools of the Trades: American Handmade Implements & Devices” focuses on contemporary, handmade tools, made by artists distinctly for craft processes with extreme attention to craftsmanship and design. Vintage tools will round out the selection.
Prior to mass production, makers and artists fabricated their own implements as needed. In doing so, they might decide to add beauty to the functional tool with decoration. “Tools of the Trade” celebrates the ingenuity born of necessity and the special narratives in the hand-crafted. The objects pertain to a wide scope of crafts including ceramics, textiles, hot glass, wood working and metal, as well as niche fields within them, such as ironwork or spinning.
Participating artists include Jeff Amundson; Randy Augsburger; Jim Austin, of Alchemy Metalworks; Brent Bailey; Brien Beidler; Bosworth Spindles; Elia Bizzarri; Med Chandler; Saign Charlestein; Dennis Dusek; Dyakcraft; Troy Evans; Janet Fox, of Handywomanshop; Seth Gould; Max Grossman; Spencer Hamann; and Kelly Harris. Also included are Arlen Heginbotham; Indian Lake Artisans; Ben Jackel; Rachel Kedinger; Clark Kellog; Andrea and Chuck Kennington, of NC Black Co.; Jay Burnham Kidwell; Kalia Kliban; Anna Koplik; Will Larranaga; Tom Latané; Terry Lee; Shanna Leino; Robert Liu; Jim Moore; Liza Nechamkin; Potter USA; Douglas Pryor; William R. Robertson; Eleanor Rose; Fabiano Sarra; Reid Schwartz; Michael Sherrill, with Mudtools; Elias Sideris; Randy Stromsoe; Tony Swatton; Dossain Valencia; Watanabe & Co.; and John Williams, of Guildwerks.
Craft in America is located at 8415 W. Third St. For information, visit craftinamerica.org.
May 2025 In Memoriam: Gail M. Brown
Craft in America warmly recognizes the recent passing of Art Historian Gail M. Brown. Among many things, Gail was an enthusiastic curator of contemporary craft and an educator whose (60+) exhibitions work spanned over 25 years across all regions of the U.S.A. Craft in America’s Center especially recognizes her as a longtime annual supporter of our overall organization. We also honor her generosity in donating her sizable art book collection to our growing Craft Library—her donated contributions have since helped create a Special Collections mini-collection of rare and unique exhibition catalogs and paper ephemera. Craft in America remains grateful for Gail’s contributions and impact within the Arts, and we send our condolences to her family and friends. As an effusive collaborator and proponent of the Arts, Gail M. Brown will be sorely missed.
Winter ‘25 FEATHER EXHIBITIONS : ART LIBRARY DISPLAY
This winter / spring the Craft in America Center is exhibiting innovative feather-based artworks by Boris Huang, a Taiwanese-Hawaiian featherwork artist and Chris Maynard, a biologist/birder feather artist. Our Education Coordinator, Sam Sermeño, has curated an interactive library display to accompany technically distinct and cross-cultural approaches to feather art. During the exhibition opening, the Center was fortunate to have both artists present. Maynard gave an in-depth presentation on his work and Huang gave a detailed feather lei demonstration which will be featured in our Craft Video Dictionary, a new learning resource for craft and art techniques across mediums.
Several of the displayed magazines and books highlight long standing featherwork art forms, from Mardi-Gras to Hawaiian lei-hulu art traditions shared by renown matriarchs. This collection explores the dynamism of feather work’s niche art culture, craft techniques, and its deep impact on different regions’ community expression; from the ornately feathered and beaded regalia and parade culture of New Orleans, to several schools of Hawaiian indigenous featherwork traditions, to more contemporary and fiber-cut dimensional feathered installations.
We hope you enjoy browsing this selection of reading materials, and please know that the invitation to browse our library remains open-ended. Thanks to generous book donations and ongoing curatorial scholarship, our library warmly welcomes the curious passerby, armchair art historian, artists & creatives across all mediums and practices.
Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (2015) dives into various museology research, curatorial insight, and cultural critique of what is considered the origin of Hawaiian featherwork among royalty ranging from the 18th to 19th centuries. This book pays homage to the hand-techniques required in constructing these various feather cloaks and adornments. Ample parts of this book share accounts and research about the cultural recognition of fetherwork’s craft and how this featherwork secured Hawaiian chiefs spiritual protection and prosperity for centuries. According to most art historians, few royal feather artworks (known as nā hulu ali‘i) are known to survive outside of various art museum and private collection settings. Viewers will learn much about the surveyed seventy+ rare examples of royal featherwork capes and cloaks (‘ahu’ula), feathered royal staffs (kāhili), helmets (mahiole), feather leis (lei hulu manu), and various feathered deity iconography (akua hulu manu) in paintings and other paperworks. Deeply rooted in cultural significance, this book explore how various featherwork are detailed, along with their recorded historical-social functions; many of these items were central to Indigenous Hawaiian diplomacy, from securing political alliances and agreements, to battlefield armor and regalia, used as their own form of martial currency, to eventual trading and foreign visitor cultural gifts. This dense volume also serves as the catalogue accompanying one of the first Hawaiian featherwork exhibitions on the U.S. mainland, via the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2015).
The House Of Dance And Feathers: A Museum By Ronald W Lewis (Rachel Breunlin and Helen Regis, 2009).
This book was published nearly a decade before Ronald W. Lewis, an illustrious New Orleans culture-shaper, passed away. Lewis helped assemble the “House of Dance & Feathers” museum found in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Readers will enjoy the museum displays, festival and parade photos, interview excerpts and insider knowledge sourced from the posthumous Lewis himself and close knit communities. This work highlights and honors the different worlds Lewis inhabited, and these communities’ cultural impacts on Black history and New Orleans’ social fabric; recognizing New Orleans’ various Bone Gangs, Parade Krewes, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs’ continued legacies amidst decades of change.
Feather Lei as an Art (2005) by the late and renown Elder Mary Louise Kaleonahenahe Kekuewa and her daughter Paulette Nohealani Kahalepuna.
The native Hawaiian press Mutual Books released this revised and expanded edition 15 years after the original was self-published by the authors to bring it to a wider audience. Boris Huang’s featherwork mentor– Elder Mary Louise was renown as one of the main Matriarchs of lei hulu feather arts, and various diasporic Hawaiian heritage-arts revival movements. This book generously shares layers of history, cultural insights, spiritual symbology, and technical diagrams and approaches to this traditional art practice. Sharing practical criteria for knowing one’s feathers (hulu manu), to feather preparation stages, to making traditional lei (Wli) or more contemporary Humu Papa lei with feathers, and respectfully storing and preserving these iconic feather adornments and uses.
The Craft Center’s library proudly houses over 2,000 periodicals and decades of various art and craft magazines. Librarian Sam has pulled a handful of articles from Surface Design and American Craft Magazines? featuring featherwork and related cultural art history articles. Readers will enjoy short features about Kate MccGwire’s mind-bending feather installation sculptures (Surface Design, 2014, Jessica Hemmings) to New Orleans contemporary mixed media artists to further explore; such as Charles DuVernay, Pippin Frisbie-Calder, Mapó Kinnord, Seguenon Koné, and the late Sylvester Francis, founder of Backstreet Cultural Museum (American Craft, 2024, Katy Reckdahl and Jennifer Vogel).
The library is open to the public: Tuesday – Saturday, from noon to 6pm.
The Craft in America Center Library proudly houses over 3000 books, exhibition catalogs, and more than 2000 periodicals dedicated to the art of craft and related topics.
For further Lbrary or Craft in Schools inquiries, please visit our Library page or contact Education Programs and Library Coordinator sam@craftinamerica.org
Library in the Summer: Woodwork, Design & Craft Video Dictionary
This summer Craft in America invites you to the Center’s woodwork, furniture, and historic design exhibition. Our Building Blocks: Process in Wood show highlights both regional and international artistry across cultures and time periods, focused on handworked wood fabrication. Complementing this dynamic show, we encourage visitors to learn more about our dynamic and educational Craft Video Dictionary woodworking videos and library-magazine woodworking displays.
Library Highlights on Woodworking
Our easy-access craft art library features regularly rotating displays, and our range of materials span from rare books, artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, art-magazines, to craft-techniques/technical manuals.
This summer’s featured woodworking books on display range from the 18th Century American Shakers woodworking and legacy designs, to American Mid-Century Modern legacy schools of woodworking (a la The Furniture of Sam Maloof, header image), to more internationally renown sculptural/vessel focused approaches to wood fabrication (a la Keiko Hirohashi’s design book Wood Package). We’ve also pulled woodworking periodicals dating back decades, including magazine runs from 1970’s-2020’s American Craft, 1980’s Woodworker’s Journal, 1980’s Fine Homebuilding, Fine Woodworking 1980’s-90’s, Woodworker West (2007-2023), and more — all previewed below!
The American Shakers and Their Furniture in (1982) black and white format, boasts fascinating historic perspectives on this ascetic, minimalist-design oriented religious community’s contributions to woodworking and design over the last 200 years. This book features dynamic, near timeless diagrams, measurements, and instructions for recreating their highly functional and visually stunning wood-based pieces centuries later. Nodding to this lineage, our Woodwork exhibition also features artist Ryan Taber’s Stofa Pattern #2 after Tony Smith’s Batcave 1969-1971 and the Shaker Super Heater, 1820-1830; made from White Pine.
Wood Package, highlights innovative Keiko Hirohashi’s design and surreal woodwork. Much like Martin Alexander’s own cultural woodwork homage and nod to the playful interpretation of wood as both a sculptural and playfully reverent “Florecita” vessel, Hirohashi’s work explores whimsical and diasporic design of wood containers. Wood Package asks each viewer to consider how woodworking forms and their outer layers are just as important (vessels) as to what is housed within.
Come visit us and browse our extensive craft library! With over over over 3000 books, exhibition catalogs, and more than 2000 periodicals dedicated to the art of craft and related topics — there’s something here to delight any curious reader. Come visit us this summer and explore the expansive world of craft art and woodworking!
Woodworking Network: Craft in America Launches Craft Video Dictionary
5/13/24
Full, original article by Dakota Smith on Woodworking Network here.
Craft in America has launched the first-ever Craft Video Dictionary (CVD). The CVD is an online resource that gives the public a direct, close-up view of craft processes and techniques. Instead of words and images, CVD definitions are conveyed via video. Clear and concise, these videos are edited to focus on the artists’ movements and the transformation of materials. The project was initiated with support from The Decorative Arts Trust through their Prize for Excellence and Innovation in late 2020.
The first rollout of this new reference tool includes an initial batch of one hundred video definitions. This initial collection of videos begins to flesh out the ins and outs of art and craft making across a range of materials and media. Two hundred videos will be posted in total later this year.
The CVD includes techniques as demonstrated by artists with expertise in ceramics, metal, wood, fiber, glass, and more. Each video captures an artist manipulating material with their hands and tools through methods that are traditional, historic, and also very much still alive. “The CVD videos are intended to clearly define a craft technique, rather than demonstrate a how-to process. We hope this project will be useful to educators, museums, and everyone interested in craft,” says CVD project producer Denise Kang.
Thus far, 14 artists have been filmed across Southern California, and many of them are teaching artists at colleges in the region. The CVD includes definitions of terms ranging from sgraffito, which is a ceramics process, to glass blowing, and from cabinet making and joinery, to spindle turning, and blacksmithing.
By providing an intimate lens into the artist’s studio, CVD video definitions provide a sense of how the objects in our world come to be and what their craft entails. On creating the videos, CVD Project Director Emily Zaiden noted, “each artist during filming was able to take a step back from their second nature process and think about what someone unfamiliar with their craft might need to see and understand their work.”
Woodworking Network: Craft in America Announces New Exhibition
April 26, 2024
Original post by Dakota Smith on Woodworking Network here.
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Craft in America Center has announced Building Blocks: Process and Wood, a group exhibition highlighting Southern California woodworkers who use tradition to create contemporary interpretations.
Craft in America is organizing an exhibition of woodwork and furniture-based sculpture made by the artists who were consulted and filmed for the new Craft Video Dictionary (CVD) definitions. The exhibition will consist of approximately two dozen recent works made by six artists in the field who are based across the Los Angeles basin. Ranging in styles and perspectives, these artists are unified by formal innovation coupled with a unique understanding of materials and techniques.
The Craft Video Dictionary is a new digital tool for understanding how objects are made. Launching in early 2024 with an initial exemplary array of video definitions that span media, material, process, and discipline, the CVD will continue to expand and develop over time. New, additional video definitions will be added at later intervals in 2024 and beyond. Especially for those who are not makers or artists, the CVD provides a chance to gain awareness about the crafting of objects, in real time. These educational videos are intended to clarify, elucidate, document, and explain craft techniques.
Participating Artists: Reuben Foat, Martin Alexander Hernandez, Ryan Taber, Lauren Verdugo, Larry White and Maxwell Wilson