Tony Alva

Tony Alva

Oil on Chinese food take out container, 2010, 8"x 9.5"x 4.5"

sold

Todays painting is another that I've done on Chinese food take out containers, I started doing them a few years ago, after laboring in my studio on a cardboard dodecahedron, I came inside for lunch and finished off some leftovers. When I started unfolding the container to recycle it, I realized it was almost a readymade version of what I just spent a couple hours trying to fold together. The image is of skateboard pioneer Tony Alva, one of my heroes from childhood. A friend had a subscription to Skateboarder magazine (which later became Thrasher) and we would stare and dream of the cool stuff for sale and the incredible pictures by photographer Glen E. Friedman (who not only was there, at the start of the skateboarding craze of the mid-seventies but also at the beginings of the Los Angeles hardcore punk scene). I, of course became a skate punk, as soon as I understood what that was, but could never quite get the actual skateboarding part of it.

The skater is cut out from the bottom closing flap of the container, it is just folded up and stapled. The hanger is the metal handle from the container.

#25