I met Brendan way back in 1992. We spent many days and nights skating the streets of center city Philadelphia. These were much simpler times on the stoops. But they created bonds that can’t be broken. If you played in traffic, you know this well.
When did you start skating?
I started skateboarding in 1986. Reagan was president. It sucked.
What was your first skateboard?
Vision Mark Gonzales in Wood grain, no paint. It had that white face in the upper right hand corner, Indy trucks and Kryptonics wheels.
When did you stop or slow down significantly?
The first time I slowed down significantly was senior year of college. I went from skateboarding all day every day to skateboarding to and from the bar. In my mid-twenties, I picked up the skateboard again, but stopped because it is impossible for me to skate drunk. After I put the plug in the jug, I picked up my skateboard again in my thirties. That said, as I stand on the precipice of my 40th birthday, I have not skateboarded much in the past year.
What do you do for a living?
I am an artist, curator, and writer.
When you are not skating, how often do you think about skateboarding?
A day does not go by without me thinking about skateboarding. If I see a bench, I think about ollie lipslides. If I see a banister, I wonder if I can still pull off handrails. When I hear someone skateboarding down the street, you know–the sound of urethane wheels against pavement, I want to be skateboarding too. After thirty years, I have found the desire to skate has not left me.
How did skateboarding affect the direction of your life?
Like most skateboarders my age, I played lots of sports as a kid: basketball, soccer, and baseball. I love the competition, but I hated the regimental nature of team sports. Skateboarding was the perfect antidote. It was autonomous, crude, and dangerous. It had a do-it-yourself mentality. I loved it.
To me, skateboarding was about living on the edge. To purse my art, I’ve lived a hand-to-mouth existence for the past twenty years. It doesn’t get much more edge than that. That said, I do not know how much gas I got left in the tank.
What is the connection between skateboarding and creativity?
Skateboarding, for me, was always about making do with less, about using what was readily available to me. In my art, as well as my writing, I have tried to use the contents of my life as the primary subject and object of my work. For example, my project “BLACK COFFEE, NO SURGAR” is a collection on 200 Polaroid photographs of Jersey City, NJ, my former hometown. An anecdote is typewritten on the lower white margin of each Polaroid photograph. The anecdotes are derived from personal memory, other people’s memories, and actual events. In Agitators Collective, a guerrilla art group I co-founded with Jason Seder, we created large-scale whimsical sculptures and installed them in derelict neighborhoods in our city.
More about Brendan Carroll
BrendanScottCarroll.com (Portfolio), BrendanScottCarroll.com (Curatorial), Brendan’s writing on HyperAllergic, Brendan’s writing on Art21 Magazine
Connect with Brendan Carroll
