Wood sculptor George Peterson first stepped on a skateboard in 1972, when he was just six years old. Back then, the layered plywood under his feet hardly seemed like the stuff of art. But nearly three decades later, he began turning that most artificial of materials into totemic works that combine two life passions — one discovered on the streets and sidewalks of his California boyhood, the other in high-school wood shop.
Peterson’s “Lingo” series of wood sculptures created from used skateboards began appearing four years ago, and now numbers more than 450 pieces. “I buy them for five dollars from local skaters,” Peterson explains. “As a person who obsesses about all the different wood species, I’ve come to see these broken and banged-up pieces of plywood as a type of exotic material.”
The boards are deconstructed in Peterson’s shop with jigsaw, chisel, and chainsaw. He then sculpts the “decks” (the boards without the wheel assemblages) into evocative, highly textured works; some of them also acquire bits of rope, string, and metal. “I’m really inspired by African and tribal art,” Peterson says. “The boards themselves, and skateboarding culture, also play into it, in that skateboarding is kind of a modern tribal experience. And like making art, skateboarding is a very creative and personal outlet.”
Peterson’s skateboard pieces are only the latest to emerge from a career that began with seemingly simple wooden bowls (although even those mimicked the cement bowls of skateparks). The bowls were his first serious engagement with his chosen material, after indecisive years dropping in and out of college and an eventual return to the wood shop. “I got serious about it when I was 24, and turned it into a career at 26,” Peterson says. While he continued to produce big and small functional pieces, including tables, more purely abstract sculptures soon began to draw his attention.
These larger pieces also, like the skateboard series, combine other materials, and likewise carry the same mysterious inner life of symbols and hidden meanings. Although delicately worked and polished in their final form, they are the product of destruction, dismemberment, and manipulation. “I channel a lot of destructive energy into my art,” Peterson admits. Some of his sculptural works are formed from whole logs, to which Peterson takes chainsaws, hammers, axes, and fire. “Breaking things can be so satisfying,” he says, “and if you channel that into a piece of art, you can get a constructive, creative result.”
The process begins, though, with a careful study of the raw wood, how its grain and flaws can serve a final form. A chainsaw uncovers the rudiments of that form, which Peterson then refines with smaller and more delicately wielded tools, blowtorches, textural elements, and paint. “Sometimes I start with a concept and then find the wood to suit it,” Peterson says. “But every piece is different. It’s hard to generalize.” Once a piece nears final form, it will go into a kiln to be dried out, sometimes exposing further possibilities through warping and cracking.
While the larger pieces are formed from raw wood, most commonly huge logs of white oak, Peterson’s skateboard pieces are his first to be created from already machined processed material: in essence, his first work made from recycled sources. Many of them, along with some of Peterson’s larger sculptural works, are included in a show at the Transylvania Community Arts Council in Brevard through mid-October. But he’ll spend the winter ahead preparing for two back-to-back shows in Japan next spring.
In between, Peterson will still be able to relax with a little skateboarding, an activity he still enjoys at age 48, and which brought him a new phase of his career. “I’ve been skating for more than 40 years,” Peterson says, “so it’s really cool to be able to incorporate this motif into my work, and celebrate the skateboard for the modern icon it is.”
Selected pieces from George Peterson’s collection will be on exhibit at the Transylvania Community Arts Council (326 S. Caldwell Street in downtown Brevard) through October 17, in a joint exhibit with painter Shellie Dambax. 828-884-2787. Tcarts.org