MARK GONZALES
As a poet on and off the board, The Gonz’s imagination draws mesmerising shapes in text, image and movement. The artist shares his insight into the mindset of skate, and discusses why this artful sport that transports is too diverse to define.
Known for his radically innovative skating style, Mark Gonzales, aka “The Gonz”, is celebrated as one of the pioneers of street skating. Born in California in 1968, he received his first skateboard as a Christmas gift at the age of seven. By the time he was 16, he was already on the cover of Thrasher magazine. In 2011 he was named the Most Influential Skater of All Time by TransWorld Skateboarding. When he’s not skating, this adoptive New Yorker nurtures his career as a contemporary artist (his speciality is painting skateboards) and a writer of haiku-style poetry. “The secret to my success? In all of these disciplines I never took myself too seriously. And never for a second did I consider myself done learning.”
You’re revered as the founding father of street skating. Tell us about the genesis of this discipline.
Skateboarding started in the streets in the 1950s, before skateparks started mushrooming everywhere in the country a decade later. But then, around the late ’70s, they started getting sued as many kids got injured. That induced a rapid decline of this sport, inducing many to abandon it. But I didn’t. Being a school dropout, I had little else in my life at that time. I started skating again in the streets, doing there the same tricks I’d learnt in the empty pools. There weren’t so many skaters left at that time, so it wasn’t difficult to stand out.
Among your many innovations, you’re credited with introducing jumps into this sport.
True, I started jumping with the skate, which back then was something new. I like to think I’ve contributed to free this sport from the influence of the moon and the planets.
That’s the poet in you speaking. What do you mean?
Surfers follow the fluid movements of waves, which in turn are originated by the fluid movement of the celestial bodies. Skaters, initially, emulated the fluidity of the surfer’s movement, but then progressed into something different, where discontinuous movements, like jumps, were also allowed. Skipping this continuity in the movement comes with its psychological challenge, though: if you try to jump with a skate you know that you might look ridiculous if you fall. You need to have the crazy imagination that you’re going to make it, even though most of the time you’re not.
Skating aside, your artworks have been exhibited in galleries and collected by celebrities like Puff Daddy, Jay-Z and Kaws.
I’m a self-taught skater – like most skaters, by the way – and a self-taught artist. If you’re making art with clay and you don’t keep your clay moist, it’s going to dry. If you don’t learn not to ride your skateboard in the rain, you’re going to ruin your bearings every time. There’s no way to excel in whatever field without the slow learning process that comes with practice – a practice that never ends, apparently. In both disciplines, art and skating, I feel I’m still a novice, and that day after day I’m still learning.
I can’t believe “The Gonz” is still learning to skate.
You should! I’d love to do a 540 but I’ve never properly made one! This trick, invented by Mike McGill and for this reason also known as the McTwist, consists in jumping and getting the skateboard to do a full rotation and a half before landing on it. Those videos on YouTube show kids making it look so easy!
How do you think you’ve influenced the skateboarding world?
I guess being fearless – not being afraid to fall and get hurt, and then getting back up right away. I’d like to think
that this has inspired and empowered other people. Fear is your biggest enemy as a skater. It can make you rigid, and take you out of the belief that you’re going to do the craziest stuff. But as soon as you lose it, incredible things start happening. The only thing I’m fearless at is skateboarding, though. I’ve been offered to try bungee jumping a few times and politely declined. Sometimes I’m even scared to cross the street – people in New York drive insane!
You have long-standing collabs with brands like Adidas, Supreme,
Thrasher, Retrosuperfuture, JanSport and Études. How do you explain fashion’s fascination with skating?
The encounter between these two worlds – skateboarding and fashion – always looked somewhat strange to me. I suppose high fashion has expressed a fascination for the rebellious, fearless and stubborn side of skaters, drawing inspiration from their outfits. But I have a hard time seeing real skaters – people who perform and love one of the cheapest sports in the world – buying those expensive clothes and ruining them straight after having tried a few tricks! It could be that I’m wrong, though. It’s become impossible to define what skaters are and think today.
What happened?
The sport has finally embraced more diversity, welcoming women, non-binary people, LGBTQI+, the black community, etc. It’s hard to define a typical skater’s profile nowadays because there are so many types of individuality that can be shown through this sport. There’s one thing all these profiles have in common: they’re passionate about the board.
Diversity and inclusivity blew over skateboarding the past few years, bringing attention back from the look to the sport itself.
How do you feel about this change?
I’m thrilled to be in an era where women are finally allowed to be better skaters than men.
You write your poems on skateboards. I assume they’re not that long if they have to fit on a board.
They’re short, indeed; sort of haiku. When I was younger, I used to write the craziest stuff, mostly to shock my friends and their parents. Rather than poems, I’d call them absurdities.
Can you share one of these absurdities with us?
I’ll improvise one. Wait... “I’m a fly. But because I was not high, she passed me by.”
Beautifully absurd and obscure, thank you! The origins of skateboarding are obscure, too, aren’t they?
Skateboarding derives from surfing, as the initial name “sidewalk surfing” reveals. But where and when did humans start surfing? I researched the Hawaiian Islands, where I discovered, to my astonishment, that surfing was a sport that only the royal family and the nobles could practice. For all the other citizens, riding a board was strictly prohibited – a taboo. It intrigued me to such an extent that I started studying this little-known civilisation – by now one of my favourites after the Romans. James Cook reports having seen someone surfing near his ship when he landed there in the late 1700s, believing the person had stolen something from him and was trying to get away. But that aristocratic Hawaiian was most likely just having fun.