Antiquated warriors

The art gallery was cold and dimly lit. Smudged charcoal drawings of warriors on horses, darkened shields and swords, hung below words in feathery Arabic. We approached the booth, a screen hung at the far end. A man with a beanie and sun-worn face stood staring at footage of young skateboarders careening off of stairs, skidding off of handrails. He smiled wistfully over the empty seating area, flinching at courageous attempts on the screen. My friend and I caught his attention. “Hi. My name’s Steven,” he said. He looked like a skater, whatever that means, in that typically Southern California skater-for-life sort of way. His face was a clay colored beige, lined with cracks like trampled asphalt. Did he listen to Sublime and smoke weed? Or was it NOFX and meth? Little judgments and assumptions flickered through my mind as he explained his project. “This was filmed in 1994 but the local skate shops said they will carry the DVD when I make it. That’s what I’m doing with the footage.” 

He picked up a small stack of papers and I braced for a pitch. “Here’s a little bit about the project.” He handed me two pieces of notebook paper. “I believe in communicating with handwriting. Here’s a print one, and here’s one in script.” He handed another copy to my friend. The block printing on my copy was rounded and clear. I looked up at him, down at the stack in his hand.

The fact that he wrote out all these information sheets was an art project in itself. Like the monks of old. Have we become that disconnected from the handwritten word with all of our emails and text that this was such an amazing feat? I remember when I could recognize handwriting of friends and family just by the way they swirled the J in my name. Now, unless I spy a friend’s To-Do list or happen to get a birthday card, I rarely ever see someone else’s “hand.

Or was this handwritten sheaf simply an extension of his passion for these urban skateboarding warriors?

Steven put the stack back down on the table and thanked us for stopping by. No pitch for money, he wanted nothing more than to talk about his art 20 years in the making summarized in a two-paged, beautifully crafted antiquated form of communication.