On the Boards

Edited by Annie Block, Mark McMenamin and Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 11/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Check out these stunts. Skateboards are coming in from the parking lot—and bringing some street savvy to the world of decor. Totally rad, dude.

A onetime break-dancer, artist Olafur Eliasson was commissioned by French skateboard manufacturer Mekanism to create Your Mercury Ocean, offered in a limited edition of 90. Milling the 13-layer plywood skateboard deck at varying depths produces the three-dimensionality; the mirror-coat distorts as it reflects.



On the verdant shores of Lake Toxaway in North Carolina, self-taught wood turner, sculptor, and skateboarder George Peterson carved, burned, painted, sanded, and polished old skateboards to assemble his tribal-inspired Lingo. It comes to a Donna Karan New York store next year.



The two founders of Germany's Skateboard Museum Stuttgart conceived the 400-page Made for Skate: The Illustrated History of Skateboard Footwear—photogenic enough for coffee tables everywhere. And the museum's "Made for Skate: The Exhibition," currently concluding its European tour, may head to the U.S. in 2010.



Drawing on its extensive lineup of tattoo-inspired canvas wall hangings, London urban-design collective Fat Punk Studio is now heat-transferring images directly onto plywood skateboard decks. Equally fitting for walls, the six patterns come in three widths apiece.



Among the street-centric highlights of "Dan Graham: Beyond" is the architectural model Skateboard Pavilion. The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized the touring retrospective. It's at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, through January 24.



We all know pop-up shops. But what about a pop-up skate ramp? When the New York event space Openhouse Gallery hosted an eight-day collaboration between skateboard outfitter Quiksilver and retailer Autumn NYC, hoodies and grip tape flew off the shelves, while customers attempted their own aerials.