LIA HALLORAN

Skate Craft: Do-It-Yourself Design in Skateboarding, celebrates skateboarding's do-it-yourself ethos. Tracing skateboarding’s evolution from homemade ramps built from found lumber to the handcrafted works of today, Skate Craft showcases the progression of skateboard design, gear, and apparel, alongside contemporary works created from repurposed boards. One of the largest museum shows featuring skaters as designers and innovative creators, Mingei celebrates their impact on Southern California craft and design.

Skate Craft is co-curated by Mayo Mendoza and Guusje Sanders. In 2023, Mendoza, the facilities director at Mingei International Museum and a lifelong skater, proposed an exhibition exploring the connection between skate culture’s ingenuity and mingei, the Japanese folk art movement that inspired the museum’s founding. Mingei, meaning “the art of the people,” celebrates the beauty of craftsmanship and everyday objects. The museum’s curatorial team embraced the idea, recognizing connections between the hub of skateboarding in Southern California, traditional craft practices, and the skate community’s do-it-yourself approach to building and repurposing objects. Mendoza was subsequently named co-curator and partnered with Mingei curator Guusje Sanders to develop the exhibition.

“Co-curating Skate Craft has been an opportunity to share the stories of makers,” Mendoza said. “My first fish-tailed, coffin-shaped skateboard, built in my bathtub in 1985, was made without blueprints and with very limited adult supervision. This exhibition explores skateboarding’s DIY spirit—the intention and determination to turn an idea into reality through repeated failure. That is skateboarding, from the activity itself to the objects it creates. Think a thought and make the thought, without guardrails. Balboa Park is world-famous for its skate spots, and Mingei celebrates the creativity of ordinary makers. Skateboarding is mingei: ordinary people making extraordinary things in skateboarding.”

Showing how skateboarding nurtures creativity, self-expression, and joy through artisanal craftsmanship, Skate Craft will be presented in five sections: boards, gear, obstacles, tools, and repurposed boards. More than 200 objects will be on display to tell the craft story of the sport.