Artist’s Book with aquatint images by jessica Dunne
12.5″ x 12″ x 2″
2009
CRAFT: Shaping a Surfboard is an exploration of what it means to spend days working with your hands. The handwork required to make a surfboard, an etching, or an artist book is the inspiration that enabled me to fuse my love of the craft of making prints with a lifetime spent in the world of surfers. Dave Parmenter is a renowned surfboard shaper, writer, and former professional surfer. He writes personally—and often furiously—about shaping boards, surfing, and contemporary surf culture. In his dedication to his craft, I found something akin to my feelings about my own work. His article in The Surfer’s Journal about shaping a surfboard, with all the considerations that make it function in dangerous situations, is excerpted in this book.
My partner, Mark Renneker, is a devoted big-wave surfer. I have lived for years with as many as forty-five surfboards of varying lengths and silhouettes. I am no surfer but it wasn’t the sport of surfing that caught my attention as much as the craft of shaping a surfboard.
The craftsmen involved in the task, their tools, and the terminology all fascinated me: the shaper, the glasser, a downrail. The craftsman holding out against technology and mechanized efficiency is a driving force in the author’s monologue. And the prints evoke the working environment of the surfboard shaper. People involved in fine crafts have more in common than not. Since the industrial revolution began, craftsmen have been skulking around, sensing, and maybe enjoying, impending obsolescence.
– Jessica Dunne, San Francisco, CA