Owego students design 150 skateboards for Tioga's First Friday

Yahoo

06-03-2025

OWEGO, NY (WIVT/WBGH) – Tioga Arts Council's First Friday is tomorrow night, and one exhibit will feature artwork from 150 Owego students, who use skateboards as canvases.
The Arts Council received a grant from the Floyd Hooker Foundation, to collaborate with an internationally renowned artist Mark Rivard.
Rivard's work is unique, using blank skateboards as his canvas to draw on.
He provided 150 skateboards to students at Owego and challenged them to make an illustration that tells a story.
The students started sketching their designs on paper, before moving to the boards.
Rivard says he and his brand, 'Do Rad Things,' have brought skateboards to over 20 thousand kids over the last 20 years.
'Most kids probably aren't going to skate these boards. They're spending five, six hours creating the artwork on these boards. They're not necessarily gonna go and muck it up by skating it at the park. Regardless of whether they skateboard or not, that's more or less irrelevant. This is just more about expression,' says Rivard.
All of the designs are done with Sharpie markers. Rivard received an endorsement deal from Sharpie back in 2011.
He says the boards themselves are high-quality, real, skate-decks, and the students could put wheels and bearings on them if they wanted to.
One student, 6th grader, Coeburn Locke, says even if you're not a skater, or an artist, you get to create something that'll last the rest of your life.
'I can give it to someone, I can keep it, I can hang it up in my room. There's many things you can do with it. You can snap it in half and turn it into a different piece of art. It's your choice. You can do whatever you want with it. You can add more to it with more Sharpies,' says Locke.
The students' boards will be on display at the Tioga Arts Council, located at 179 Front Street in Owego, tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. and for the remainder of the month.
Rivard will give a brief talk at the exhibit beginning at 6 p.m. with a post party at Lucky Hare Brewing.
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