Michele Addelio ‘Skate & Art’ Book Review

09/06/2025

As the editor of Backside Skate Mag, Michele Addelio has used his platform to explore skateboarding in terms of its creative reverberations and in the process interviewed a huge swathe of those who have taken on board the ancient Greek wisdom that, “sometimes skateboarding involves not skateboarding.” He has now made the jump into print with the life-affirming Skate & Art, a book celebrating artists who have been influenced by skateboarding which has just been published by the Lannoo imprint and which you can get hold of here, with the book’s royalties going to Make Life Skate Life.

Whilst there are many books celebrating skateboard graphics, Thrasher’s ‘Canvas’ series has long been championing skateboarding artists, and this publication isn’t too shabby when it comes to portraying the artistic end of the skateboarding community, it is rarer to see a book specifically spotlighting artists who have reimagined skateboarding through their preferred artistic medium. And the mediums on display here vary widely; watercolour or acrylic, pen or pencil, digital or linocut, stop motion or sumi ink, each artist approaches the subject in their own unique way. This is the focus of Michael Sieben’s preface to the book, in which he states;

“You don’t have to be a virtuoso to make a great painting. Likewise, you don’t have to be a phenomenal athlete to be a good skateboarder.

“What you do need, however, is to find your own inherent sense of style.”

Polar Skate Co. by Max Schonatus

Of the artists themselves, I’m not sure what Michele’s process was for choosing who to include but he’s managed to feature a range impressive for the limited space afforded by a coffee table book; from well known figures like Henry Jones, Lucas Beaufort and Jimbo Phillips, to those working in relative obscurity, spanning the US, UK, France, Canada, Germany, Yorkshire (yes it’s a separate country), Spain, Japan, South Korea, The Netherlands, Russia and Singapore. Each artist is afforded a couple of pages for their work followed by a short two page interview, giving us an insight into their working process and influences. The end result is by no means comprehensive, but still offers a valuable insight into what it is about skateboarding that so entrances the eye and the grey matter.

Southbank by Erik Ziegler

We are living through a time within skateboarding where industry and culture seem to be drifting ever further into diametric opposition. Brands plead empty pockets when it comes to funding videos and magazine projects whilst simultaneously sinking thousands into one off circle jerk spectacles, and it’s becoming hard not to worry that skateboarding (obviously in terms of industry rather than act) is entering its ‘last days of Rome’ phase. This is the moment – while the ad execs and miscellaneous vultures are otherwise occupied with regular trips to the vomitorium – that a book like Michele’s is so important. In showing artists engaging in a dialogue with skateboarding, using its unique spark to inform their own creative practice, it acts as an antidote to the background of bread and circuses and reminds us of why skateboarding beguiled us in the first place. 

Tiago Lemos by Duncan Kirkbride

A clarion call to creativity, royalties will be going to Make Life Skate Life; a reminder that, despite the seemingly niche nature of the works featured within, art does not exist in a bubble and as part of a broader community our artistic talents can be used to empower others as well as ourselves. It is also a reminder of that strange, mind-expanding hum that draws the curious to skateboarding, its place outside regulatory bodies and competitive pressures and the capricious vagaries of a hyper-capitalist society; though of course, as with any cultural undertaking, those constraints are always waiting in the wings. Skate & Art reminds us, though, of why we start down paths as skateboarders and artists – to ignore for a moment those things, and to revel in the diaphanous moment. 

Skateboard Sa’mba by Allison Scarry

Lance Mountain by Pedro Colmenares Carrero