Renaissance & Rebellion - Flipbook - Page 206
A MAMMOTH FIRST
CALIFORNIA 406
LOCOS
A MAMMOTH FIRST
It was the winter of 1984 and I had been working at Mammoth Mountain as a lift electrician
for several years. I would travel around the ski resort on my snowmobile maintaining and repairing
issues with the motors and drives of the lifts that made up the enormous Mammoth Mountain.
One late winter day my skateboarding cousin Dave Tourjé called me from Southern
The Pioneering Wisdom in Punk
Norton Wisdom is an LA original if there ever was one – a punk rock pioneer that deviated from an
abstract studio practice into an entirely new genre of his own making called “performance painting.”
In this music-based practice, he dives directly into the painting, creating large works on backlit acrylic
panels onstage during live music. Each performance painting constantly evolves as the musicians play, and
California to say he was going to be in Mammoth and needed a place to stay and was also
Wisdom is unafraid to overpaint, erase and recreate as notes hang in the air, and rhythms enter, shift and
bringing this board contraption called a “snowboard” that he got from Tom Sims, who Dave
leave. Like a live musical performance, once finished, this singular painting ceases to exist in that form.
knew and boarded with and who was considered an inventor of the modern sport. Mind you,
Though Wisdom photographs it, the painting itself is destroyed, underscoring the ephemeral nature of live
snowboarding was considered an outlaw sport then and wasn’t allowed at any major ski resorts
music. Wisdom later utilizes elements of paintings’ chroma-prints in collages, a fine art form of self-sampling
and especially Mammoth, and in fact, wasn’t allowed there until four years later in 1988.
that Wisdom developed in the early 1980s, paralleling the rise of sampling in underground music like
Dave arrived and had a great couple of days skiing, as I recall. The day before his departure he
rap. Performing in diverse environments ranging from dingy punk rock clubs to the Salt Lake City 2002
asked if he could take this board up the mountain to try it out. NO WAY!! Dave McCoy (Owner of
Winter Olympics, Japan’s Butu Dance Company and Walt Disney Hall, Wisdom’s live collaborations with
Mammoth) would never let that happen on Mammoth Mountain. But then again, I did have access
musicians like Mike Watt, Nels Cline and Stephen Perkin have taken him around the world.
to a snowmobile and the Chair 12 area was pretty secluded, especially after hours…
We arranged to have Dave meet me at closing around 5:30pm at the upper parking lot of
An alumnus of the Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied under West Coast avant-garde artist
John Altoon, Wisdom removed his paintings from galleries in 1974 and began a hardcore studio practice
the main lodge near Chair 11, where I would sneak him up the mountain to try out this crazy
while working as a lifeguard on Southern California’s storied beaches. One afternoon, as Wisdom sketched
board. Right at 5:30, Dave met me at the base of Chair 11 where we snuck that board onto the
while staring at the ocean, a familiar figure appeared strolling on the beach, fellow Chouinardian John Van
back of my snowmobile in a bag and drove it like a bat out of a cave up the hill to the top of
Hamersveld. Though not close at school, the two built a friendship based on the conceptual-based and
Chair 12. The runs were barren by now as the ski patrol had made their last sweep of the day.
humanistic thinking fostered by the Mme. Chouinard and her Art Institute’s instructors during the 1960s.
When we got to the top of the run Dave hopped off, slipped into the odd bindings and
While in Berlin for an exhibition in the late 1970s, Wisdom night-painted 150 meters of the Berlin
took off down the middle of the run. It was super quiet, with a light snow falling. As a proficient
Wall’s then Communist-controlled eastern side, using search lights for illumination, a highly illegal and
skateboarder Dave handled the board really well and I followed him on my snowmobile as he
dangerous act of art in action. He was arrested, detained and deported. On his return to California,
crossed the run, back and forth making semicircular turns to the bottom. After a few runs I
he continued his studio practice but began painting live with musicians, becoming an integral part of
got too scared for my job and asked Dave to wrap it up. He tucked the board under his jacket
fleeting, momentary experiences, but could be reformatted in the same way a live show can be recorded,
in the bag best he could to smuggle it out of the parking lot and to his car before he and I got
remixed, remastered and released. As part of Los Angeles’ wildly creative punk rock/art scene in the
discovered and busted by “someone, everyone.”
1980s, Wisdom crossed paths with Dave Tourjé, also experimenting in art and music at the time, who
I didn’t think much of it then but many years later realized that on that quiet day Dave had
certainly ridden the first modern “snowboard” on Mammoth Mountain. If anyone else had, I would
have known about it given my job and how long I worked there. Were there others? I doubt it.
So there we were. No videos, no photos, just a couple of guys taking a risk on this Tom Sims
was also playing in numerous bands including the influential post-punk band The Dissidents.
A bold and spontaneous painter with firm roots in fine art studio practice, Wisdom says, “I
really believe that if you don’t have the strength to paint over a good painting, you could never have
painted a good painting in the first place.”
board back in 1984, on the eve of the snowboarding craze that would follow just a couple years later.
–Lisa Derrick
–James Tourjé
RENAISSANCE &
407
REBELLION
