BOARD MEETING

Hooked up with Tony Amos yesterday to discuss his plans for 'Wax On'. Tony has been surfing since he was 11 and shaping his own boards from the age of 14. He is also a terrific photographer working with medium and large format cameras and printing in his own darkroom underneath his house in Bronte. "Nothing is sacred and the rules are way out the window" is his mantra and he's applying it to his latest work - a hand-shaped surfboard coated with tie-dyed fibreglass and red onion skins. He's also making very cool light shades out of surfboard decks folded back around themselves to reveal the detail of his glassed in artwork which is hand-squirted on using plastic 'Nifty' bottles.

We decided to continue our meeting in the surf down at Maroubra which was running a decent ENE swell with an offshore WNW wind. Tony was seriously styling on one of his spunky little guns while I took a pounding on the sandbank. "Some days all you get is an adjustment," he reassured me afterwards in the carpark. And, indeed, my back feels a lot better for all the pummeling.  

Another interesting idea that Tony is proposing for someone to take up as a performance piece is 'Water-Boarding' where a big wave rider is strapped to a surfboard and subjected to the sort of high pressure water treatment inflicted on suspected terrorists in places like Abu Grahib prison in Bagdad. Any takers?