News

Nostalgic Visions of Skateboarding Roots- The Other Paper

By Kitty McConnell
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 7:13 PM EST

If you grew up in Columbus or the 'burbs in the ’90s, you grew up skateboarding. Or trying to skateboard. Or watching your brother or your boyfriend learn to ollie.


With their new Mahan Gallery exhibition, Thom Lessner and Patrick O’Dell have resurrected those early years when skateboarding was first trending in American suburbs.


“Mall Curb” is a collection of paintings by Lessner and photographs by O’Dell that are said to focus on the “lifestyle and goings-on around skateboarding,” particularly as they experienced that scene while coming of age in Central Ohio.


Lessner’s art will be familiar to patrons of Dirty Frank’s Hot Dog Palace, the Downtown eatery owned by his sister Elizabeth Lessner. He’s responsible for Dirty Frank’s funky aesthetic, as he created all the art that hangs in the restaurant.


Lessner, who currently lives and works in his studio in Philadelphia, will be in town for the exhibition’s opening reception, which will take place during Saturday’s Gallery Hop.


“It’s kind of a youthful thing, coming back to where I started this stuff,” said Lessner from the Mahan Gallery, where he was hanging the paintings on Wednesday afternoon. “I put the word out to everybody who had a board or pipe in their parents’ driveway that I skated when I was in sixth grade in Westerville.”


The Mahan Gallery is anticipating a huge turnout for the “Mall Curb” opening reception. Assistant director Kelly Cousins said that Mahan’s partners for the opening party include Embassy, the Clintonville skate shop, Skreened T-shirt designs and other skate-friendly businesses.


“We wanted to give them a show back in their hometown,” Cousins said of O’Dell and Lessner. Rather than curating the show, Cousins said the gallery gave the pair “free rein” to cultivate the environment they wanted.


The resulting exhibition is likely to draw veterans of the local old-school skate culture as well as a younger crop of skate-park regulars. After the reception, the party moves to Dirty Frank’s for music and Philly dogs.


 Lessner’s Columbus show and visit are a nostalgic occasion for his sister Liz as well. Along with both of her brothers, Thom and Tim (a co-owner of Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails), Elizabeth Lessner said she was energized at an early age by the burgeoning skateboarding scene.

“Mall Curb” will be on display from Friday (Feb. 5) through May 27 at the Mahan Gallery, 717 N. High St. A Gallery Hop opening reception takes place from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, followed by an after-party from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. at Dirty Frank’s Hot Dog Palace, 248 S. Fourth St. 614-294-3278 or mahangallery.com.



“It was our first glimpses into counter-culture, the first time we heard punk rock music or went to Dead Milkmen shows,” she said. “It was the first time we were introduced to a sport that involved so much creativity and self-expression.”


At a time when kids got hassled by the CPD for skating in Downtown Columbus, the sport was inspiring, “especially to some kids stuck in the middle of Ohio. Skateboarding was not just a sport, it was a culture,” said Liz Lessner.


“The shirts read ‘Skate or Die!’ People lived by that culture. We craved it! Ohio's youth was starving for some of that energy at that time, and we ate it right up.”