Hey Floridians, Check Out This Surf Exhibit for Us!

SURFING FLORIDA: Friday, March 16, 2012

Florida Atlantic University’s University Galleries will host a series of public programs to mark the closing of the “Surfing Florida: A Photographic History” exhibition on Saturday, May 12 from 3 to 8 p.m. in the Schmidt Center Gallery, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus.  The event will include slideshows, a film screening, lecture and music.

Pictured above and center is a promo poster designed by David Carson for the opening of Surfing Florida, which will take place on Friday March 16, 2012. Beneath it is a Bill Whitman photo album showing images of a South Florida Tom Blake-style paddleboard, circa 1930s-1940s, courtesy of Angela Whitman. The background contains a print proof of an exhibition panel with a Tom Servais image of Cory Lopez in Tahiti, 1999 - Surfing Florida Project.

“Surfing Florida” is an exhibition documenting the nearly 100-year history of surfing and surf culture in Florida through photographs by more than 60 photographers, media stations, including excerpts of Hollywood films like “Gidget,” interviews with numerous important Florida surfers and many core surf films. The exhibition also includes a collection of more than 50 surfboards — from a 1930s-era Tom Blake hollow board to a contemporary board by shaper Matt Kechele, whose 1979 “Kech-Airs” were the first successful forays into the most progressive phenomena in today’s surfing, aerial surfing.