A deep dive into the world of surf, art, and record keeping. We sit down with Tony Caramanico as he takes us through his journey as an artist, and preparation for his solo show at Summum Gallery St Barth.

GISELE LACOURSIERE:&nbsp;Tell us about your exhibition in St Barth and the works that you are presenting.
TONY CARAMANICO:The works to be featured in this show are going to be some new works on foam and fiberglass, new surfboards, framed prints, several canvases and original collages. These are all made from prints from my journals that I&rsquo;ve turned into collages.

GL: Tell us about this craft of collage that you have developed? Can you remember the first journal entry collage you made?
 TC: In 1978, I started keeping journals. It began as just a small daily record of the waves, what was happening each day, the different seasons, a specific event. It was all about surfing, what I was into, and the people I was around. I moved in with Peter Beard in 1978. The next year I moved up to a larger format for my journals. By 1980 I started learning the way that Peter did his journal pages and that took me to the next level. It&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;ll see in my work now. Peter Beard&rsquo;s mentoring really changed how I journal. Since then, it&rsquo;s been something I&rsquo;ve done daily for forty-five years now.

GL: There is something to be treasured in this process of keeping records for decades.
TC: Looking back at a journal page from decades ago it&rsquo;s like looking back at a movie or a picture. I can visualize each little statement, each little picture, why I put it there and who I was with. That&rsquo;s been interesting, everything comes back. It&rsquo;s very vivid and it&rsquo;s a way of looking back and preserving this surfing lifestyle I&rsquo;ve developed over these years. 

GL: Could you describe your creative process?
TC: There&rsquo;s always been something about journaling, it hasn&rsquo;t been a chore or arduous. It&rsquo;s always been fun, especially decades ago when I wasn&rsquo;t doing much and didn&rsquo;t have the internet to distract me. I was just documenting my travels. It was a very good artistic release. I felt like I was documenting a lifestyle that few people cared about from the 70s to the 90s. A boom of interest swept through the late 90s. It was always kind of popular but it never went global like it is now. More opportunities have opened up but it was different back then.

GL: Could you discuss a bit about your relationship with St Barth? How did you first end up on the island?
TC: Some friends in Montauk said we had to come to vacation in St Barth, so my wife and I booked a 5 night stay on our way to our home in Tobago. We stayed in Lorient, surfed, did the touristy things. I thought it was lovely and moved on. Then in 2008 Christiane Celle, whose sons I taught to surf, purchased a piece of mine. The same year she gave me my first show at her gallery, Clic, here in St Barth. That opened up a whole different area of life for me. My wife and I started going back every year, and that was fifteen years ago. For seven or eight seasons, Christiane and I sold a lot of artwork. St Barth is very welcoming, I&rsquo;ve had a lot of people come down and surf with me over the years, and we&rsquo;ve developed great friendships on the island. We know lots of the business people, all the surfers, the restaurateurs, it&rsquo;s a lot of fun, and at this stage in my life I can really appreciate the quality of life, the safety. And there&rsquo;s enough surf to keep me happy. At this stage of the game it&rsquo;s more about expressing myself through my artwork instead of surfing.

GL: You use boards, journals, prints and canvases among other mediums to create your pieces. How do you find the differences in working with different mediums affect your work?
TC: It&rsquo;s more interesting for me, and for the people interested in my art, that I do it in different ways. Everything revolves around my surfing lifestyle, and I&rsquo;ve put my art on surfboards, which I&rsquo;ve been making now for over twenty years.

GL: Surfboards are both your passion and your art. Could you describe this process to transform the surfboard into art?
TC: It&rsquo;s just another way of presenting my artwork and having it be part of what I collect and I enjoy. This is my newest way of presenting the artwork, this is different for me and I&rsquo;ve always wanted to put them on surfboards, the recent ones are some of my best so far. You&rsquo;ll see in the show.

GL: You&rsquo;re in the process of creating a monograph book?
TC: I&rsquo;ve been meaning to do a book for at least a decade, luckily this young man Zach Raffin who I taught how to surf when he was four years old, approached me and said he wanted to do my book. He had already authored a book and had been working in the surf industry for around 6 years, so he and an Art Director, Dany Schutt, are actually constructing the book. We&rsquo;ve been in the process of working on it, we&rsquo;ve shot around three thousand images of my journals and narrowed it down to about two hundred. We did a lot of interviews to convey what&rsquo;s on the pages, the little stories behind them, and this crazy lifestyle I&rsquo;ve created and documented. I&rsquo;m really excited to see how it turns out. It&rsquo;s coming out in Spring 2024 along with an art show of mine and print images that have never been seen. Out of all the images I&rsquo;ve done I&rsquo;ve only printed about seventy-five, I have well over sixteen-thousand images so we&rsquo;re going to show a lot of new work with the stories behind them in the book. In making this I&rsquo;ve realized how much content I have and how little can actually be put into the book, it&rsquo;s about only a small percent of the stories I&rsquo;ve documented.
GL: You&rsquo;ve made a flag for this exhibition and Flags For Future, could you discuss what the concept of a flag means to you?
TC: It&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;ve never done before. A flag is to fly the message and the colours of what you&rsquo;re trying to state, mine will be about my world which is ocean awareness. It&rsquo;s a different way of presenting a message, and for me I would have never thought of doing a flag. It&rsquo;s neat, I hope you like them.

GL: Your art and surfing are intrinsically connected to the ocean. How has this bond influenced your perspective on environmental conservation and the urgent call to protect our oceans?
TC: Well, I&rsquo;ve noticed times changing. Back when I started travelling in the early 70s I would go to pristine places, there weren&rsquo;t all the crowds, especially around surf breaks, because they were usually off the beaten path and around river mouths and in exotic locations. As those surf breaks became popular, towns grew around them and pollution started. I noticed that early on. Surfers are a good barometer for the water quality because they get ear infections. A real defining moment for me was when I first when to Bali in the 80s to surf, it was pristine and had this sort of mystical vibe. There was no fast food and no plastic, no high rise hotels even, it was really like going back in time. Later in the 90s I went back to Bali as a sponsored surfer, and I remember surfing one day off Kuta beach and as I was paddling my hands were filling up with bits of plastic. It was so bad that as I got out of the water I was quite disgusted. They just didn&rsquo;t have the waste management there in a fast growing place like Bali, the mecca of surfing now, it was hard to control. Everything got thrown into rivers. They went from wrapping everything in palm leaves, natural biodegradable products, to using plastics and Styrofoam. It didn&rsquo;t take very long for that to dominate everything that got sold there. The waste all ended up on the beach. They would rake it but they would bury the trash on the shoreline. The tide would go up and it would all go back out to sea. Over the years they have developed programs to address that but still it&rsquo;s about educating the people. That&rsquo;s the moment that really got me, these exotic remote locations getting polluted. Not to mention more industrial worlds, like in California where they shut the beaches when it rains. That&rsquo;s heightened my awareness, and I do like to get involved in different surfing events and foundations, like Surfrider, and donate to that. I find that&rsquo;s kind of my area of expertise.

GL: You&rsquo;ve had a surfing career that has spanned decades. Is there a moment that stands out to you as pivotal?
TC: Yes there were a couple moments. The first time I caught a wave it felt magical. No surprises that it became my life&rsquo;s path. It was exciting and there was a sense of adventure to it. It was still unknown, globally there were only a few surf areas and there wasn&rsquo;t even professional surfing. There were a few surf contests in California and Hawaii that you could see on TV, but that wasn&rsquo;t the real lifestyle. Another moment for me was when I won Greg Noll&rsquo;s Da Bull Surf Legends Classic in Costa Rica in 1991 and the year after. After winning the contest Greg, a legendary pioneer in big wave surfing, gave me my own surfboard model. That changed everything for me. It put me on the path of professional surfing and traveling.

GL: Was there a moment where you knew this hobby would become a lifestyle for you?
TC: The real lifestyle was actually surfing, traveling, and discovering waves around the world. Early on that was all part of it, that was a big part of it, that&rsquo;s what I brought into my journals in the late 70s and 80s, because I had the opportunity to go to these great places, be a sponsored surfer and even help create an award winning TV show for ABC sports. It was still wide open then.

GL: Jimmy Buffett, who unfortunately passed recently, was a fixture on St Barth and did a lot for the island, funding reconstruction after Irma. Could you describe Buffett&rsquo;s impact on your life?
TC: Jimmy knew how to surf. When he showed up in Montauk around 20 years ago, we fast became surfing buddies. Over the years he&rsquo;d been very gracious with me. He had bought a lot of my art work and surfboards, and when I had a show in Key West he let me stay at his place. We went on surfing trips several times, so I got to spend a lot of quality time with him, especially in St Barth over the holidays each year when he would be on the island with his family. We surfed together for pretty much the last decade or so during every birthday and New Year&rsquo;s day, it was something I really looked forward to. It&rsquo;s been tough.

GL: You&rsquo;ve participated in the St Barth annual Benefit Gala for the environment for the 2nd year where you have donated an artwork. Is it important for you to give back to charitable causes?
TC: It&rsquo;s good for the environment and it&rsquo;s good to give back to the island. St Barth has given us so much over the years, so everything about these benefits is important. I was very happy to be involved last year, and this year we&rsquo;ll do it again. I&rsquo;m donating one of the artboards, and I&rsquo;m looking forward to it. I think this year will be even better than the last.

Tony Caramanico &lsquo;Something About The Sea&rsquo; Exhibition: December 2023 - April 2024. Curated by Jenny Mannerheim for Summum Gallery, Les Sables, Saint Jean, 97 133, St Barthélemy&nbsp;
summumarchitecture.com @summumarchi

Tony Caramanico: Something About The Sea

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