Steve Miller Reveals New Fine Art Surfboards
January 3, 2014, by Oliver Peterson
Bridgehampton artist Steve Miller shared a New Year’s Eve surprise email on Tuesday, revealing his new line of fine art surfboards.
Miller’s boards feature imagery from his successful “Health of the Planet” series of works, which includes x-rays of indigenous animals from Brazil’s Amazon River Basin. Three of the five designs shown have an x-ray of a Caiman, which resembles an alligator but is actually a small crocodylian reptile, on yellow, white and black short boards. The other two boards feature images of a school of piranhas on a white long board and a stingray on a black short board.
All three animals could be considered—and are—dangerous, yet they are far more threatened by man’s encroachment on their natural habitat. Miller was inspired to create the paintings on which his boards are based after visiting Brazil in 2005. He was amazed by the diverse cross-section of flora and fauna in the Amazon Basin and disheartened by the destruction it has had to suffer, thanks to rampant deforestation and pollution.
The artist has called the Amazon, and its rich plant and animal life, the “lungs of the planet,” and warns that it is sick and in grave danger. His use of technology in the art is part of Miller’s ongoing exploration of such tools in his greater body of work.
Along with his surf boards, Miller has used the x-ray images on one-of-a-kind artist books, yoga mats and in an international clothing line with Brazilian designers Oskar Metsavaht and Eduardo Varela of the Osklen fashion company (osklen.com) in Brazil. The work has made Miller a veritable sensation in the South American country.