A ghetto mile from the tourist smog
and the junkies orgasming in the
shadows of downtown Byron is Sea
Cell – a whitewashed studio, gallery and
shaping bay all in one. It’s home to the Sea
collective, a shaper, a curator, art director
and designer, who all plug into the Sea
handle.
I love the rotten sonofabitch who shapes
the boards. His name is Dain Thomas and
he’s just turned 30. Congrats, old man.
Dain makes surfboards of the kind that
usually wanna make me puke: nose-riders,
single-fins and twins. But there’s something
about the Sea collective that don’t
have that preachy waft of nostalgia. Ain’t
nothing serious about Sea. The clothes are
all-time (the latest range of short-legged,
button-fly boardshorts features an embroidered
shark on the codpiece with the line:
I eat seamen). The prints, by art director
Paul McNeill, are whimsical, colourful,
poppy. Clothing designer Brent Wayling
picks the silhouettes and works the detail.
Matt Yeates is the curator.
“I hate the word retro,” says Dain, in his
basso profundo voice. “The main thing is,
unless we love what we do, we don’t do
it. If we won’t wear it, it’s not in the range.
Which means we can do some wacky
strange shit like the shark thing. There’s a
fair amount of self-deprecating humour;
humour is the foundation that sets us
apart.”
It sure ain’t a dictatorship at Sea. All four
members, despite their different roles, and
despite some lines being more lucrative
than others, pull the same salary. “It isn’t
your average arrangement,” says Dain.
“No one owns it as such. We’re just a
bunch of blokes doin’ what we love.”
Dain’s enlightenment on the road to Sea
began when he was 19 at the Bob McTavish
factory. First, he swept the floors, then
he polished the boards, then he moved
into the production shaping line then,
finally, he started shaping his own gear for
his own customers after hours.
“I’d would work all day then stay up all
night shaping boards,” he says.
“That’s
how goddamn into it I was.”
Two things happened. A custom board
store opened up in Bondi called Six Ounce
that specialised in the kind of arty, throwback
sleds Dain was doin’ and he realised
he needed a name for his boards. “That’s
how Sea started,” he says. “I needed to
call the boards something.”
And how’s it all truckin’, now? “Half of
Byron wears our stuff and there’s interest
overseas. We’re kicking along.”
With all its pop culture references – mostly
taken from the fun part of the sixties, does
Dain find the surfing industrial complex
waaaaaay too serious?
“Completely,” he says. “Painfully serious.
For surfers, boys, girls, oldies, whatever,
surfing is just a bit of fun in the arvo. This
seriousness is our inspiration. It feeds us.
Fun and stupid is our linking thread.”
— Derek Rielly
Dain Thomas’ 5 tips for success:
- Be in touch with your inner critic. Now, more than ever, the world is full of mediocrity, due to a nasty combination of overpopulation, personal computers and the internet. This makes it all the more important to hone in on your niche and objectively ask yourself (not out loud, Rain Man) “Is this the most amazing shit I can do?”
- Be positive. It’s pretty simple, really. Look on the bright side, glass half full etc. Nobody likes a whinger. Learn how to rise above the meaningless dust-ups. Don’t be a sycophant, though.
- Get up early and work really hard! Or, if you’re anything like me and can’t get out of bed up at a reasonable hour or work really hard, employ people who can.
- Take counsel from your siblings. If you have brothers or sisters hit them up when you need bonafide honesty. They’ll often shoot you straighter than anyone else will.
- Don’t participate in ‘tips for success pieces’. You will inevitably waste far too much time trying to come across as really funny and really smart. And, no matter how deep you dig into your ‘tips for success’ Google results, someone else in the article will have found the same site you plagiarised, making you both look lazy and vacuous. You have better things to do, like your overdue BAS.
Posts: 1
Reply #1 on : Mon June 01, 2009, 20:31:36