Don Pendleton 

Where were you located in 1995 and what were you aiming for back then?

I was in a coal mining town in West Virginia (Beckley) in 1995 and I was miserable. I was working at a small newspaper and living in poverty, really depressed and feeling trapped. I would paint after work every night and I knew I wanted to do art full time, I had no idea how to get there. I just knew I had to stay productive and focus on what I loved. Alien Workshop was my lifeline out of that area so I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Chris Carter and Mike Hill for giving me the opportunity to escape that. 

In your personal opinion, what’s the greatest (and maybe even most relevant) thing that went down in pop culture since 1995?

Elliott Smith playing live at the Academy Awards in 1998. And as something that was very popularly accepted and was also of significant culture value was Radiohead's album, OK Computer. Usually when something is really good, it doesn't cross over to become popular and accepted but somehow that album did. I's rare to find something that overlaps on a very large scale in my experience. I'm fascinated by things that become really popular but the internet has condensed that stuff down to the lowest common denominator for the most part. Fucking Awesome is the most important skateboard company to come around since 1995, hands down.

How would you describe your current approach as an artist... and would you say that it drastically changed over the years?

I would say it's always been somewhat experimental. I still look at it as playing around and there is a lot of failure involved in the process. Anytime I pick up a pencil or paintbrush, I feel like a kid again. So there isn't always confidence when I start a project or a piece. I just keep playing around until I can recognize something that I can develop or build on. And it usually starts out with very basic shapes.

Is it easy for you today to be as enthusiastic about that (leftfield) pop culture bubble you’ve helped to shape as it was twenty years ago?

I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten wiser. There was a time when I wished that skateboarding was accepted and popular, but I was very young and at some point, feeling like an outcast got old. And there were times when skateboarding was almost dead and I would hope for it to recover, both sentimentally and financially. At this point, sometimes I feel like skateboarding has become a monster that nobody can control and I have mixed feelings about that. But overall, I try to see the positives in both skateboarding and art. There is clearly a lot of bullshit out there, you just have to wade through it to find the parts that are pure and good.

What's the worst trend that happened during the last twenty years?

So many. I feel like trends are the way that the lowest common denominator communicate to each other. This goes back to the pop culture question and how rare it is to find much value in things that become very, very popular. By definition, that stuff is essentially designed to appeal to the masses, which usually extracts the good out of it on some level.

Reissuing/rehashing/exploiting art for the sake of profit probably tops my list of worst trends in the past 20 years. Taking something that is visually or symbolically sacred from the past and using it as a vehicle for profit seems depressing to me. And artists stealing popular cartoon characters or icons and making variations on them. I mean, it just seems like the path of least resistance and it was done so long ago. 

Do you remember the very first time you’ve flipped through an issue of Lodown... maybe even what you took away from it?

I do! I was at a skateboard trade show in 2003 with Alien Workshop and one of the distributors from Europe brought a copy and left it at the booth. It was really the first time I saw skateboarding presented alongside of art, music, clothing and culture, which is something you couldn't find in America. There were skateboard magazines, and art magazines and music magazines but it was rad to see it all presented in the same publication. 

Later on, I was in Germany for Element on a tour and went to the offices to meet Marok and the staff and that was one of the best parts of the trip. To this day, I always look forward to the newest issue. 

Would you say that print is an obsolete medium these days or is there already hope for a renaissance?

I love magazines and newspapers and print. And I do think there is room for a resurgence because I believe people are getting tired of things they cannot touch and feel and there is a huge, very unnatural/emotional disconnect between trying to consume or process something and it being intangible bytes and bits on a screen. We've seen it with zines and I think that's a good sign of things to come. Page design was one my first loves, there is something very satisfying about taking words and images and putting them together in a way that controls the eye of the reader, experimenting with type and all that. 

What can you announce for 2016 and beyond?

I have a solo show coming up in May at Artist's Republic in Laguna Beach and some skateboarding projects lined up. I think my goals have changed as I've gotten older. They've become more simple and realistic. I was never very ambitious but as an artist, I was anxious about the future and availability of work. These days, I just want to focus on fun projects with good clients and continue to have time to paint so I can strike a healthy balance between the things I love. I just finished a line with Volcom and we have talked about doing more work together so I'm looking forward to that. I've never had a solo show in Europe so I would love to try to make that happen in the next few years as well.

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