Sociologists, nutritionists, helicopter parents of all ages – here’s some food for thought: Perhaps, if you don’t give kids any meat or sweets until they hit puberty, let’s say age 12 or so, their bodies and minds start working in ways ordinary mortals are entirely clueless about. Why? Well, look at Stefan Janoski – who didn’t have any of that sugary, bloody stuff while growing up in Vacaville, CA: his effortless skating and insane switch skills are widely known, but you also have to take into consideration the wild success story of his perfect-tongued Nike SB models and the way he’s recently shifted his focus to the arts – going from painting to bronze sculptures and back, having openings all over the world, mocking the gods… Jesus, the dude even plays some decent music! Kicking off what’s hopefully going to become an extensive study about pre-teen meat/sweets abuse, here’s Janoski on his sculptures, skating, the (so-called) “Janowski” and that “big fire pit”.

Stefan, first of all, what are you up to these days? How do you balance skateboarding and art… and everything else? How’s life anyway?
Life is great! I’ve been up to lots of things! Traveling, skateboarding, making art, having art shows, reading, playing some music, doing interviews, hanging with my wife… I always try to find a balance, for life in general, but of course sometimes the scales tip. I balance skating and art by skating on trips, then coming home and making art, or when I’m home I go skate a few days, get sore, then stay in and make art a few days, get unsore, go skate again…

I read that you never had meat or sweets until you were 12 years old, before skateboarding entered your life. Apart from drawing and such, what were you into back then – if you weren’t into sneaking out and secretly eating some sweets? What made your days?
Yeah, that’s true, skateboarding and eating meat and sugar came into my life around the same time. Before skating, I ran around the mountains in Vacaville, with homemade swords or bows and arrows, exploring, pretending, climbing on rocks – just doing kid stuff. I also did all the sports the other kids did, like soccer, baseball, basketball, but I wasn’t good and didn’t really like sports. Once I found out I could quit, I quit them all.

If you compare your earliest drawings, the kind of stuff you made as a 4-year-old, to some of the shapes and themes you’re dealing with now, both in sculpture and painting, do you see a connection?
I think I always used my imagination with art. I don’t remember being a 4-year-old, but my later art was a mixture of styles, fantasy, and trying to paint like Van Gogh, so like gardens and flowers, landscapes, but mostly things from my mind.

It seems like you really started to focus on your art since having moved out to NYC, or am I mistaken? If I am, what else triggered it? 
Well, when I moved to NY, our place was way more conducive for art, so the first winter in NY I started doing big paintings; also I was able to try more types of art, like paper-mache, things with chicken wire, clay, duct-tape, resin… It was a place where I could make bigger messes and really get artsy.

And generally speaking, how has being in NYC changed your life, since it’s so different from the West Coast? Can you deal with the winters?
I have not been in any one place longer than two months in over 10 years, so winters aren’t a big deal for me. I love staying indoors for a week at a time when it’s snowing, it’s like an art retreat. If it’s nice out every day, then I go skateboarding, so when it’s freezing it keeps me in to do my other interests.

What drew you towards sculpture in the first place? Ancient things… or rather something contemporary? Toys?
It wasn’t toys. It was just another way to see ideas come to life. Sculpture is so different from painting or drawing, because it’s three-dimensional, so once I stared thinking three-dimensionally, I figured out most of my ideas worked better for sculpture than painting, and I just really enjoy sculpting – and the finished product is a lot of fun for me.

Tell me about the process… and is the physical aspect in any way comparable to the very physical act of skating?
The process is to have something I want to make, then start, which is the hardest part sometimes. After that, I just keep forming and adding and subtracting until it looks how I wanted, or looks cool. For me, it’s like skating where I get totally absorbed and there is no more time, and hours fly by and next thing I know five or six hours have gone by while I was making an eyeball or a hand or something.

So it’s very time-consuming?
Very. I like to spend days working on sculptures at the beginning, to get them to the point where then I just fix and clean them up.

You had five art shows in 2013 alone – do you think there’s going to be a point when it’s almost too much to do all of this at once?
No, I don’t think so. Plus a lot of art shows I’ve had have been skate-related, so I’ve been able to combine the two. Also, art shows are like having a video part that’s already done, you just show what you’ve done, so the hard part is over. At that point you just show off, haha.