Levi Hawken
Words: Josh Feggans
Levi Hawken has an unmistakable style. You can pick his silhouette on a skateboard half a kilometre away. He will be carving and sliding at high speeds, and choosing the obscure lines no one else will see.
He has skateboarded since his youth and has been art-making since then as well, with his unique graffiti style being emulated with his sculpture.
As time has gone by his skateboarding has focused more on speed than impact, with the brutal hills of San Fransisco being his preferred terrain. Mostly, the mountain roads and city footpaths of Aotearoa are his skateboarding canvas, leaving streaks of urethane in the pockets and curves of the topography as it rushes beneath his wheels.
Most heads that have been around a bit know Levi and will have a good yarn about him. He is a low key icon of sorts, and although friendly and charismatic, can be a little reserved and guarded at first. Quickly energised and easily enthused his guard evaporates into a captivating storyteller.
Five questions is a great way to get a window into a character and still leave a lot left to explore. Keep an eye out for what he’s up to as he doesn’t know how to slow down.
When did you first start experimenting with concrete and what was
the catalyst?
I had wanted to work with concrete since way back in 2000 when I fantasised about making skateable sculptures. I did work with concrete in 2008 as a landscaper, then worked as a labourer building a skatepark. But it wasn’t until 2016 when I had gone back to landscaping again for a few years that I worked out how to mould concrete with plywood rather than trowling it. Then something clicked in my head and I constructed my first hollow 500 x 500mm concrete cube with a relief of graffiti based letters on the sides.
Is there a correlation between your skateboarding and your art making?
Always. At school I drew pictures and paintings of skaters hanging out at Aotearoa square. I then went to do graffiti, which I was exposed to through skateboarding. I have sketches of concepts for plazas and skateable sculptures from the late 90’s. I fell in love with brutalism and modernism through skating in the city before we had street style skate parks. It’s been a long journey, but my art is the total sum of everything I’ve done in my life and I’ve been skateboarding for four-fifths
of my life.
What is one of your skateboarding sessions that you remember the most?
There are so many. So I’ll choose two. Skating at the 1991 National Skate Champs in Wellington (NZ) in an old railway warehouse converted to a massive skatepark called the Skate Pit. I was 15 and got 4th in the open street. I was doing ollie smith grinds down the handrail and Steve Caballero was skating past and yelled out “yeah!” I was so stoked. Then in 2014 we had a free ride downhill skateboarding event down the Whakapapa access road on Mount Ruapehu and I had my first real feeling of working out downhill skateboarding, three days of blue skies and high speeds. Getting close to 100kmph was life changing.
What is your current relationship with skateboarding?
I’ve just been to San Francisco. I try to go to Cali every year to skate the city hills and traverse challenging rough sidewalks, sliding through all the humps and waterfalls. I feel like I can really unleash myself, listen to music and throw slides to it. We also go into the mountains and ride slalom style speed boards. I love the feeling of flowing and sliding through corners, developing the skills to ride close with friends and draft off each other. I also skate mini ramp and bowls, sometimes street but I can’t ollie very high any more and it saddens me so I prefer to go fast instead. I don’t like hurting myself putting around.
What is next for you that you’re excited about?
Finishing an edit of the recent skateboarding I’ve done in SF. I will be stoked to put a full clip on YouTube even though it’s pretty much all just sliding left and right. My sculpture works are starting to sell more internationally, so I’m excited about exhibiting overseas and making larger monumental works in different mediums, possibly achieve my teenage goals of making big sculptures you can skate. I’m not trying to take away skatepark funding though, gimme those public spaces in the cities where skateboarding began for me.
@levihawken
@levihawkenart
www.levihawken.com
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