PUBLICATION CENTER

For the surfing Porter brothers, Chad and Flynn, a nagging question continually presented itself to them as they pondered the blank boards lying on the beach after a hard day’s surf… How to customize those blank and boring surfboards with their original, surf-centric art?

Fortunately, as fine artists and fine-art reproducers with an Epson wide-format inkjet printer, they were able to solve this puzzle and build a custom business out of it at the same time. The trick was finding the proper medium; one which could absorb all the resins and fiberglass used in the surfboard shaping process and still hold the white point and the image.

After some searching and help from their LexJet account specialist, Cody Scherer, they actually found two materials – one for surf-ready custom boards and the other for promotional surfboards that you couldn’t use for surfing, but you could use for selling and promotion.

For the surfable surfboards, the Porters ran across a Japanese paper that fit the bill for the qualities needed for a printable surfboard medium. For a unique promotional product that companies can use as an eye-catching sales tool at the point of sale, special events, and other applications, they settled on LexJet TOUGHcoat AquaVinyl PSA.

“We wanted to offer this promotional surfboard theme to people who were intrigued by it and saw a great way to use it as an attention-getter, but who didn’t want to pay for the full process involved with the custom boards, so the adhesive vinyl has been perfect. It’s actually become my favorite medium to print on, because it has the flattest quality while being faithful to the original, and it’s heavy, durable, and runs so smoothly through the printer. I’ve actually been doing more of my art reproductions on the vinyl material,” says Chad Porter.

Chad is based in Brooklyn and runs the Archival Prints side of this now multi-faceted business. Chad’s brother and mother primarily handle the surf side of things in Maui, where they also have a line of custom printed skateboards using the same basic process as the surfboards. For the custom, surf-worthy boards, Chad prints on the Japanese paper, which is then buried in resin and fiberglass through the board shaping process.

“The Japanese paper is prepared for inkjet printing, and it allows the resin to seep through the paper, but it’s thick, smooth and white enough that it receives the ink at 95 percent saturation. In the surfing market, they’ve never been able to get the same color and vibrancy as the original artwork directly on the surfboard unless it was airbrushed or had decals applied to it,” says Chad.

Archival Prints’ work on surfboards will be on display and auctioned off for charity at the Gallery Bar in New York City, May 7 – June 3. Chad is hopeful that the surfboards will hit the road at more gallery exhibitions around the world in the coming year, particularly since they received the rights to reproduce images from the seminal surfing movie Endless Summer.