Originally published in The Surfer’s Journal

A Sandow Birk Omnibus

THE GUEST OF HONOR IS DRESSED IN SLACKS, SENSIBLE SHOES, and a button-down shirt that was possibly ironed. Handsome in a retro, California beach boy way, with hair neater than a dry gin martini, he looks more like someone who stepped out of a Jan and Dean song than a heretic stoking the flames of fatwa. Still, the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair, turquoise jewelry, and the pack of American Spirit cigarettes in her overcoat pocket is palpably agitated. She’s pretty much taken over the question-and-answer session.

She is one of a couple dozen Otis Art Institute alumni gathered on a comfortable autumn evening at the Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City. They’re there to both celebrate their unlikely star graduate and, as it turns out, to confront his most recent project. The woman with salt-and-pepper hair wants to know some things about the guest of honor and this project, a third of which is hanging from the gallery walls. She wants to know how it came to be, what the hell he was thinking, and was he aware of the potential ramifications

The guest of honor, the artist Sandow Birk, patiently and politely tells the story: His travels to Muslim countries—surf trips to places like Indonesia and Morocco—made him curious. This curiosity led to a personal exploration of a document that’s played almost no historic role in our cultural and political landscape until fairly recently. Now it’s damned near center stage. Birk simply wanted to know what the fuss was all about.

As for what he was thinking, Birk admits to having thought more about the consequences of this project than perhaps any other in his increasingly ambitious oeuvre. And, yes, he’s aware that some might find what he’s doing here provocative. And, yes, he knows that in many Muslim countries the consequences would be grave indeed.

“But,” he starts to say, and something changes in the laid-back, unassumingly polite man. He straightens up a little—you notice he’s tall, solidly built, and his eyes have some steel in them—and he continues, “I don’t live in those countries. I live in America.”

The throng of Otis Art Institute alumni falls silent while the weight of what he has just said hits the back of their throats like a shot of whisky. There is a short instant of recognition, then ingestion, and finally comprehension. Suddenly, this little celebratory event has turned into a referendum on the separation of church and state here in Los Angeles, here in California, here in the United States. Or, to put it another way, if R. Crumb can render the Book of Genesis as a comic book, can’t Sandow Birk transcribe and illustrate the Holy Koran?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but…

Begun nearly five years ago, Birk’s American Qur’an is, in some ways, highly reverent. It endeavors to render each of theKoran’s 114 suras, or chapters, in accordance with the traditional specifications for colors, margins, formatting, page illuminations, and adornment.

Trickier for some, especially the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair, is how Birk extends the source material with personal touches. The traditional calligraphy translating what Muslims believe is the word of God told through the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad is done in a uniquely American idiom: cholo graffiti. More to the point, Birk illuminates the underlying context of each chapter—sometimes literally, sometimes interpretively— with scenes from life in contemporary America.

For instance, a stock-car race—that most American of indulgences—illustrates sura 100, “Chargers,” a Koranic verse about horses snorting into battle and god knowing the violent love for worldly goods that resides in men’s hearts, etc. Sura 65, “Divorce” provides fairly explicit (and relatively compassionate) instructions for the disposition of a divorce. Birk illustrates this chapter with a man leaning against his pick-up truck, a cooler at his feet, beer in hand, staring across the gulf of their front yard at his wife who has a toddler at her feet and a bun in the oven. A forsaken Big Wheel sits in the grass between them.

Thus, Birk’s Koran is both personal and American. And, herein lies the blasphemy, if it is such, where it was bound to be—in the art. The Koran, one could argue, isn’t supposed to be personalized, editorialized, illuminated, or contextualized—unless, of course, one could argue back, one lives in America.

Either way, much controversy greeted the opening of Birk’s American Qur’an. The New York Times and The Associated Press speculated on potential blowback from the Muslim community.

“Our families and people who know the gallery were scared,” Koplin Del Rio owner Eleana Del Rio said. “Who knew what the outcome would be?” Still, she said, there was never any question about exhibiting the work. “We were 100 percent supportive.”

For his part, Birk thinks all the sturm und drang is just a little off target.

“So far, it’s been about how it relates to Islam— what are they going to think? But that’s really kind of missing the point. The audience is Americans. That’s whom I’m thinking this is for,” he says. “It’s saying look at yourself. It’s saying this is how we live, this is the message from God, and how do those things fit together—sort of taking it at face value. Whether you’re talking about the Bible or the Koran, when the guy tells you a flood’s going to come or you’re going to burn in hell, how is that supposed to affect you when you’re just going to the grocery store today? It’s the whole conundrum of religion, I think…”

Birk pauses and laughs before finishing the thought. “…That sort of putting two things together—the divine message and the really mundane of America.”

Back at the Koplin Del Rio gallery, with the question-and-answer session waiting for some resolution in the wake of Birk’s declaration, the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair finally breaks the silence. “I think you’re a very, very brave man,” she says.

At the reception that follows, the woman says her name is Diane and explains that aside from being an artist and an Otis alumni, she’s a South African Jew. “I think I shouldn’t tell him what I know about jihad and world history,” she confides in a near-whisper.

Soon enough, though, it’s something other than jihad and the modern Crusades and the banality of American culture or whatever else one might read into the subtext of Birk’s American Qur’an that has caught her imagination.

“I can’t believe through surfing he traveled the world and became fascinated with the Koran and this is what happened,” says Diane, shaking her head, as mystified now with the impetus for Birk’s intellectual journey as with the journey itself.

She’s got a point. With Birk, you can’t blame it all on surfing, but you can blame a lot.

***

SANDOW BIRK, now 46, grew up in Seal Beach. He started surfing when he was 11. Like a lot of kids around those parts, he rode his bike to the beach in the morning to get a session in before school. On the other hand, Birk’s parents, who were refugees from Detroit, didn’t acclimate well to certain aspects of the SoCal lifestyle as quickly as did Birk.

“They were totally not into surfing at all,” says Birk. “They still don’t really get it.”

Birk says his parents invoked an every-other-day rule for surfing when he started succumbing to catnaps as a result of his morning sessions. Showing early signs of the motivation (and defiance?) he would later apply to some of his more ambitious projects, Birk skirted the rule by sneaking out at night and rolling the family car silently down the driveway. He and his friends would then make a break for some night surfing at the Huntington Beach pier, which was lit up to the end, “So you could see the sets coming in,” says Birk.

Weekends were spent surfing in Mexico—“with no money.”

Eventually, Birk started funding his surfing habit the old-fashioned way. “Me and my friends had a little surfboard company in the garage,” he says. “We made our own boards, so I learned a little bit about how to make boards.”

Birk came of age at a particularly pregnant time in Southern California youth culture, when surfing and skateboarding collided with the Orange County to Hollywood punk-rock nexus. “During the whole punk-rock years, all my friends were in bands, and we used to go to Hollywood all the time during high school and see bands play,” he reminisces, “Black Flag and all that.”

Not surprisingly, mainlining the L.A. punk-rock scene had an influence on the young man. “I was going to try to be an architect, but I was always that kid who drew on the folders and stuff at school and then painting surf- boards in the factory and then…ah, I just didn’t want to go be an architect,” he says, “so I went to art school instead.

It just seemed like way more fun, like more punk rock. “My parents weren’t happy about it,” he deadpans. Asked if his artistic sensibility gestated out of the surf and skate culture he grew up in, Birk chuckles. “I don’t think there was a surf and skate culture there,” he says. “Surf culture was painting pinstripes on the rails and skate culture was, like, Magic Marker on your T-shirt.” Back in the early ’80s, Otis was located near MacArthur Park in the scrappy Westlake neighborhood just west of downtown Los Angeles.

Enticed by the availability of cheap spaces, artists, punks, and bohemians started the first wave of post-Watts downtown backfill. For Birk, his first year of art school was a seminal experience.

“I started hanging out with people who were artists and lived in lofts and painted and went to art shows,” he says. “I was totally blown away. I didn’t even know you could do that. I didn’t know there were people who were, like, really artists, in the city in our time.”

We’re talking over lunch at a boisterous restaurant in downtown Long Beach near Birk’s home. After a long time in Hollywood, Birk and his wife, the talented artist and sculptor Elyse Pignolet, whom Birk met in San Francisco, now reside in Long Beach. Their home is in the Masonic Temple, a beautiful 1920s building built by the Long Beach masons for their headquarters. It was converted to multifamily lofts a few years ago and is now called the Temple Lofts.

Their loft is an open, bright, work/live arrangement shared with a dog and a shit load of evidence of the artist’s life—canvases, sketches, archives, books. Entering the loft, one is immediately greeted by a large, elaborate sculpture modeled on an offshore oil rig. Called “California Dreaming” it was constructed of detritus found on Southern California beaches. A close look reveals crutches, tubes, gas containers, egg crates, car parts, and the like. It inspires one to donate to Heal the Bay, Baykeeper,
or Surfrider. A homey-looking living area waits in the rear, beyond the workspace.

After a morning surf session, Birk seems relaxed and in the mood to talk a little story.

“So then,” he continues, “I really wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t really like school. So, I dropped out with my high school friend and had this idea to drive to Brazil. We took my car and just started driving. We drove all through Mexico and the car eventually blew up. So, we took the bus all the way to Brazil.”

To stay afloat, they worked with every garage-door board manufacturer they could find along the way. Birk’s buddy would shape, and Birk would glass and paint.

“We were just out of high school, you know; we weren’t very good or anything, but as we’d travel along, we’d work in all these different places, like in Mexico, Ecuador. We’d pull into town and there’d be one guy making surfboards, and we were, like, straight from Huntington Beach,” recalls Birk. “So the guy would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, come and show me the newest thing.’

It was when the transition from twin-fins to tri-fins was happening, and we’d show them how to make the tri-fin. And everyone would be, like, you can stay here for, like, a week, and we’d show them all the tricks and they’d say, ‘Oh, call this guy when you get to the next town.’ So we were able to work all the way down.”

Birk arrived in Rio the day before Carnival with $200 bucks in his pocket. In 1984 dollars it was just enough to make it through the five days of partying that greeted him. Luckily, when Carnival ended he and his friend had an audition with the head of the local surf- board factory.

“He was a really cool guy, Daniel Freeman, the first Brazilian on the World Tour in the ’70s,” says Birk. “Remember the Bronzed Aussies? He started the Brazilian version of that. They were called the Brazil Nuts. They had matching track suits of the ’70s.”

Birk spent the next half a year or so working in Freeman’s factory, learning Portuguese and surfing. Then, he met an expat Brit surfer who lured Birk and his buddy overseas with promises of traveling around Europe, surfing and working in factories.

“He was, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get you a job when you get there.’ And we got there and no job, no nothing. That’s when my buddy and I split up. We got in a big fight in a bar in Wales, and I haven’t seen him since,” says Birk. “It turned out he was smuggling cocaine in from Rio. That was part of his scheme to keep traveling, and I didn’t know about it…and then it got ugly.”

Stranded overseas with no money and no way home, Birk called his parents.

“They said, ‘If you go back to college, we’ll send you some money. I didn’t want to go home, so I went to college. I did a semester in Paris and a semester in England. I went to school in Bath. From Bath I could take the train and go surfing at Swansea out in Wales and make it back to school.”

Despite the cold water and temperamental swells, Birk says there was a whole scene out there at Swansea. (“The Brits are kind of hard-core.”) But he spent more time honing his art-history chops in the museums of England and France than his cutbacks on the Irish Sea. The effects on his artwork were profound and lasting. From the outset, Birk defined himself as an artist who surfs rather than a surf artist. His inspirations and appropriations came from past masters, not just the lowbrow influences that typically inform surf and skate artists.

Before that, though, Birk would struggle to find the confidence to take himself seriously as an artist, a journey that took him back to Rio when he was done soaking up old-world art history.

“I had saved up money and bought a one-way ticket to Rio, and I was like, I’m going to go to Rio for the summer to see my friends, and then I’ll go to school. And then I got a full-time job, I got an apartment, and so then I stayed three years,” explains Birk, chuckling a little at his obvious omission—that his parents weren’t happy about it.

But for him, it was the good life on Ipanema Beach.

“It was insane. I was 26; I was single. I’d ride a motorcycle with a surf rack on it, and I had a one- bedroom apartment a walk from the beach, and I was surfing every day in the tropics,” he says. “Wow.”

Up until then, Birk had been drawing “tons and tons of sketchbooks” but was daunted by the prospect of painting. In Rio, though, he finally confronted his self-doubt and began putting paint to canvas.

“I lived alone and started painting for the first time, you know, just getting a canvas and painting a picture— not a school assignment or something,” he recalls. “For a year I did a whole series of like 20 paintings.”

The experience taught Birk that he could motivate himself and not only paint but also have something to say as an artist.

“I didn’t have it planned out that I was going to find my voice, but I think I did,” he says. “I finally came back for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones was that I wanted to go back to school and become an artist.”

***

ONE OF BIRK’S EARLIEST PAINTING SERIES, featured in The Surfer’s Journal some 17 years ago, places surfers in the middle of paintings overtly referencing neo-classic masterpieces such as John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark.” In Birk’s fabulist concoction, it’s called “Aggro Crowd at Lower Trestles.”

In a later series of urban paintings, Birk depicts a drive-by shooting (“Death of Manuel”) in the same heightened tone in which Jacques-Louis David, the 19th century neo-classical painter and revolutionary, portrayed the slaying of his friend, the radical publisher Jean-Paul Marat (“Death of Marat”). The subtexts are many layered. Marat was an associate of Robespierre and the Jacobins during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. His killer was cliqued up, so to speak, with the more moderate Girondist faction.

In History Paintings, including the “Bashing of Reginald O. Denny,” “The Truce Between the Crips and the Bloods,” and “The Surrender of O.J. Simpson,” Birk gives the disposable icons of our modern media culture the same heightened status the old masters gave their subjects. The mock-heroic treatment instantly mythologizes contemporary events, infusing the paintings with a tone of irony and fable and freeing up Birk from the screeching didactics of so many contemporary artists attempting political commentary.

One of the best examples is the new-millennial “In Smog and Thunder: The Great War of the Californias.” Here, Birk elevates the banal kvetching of Northern Californians about philistine SoCal into a multimedia mock civil war between Los Angeles and San Francisco, referencing familiar war imagery from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and propaganda campaigns from the two world wars. “Smog and Thunder” meshes the contemporary and the classic—horses, motorcycles, Ironsides, helicopters, jet fighters, man-o’-wars—all find a place on this cultural battlefield. The effect is dizzying, hilarious, and certainly takes the piss out of the whole feud.

“Prisonation: Visions of California in the 21st Century” takes its cues from 19th century American landscape paintings to depict all 33 state prisons against their formerly idyllic backdrops. One is left with a sense of paradise lost one doesn’t normally associate with prisons. Later, Birk would interpret Dante’s Divine Comedy through the point of view of a South Bay slacker. The ambitious wood-etching series “Depravities of War,” finished just a couple of years ago, takes on the Iraq War and is inspired by 17th century artist Jacques Callot’s “The Miseries of War,” which was inspired by Francisco De Goya’s “The Disasters of War.” Tonally and formally, Birk recalls both in his series.

Birk’s use of anachronism toys with parody, but more importantly gives perspective. How well, he seems to ask, does our media-intoxicated, self-absorbed culture match up against history? What, for instance, was the arrest of O.J., a celebrity-fueled circus, or a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions? Both? Birk’s painting won’t tell you, but it’ll make you wonder.

Despite the tongue-in-cheek grandiosity, Birk confesses his style grew from humble beginnings. “That pretty much came from going to school in Europe, just seeing those old paintings,” he says. “I just started copying them early on, I think as just sort of a way to learn how to paint better, stealing their ideas. That’s the way it sort of grew.”

If it was surfing that set Birk on his wandering path, it was also surfing that helped him define what he wanted to do when he finally returned to Los Angeles and art school in the late ’80s.

“Back then, it was like to do anything serious you had to move to New York, and I totally didn’t want to move to New York because I didn’t want to quit surfing. So, then, I was kind of pissed off that L.A. isn’t bigger, so I sort of on purpose made L.A. the subject of every- thing. I wanted to make L.A. the art center…. I was like, I’m going to paint my fucking city.”

Birk stops himself and laughs at his hubris. But he is a bit of an anomaly. Outwardly, he bears none of the signifiers of the modern artist: no full-sleeve ink, no ironic facial hair, no contrived eccentricities. But the fact is, Los Angeles has become one of the important art centers of the world, and Birk has grown right along with it adding maturity to his ambition and grasp to his audacity. In the process, he’s become one of the city’s most significant artists.

“It’s almost like he leads a double life,” says writer and surfer Jamie Brisick, a friend and frequent flier with Birk for years. “He doesn’t talk about himself a lot, then it comes to the end of the year and you’ll go to the show and it’s like, this guy’s a fucking monster.”

Now in a more mature phase in his life and work, the monster is coming out of the box.

“Well, one thing I’ve consciously done is choose ever-expanding topics,” says Birk over dinner at an Ethiopian soul-food restaurant down the street from his gallery. “You know, I did the War of the Californias thing and I did the California prisons thing, and then the Dante thing spanned American [concerns], whereas the Iraq War project and the Koran thing are more international. We are consciously trying to take on the themes that are more globally relevant. I don’t want to be just a West Coast California artist.” Not anymore anyway.

***

IN AN HOUR OR SO, Birk will face those aforementioned Otis alumni and their anxieties. Speaking of which, since American Qur’an opened at her gallery, Del Rio tells me that despite the initial hysteria, the Muslim community has been mostly supportive, while the flack has come from the Christian right. Surprise, surprise. And while Del Rio believes Birk has “reached a new level of maturity for where he is in his artistic career,” no one’s betting he’s going to fully give up board for brush.

“What’s interesting about him as a surfer is that he’s still as keen and hungry as any surfer,” says Brisick. “He surfs really, really well.”

Birk is more modest about it. “I don’t think I’m getting better, but I don’t think I’m getting worse. I’m right on that cusp where it’s going to start going down- hill…I’m going to be frickin’ 50 in like four years,” he laughs, but admits, “I still haven’t outgrown my boards. I’m still riding the same boards since high school.”

Maybe, I suggest, it’s time for a longboard, or even, yikes, a funboard.

“Yeah,” says Birk while he ponders the inevitable, before rejecting it. “No! I just got a brand new four-fin.”

The day after the reception, Birk and his wife fly to Lisbon for a long vacation. She’s pregnant with their first child, a girl. Birk says he’s thrilled at the prospects of being a dad. I ask him if he feels like he’s settling down in his art and in his life, becoming…less punk?

“No, no. More punk,” he laughs. “Do it yourself: that was the punk motto. Don’t do what you don’t want to do. Don’t get a job, live every day…hey, it goes with the surfing motto, too.”