Nicholas Tramontin

Born in San Francisco, raised in Marin County at the base of Mount Tamalpais, surrounded by massive redwood trees, Nicholas lusted after an urban landscape. Always in trouble for making art instead of doing school work he discovered a sense of freedom and passion for automobiles at a young age. During this time the surf, skate and gra ti culture was also emerging as a strong influential cultural force, calling him to Los Angeles. He uprooted and replaced 500-year-old redwoods with 100-foot-tall buildings. The new replaced the old, the fast replaced the slow, and he began creating unique works of art that moved you, fast. Nicholas is driven by speed and movement. Riding a wave on a surfboard or shifting gears in a fast car, the connection to machines and unstoppable forces has always inspired his direction and his work. While his passion for beautiful turbo speed machines will always be a part of his framework and story, exploring the machine of the mind through his work allows him to have both movement and connection. Through heartbreak and a deep romance with the darkness that lives within all of us, Nick finds the light in his work through the process of layering paint with brushes, spray paint and resin. His work combines abstrac textures with a deconstructed gra ti street style.

Each piece creates a loose barrier between light and darkness, moving from restriction to preservation of space, and sometimes filled with freeing chaos. Other times, revealing portals to what feels like other dimensions. This process avails the freedom to travel and transcend space and time, to rediscover the dark forest, where nothing is old or new, but in a perpetual state of change and rebirth.

Nicholas was selected by Restoration Hardware to create the first collection of street art to the retailers catalog. He has been Commissioned for various mural works including a 2500 sq foot installation for Portia De Rossi her company General Public Art. Nicholas’s works have been exhibited in Auctions and included in private collections.

Kimbie Noble

Based in Bozeman, Montana and growing up along the coast of California, Kimbie is an impressionist artist who exclusively uses palette knives and uniquely thick paint to create dimensional fine art. Similar to the nature inspired subjects themselves, the paintings are appreciated from varying perspectives, different light and multiple senses because they are dimensional. Layer after layer is applied with a thick impasto technique that allows for extreme texture; the paint appears to be coming out of the canvas. Her paintings embody her love for the beauty and force she finds in nature. It is outside, either in the mountains or by the ocean where she finds healing, her peace, and inspiration. She believes in big art and art that has big of meaning. It should stir curiosity. It can promote wanderlust. “When my heavy textured acrylic strokes find meaning with the viewer, that is the ultimate gift of hope for me.” It is the connection between artist and art lover that can enhance our lives with significance and wonder. Choose big art that predominantly fills one wall, it will keep the eye focused in that space. “Introduce just one large-scale statement piece to pull the room together and amp up its style. Big pieces are like a blanket that gives you a big hug. It can be unifying.”

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David Diaz

David Diaz’s visual expressions are explorations of balance, beauty, values, irony and empathy. He celebrates color and texture – all the while – getting to the bone of emotion and sensation.

Finding beauty and patterns all around him, David takes inspiration from both the mundane and the sublime which is reflected in the current use of Surfite as his medium of choice.

David’s early work began with oils and acrylic on canvas and migrated to stone sculpture. His journey of expression aligned with his passion for surfing when he discovered Surfite. In the process of making surfboards, technicians use brightly colored resin to decorate each board. Afterwards, when this resin pools and hardens on the floor, it becomes Surfite: set forever as blocks of completely unique striations of color and form.

Diaz’s work honors and displays the imperfect ways colors play and meld together. Light awakens the organic fusion between layers. The beauty lies in the celebration of the imperfect. Unique and impossible to replicate, each piece evokes wonder and carries an undeniable reminder of the sea and the freedom and exhilaration of the sport of surfing.

Born in New York, Diaz relocated with his family to Monterrey Mexico shortly thereafter. Trained at the Northern Arizona University, Diaz studied photography, sculpture, painting and stone work. He has lived in Mexico, Spain, El Salvador, Peru and now resides in Redondo Beach California.

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Michael deNicola

Michael Torquato deNicola is a world traveling and award-winning surfer, artist, and filmmaker.

Mike grew up making sense of the world through surfing and art. Born and raised in Southern California, he is a life long surfer with much of his inspiration coming from the Ocean and his experiences around the globe in locations such as Indonesia, Iceland, Samoa, Peru, The Galapagos Islands and more.

Mike started surfing at the age of 12 and was competing with the US team by age 19. As the first pro surfer from the US team to graduate from College, he learned to negotiate between his athletic and creative pursuits, and the business of surf.

Mike has always designed the work on his surfboards, but it was only when he started traveling and competing internationally that his work developed into the style it is today. Mike’s boards tell the story of his relationship with the Oceans from around the globe. If Mike’s surf style can be called fluid his large and colorful mixed media pieces resonate the same fluidity in a layered collage of rhythms, patterns and forms.

Some of his favorite ventures have come from working with Marie Claire, The Olson Company and creating and producing Red Bull’s ‘5X’ series, seen on FOX, NBC and Fuel TV which feature a new format of competitive surfing. Mike produced and art directed the award-winning documentary ‘The Westsiders’ and produced the feature film ‘Chapter and Verse,’ released in 2017.

Mikes visual works have appeared in galleries, art fairs, film festivals and TV screens around the world over the past 25 years as was the subject of ‘A L.A. Surf Story’ presented at Civic Center Studios in Downtown Los Angeles.

In 2020, Mike created ‘A Book of HOPE’ which is based on a repetition of 21-Day meditations during the pandemic. Most recently, his artwork has been exhibited at the Tracy Park Gallery in Malibu and The Swing Street Gallery on Gallery Row in Downtown L.A.

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Chip Herwegh

Native Angeleno and South Bay local, Chip Herwegh has a lifelong love affair with the history, geography, and societal archives of his hometown. His work, his art is intimately anchored by moments in time and evocative settings that he has been documenting over decades. Filed and stored, figuratively, and brought out thereafter when inspiration takes flight.

Chip spent years working and honing his artistry with a diverse tool set, eventually leading him to a place where building, research, playing about, and true carpentry craftsmanship has made his work both nostalgic and progressive. Experimentation has become an integral part of his methodology as well as the reinventing of techniques and using materials in hybrid and charmingly unanticipated ways. As the 20th century artist and great experimenter Saul Baizerman began with a flat sheet of copper and a hammer, Chip begins with a piece of wood and his tools. The outcome is most often a surprise, even to the artist himself, revealing a hidden, never imagined grandeur.

Two notable pieces include “Kenter Banks” which began with the finished product, a skateboard deck, and then cut away revealing layers of colored veneers exposing something quite beautiful but completely unenvisaged. Secondly, his work “1555 Artesian” is a large format architectural piece evolving from a photograph by one of Los Angeles’s most well known and iconic post-war artists, Ed Ruscha.

Though he works in three dimensions, his goal is to ultimately collapse the distinction between painting and sculpture, blurring the boundary between the two. The art and method, though done in isolation, is never a selfish act. Chip’s preeminent goal is to share the emotional process from past to present that he experiences, with the observer, to form a palpable connection between him and the viewer.

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Dennis Jarvis

Raised in Southern California, Dennis Jarvis started airbrushing surfboards as a teenager. A makeshift spray booth was in his bedroom at the time and the racks were his mother’s ironing board. Drawn to conflicting colors and graphic designs, Jarvis carved out a career as an airbrush artist, first selling his creative designs to local South Bay surf shops. His then art teacher at Mira Costa High School, John Jancar, noticed his talent and mentored him, explaining that, “simplicity is the key to a good design,” a mantra Jarvis holds throughout his career. As a young man, Jarvis worked as an artist, craftsman, shaper and athlete, traveling the world as a pro-surfer. From his winnings he returned and established Spyder Surf in his hometown of Hermosa Beach, a family-owned company now celebrating its 40th year. His skills originate from the thousands of hours shaping (sculpting) and painting surfboards. With Spyder Surf as his launching point, Jarvis continues to receive honors from the public, including recent thirteen-time winner of Shaper of the Year; inductee to the Surfer’s Hall of Fame; distinguished alumni at Mira Costa High School’s Hall of Fame and more magazine covers than any other Los Angeles based surfboard company since the 1960’s. Starting with an airbrush, Jarvis continues to have a historical impact on the graphic art that defines surf, skate and snowboard culture.

With Spyder Surf brand launching his art onto the world’s stage, Jarvis became sought after as a visual and conceptual artist. Filmmakers like James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow commissioned Jarvis to create dynamic visuals for the film Point Break. That experience led him to work behind the camera as Concept Designer and Creative Designer for television and film which opened the door to him being awarded for his work as a producer and director. Jarvis was notably commissioned by designer Clive Wilkenson to create a flowing surf themed feel for the world-renowned advertising agency Chiat Day in Marina del Rey. Other commissions include collaborations with internationally known Environmentalist Artist Ed Massey and Snapchat bringing him in to create a lifestyle atmosphere in their Santa Monica complexes.

Jarvis was inspired to become an artist-gallery owner from many sources, including other cultural pioneers like graffiti artist and Los Angeles gallery owner, Kelly “RISK” Gravel whose art covers the exterior of Gallery 208. Other artistic influences include the work of Phil Roberts and Rolland Berry in addition to the expressive Color Field movement dating back to the 1940’s with Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella.

The main source of inspiration is rooted in his family. Jarvis still resides in his hometown of Hermosa Beach with his wife and three children while continuing to shape and paint surfboards for world-wide competitive athletes as well as local groms just starting out on the waves.

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