Grip-tape art

Two ex-Massachusetts men have created one of the coolest works of art I've seen in years. The falling man and cityscape pictured below were cut out of grip tape -- the sticky-backed sandpaper that skaters apply to the top side of a skateboard "deck," so their shoes won't slip.

The artwork was designed by San Francisco-based cartoonist and illustrator Joe Alterio, originally of Arlington, for the Deck/Shoes art show at the Space Gallery in San Francisco.

If Alterio's name sounds familiar, it's because I raved about his Robots & Monsters project last spring. Alterio was trying to raise $1,000 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation by drawing customized robots and monsters for $25 apiece; his idea was such a hit that he raised $10,000 in less than 48 hours, and had to shut the website down.

You can see more of Alterio's skateboard illustrations here.

In order to produce the skateboard art, Alterio collaborated with Jesse Milden, a skateboarder and former web designer at Tripod (in Williamstown) and Lycos (in Waltham). Now living in Seattle, Milden is the proprietor of Subhead Premium Grip, an intensely hip customized "anti-slip sticker" business. For example:

While I'm thrilled to see Alterio and Milden thriving on the West Coast, I'm driven to ask, for the thousandth time: Why did they have to leave, in order to succeed, Boston?