Jeremy Beightol - 360 toe roll wall ride - Birmingham, Alabama by Wes Driver 2004
Article by Daniel Nodzak
Jeremy Beightol is one of rollerblading’s most visually distinctive artists and he’s recently decided to reprint most all of the illustrations he did for 4x4. To begin he’s made a limited run of two of his classic 4x4 designs available for pre-order until October 30th with more to come in the future as he continues to work through his portfolio. So I took the opportunity to reach out to him to learn more about his personal history with skating, art, and how he combined those interests to launch his brand Kaspa. A decision that would eventually lead to a lengthy career designing for rollerblading brands like 4x4 Wheels, Intuition Skate Shop, and the new kid on the block, Chroma Wheels.
If you’d like to pre-order the first run of Jeremy’s classic 4x4 tee shirts you can find the link at the end of this article.
Hey Jeremy thanks for joining me today. I'd love to get started with a brief run down of your history with blading.
I started skating when I was around 11 or 12 in my hometown of Erie, PA. My old man put in the floor for a local sports shop owner and got me a pair of Lightnings on trade as part of the payment for the job. The intention was for me to train for hockey with them over the summer. I was already skateboarding here and there and didn't really give my rollerblades much interest at the start. Then I caught the MTV Sports episode with the FR guys in New York, and that was pretty much the end of that. I started rollerblading every day. To school. From school. Exploring my hometown, always looking for new spots.
Erie isn't a huge city by any means so spots were pretty limited, which forced you to get creative. Not to mention, for a long time it was just me and one other rollerblader, Chris Baden, that were the only people trying to skate everyday... mostly within groups of older skateboarders. Erie also had a strong punk, metal, and drinking scene then, so those were the people we were around most of the time. We didn't collect magazines or videos really, and this was before either one of us had the internet- I want to say between '96 and '98. So we pretty much built our skating scene from the ground up outside of having a basic knowledge of the culture; which included pretty much just knowing the trick names, getting the Roller Warehouse Catalog, watching the ESPN comps, and catching a few videos.
Also, Erie, being a tourist stop, would bring in other rollerbladers traveling with their families from out of town. You'd spot a new person almost every summer skating street. So that helped bring in some news every now and then. During those years, we built a small crew and it went from there.
Jeremy Beightol portrait 2020 by Lara Borrasso
Along the same lines as my last question when did you get involved with art?
I always drew as a kid. Erie's a big Catholic town and my Mom's side is from Naples, so I went to Catholic school. Luckily, I got interested in Egyptian, Roman, and, most heavily, Greek mythology somewhere around 4th or 5th grade outside of the classroom. Then, I got into comic books. All of that combined kind of inspired me to look for sense in the things I was being taught in school and really helped me get some perspective on how biased what I was being taught was, and how biased the people teaching it were, and how much it affected the other kids around me.
To make it short, I was in detention a lot. So, that ended up giving me plenty of time to read and teach myself how to draw. Comic books helped simplify art and I already had pens and markers for school, so why not. I loved Jae Lee's Namor series, and when The Crow came out I tracked down the Jim O'Barr graphic novel the movie was based on, just to give a couple of examples. When I was 14, my art teacher showed me Gustav Klimt and Heironymus Bosch. I got into art more seriously after that. Noticing how Klimt outlined his subjects in some paintings linked comic art and graphic art to fine art for me. It was the next logical step.
So, linking that back to skating, I started drawing t-shirts and established Kaspa in '98, then around '02 or '03 I met Jon Elliott at a demo, which led to me working for 4x4. And then, in 2007, I started teaching myself how to paint. I've been making Kaspa ever since, I still freelance within the rollerblading industry doing graphics and illustration, and I'm still getting my paintings into galleries around the US.
4x4 “Cheers v.1” logo by Jeremy Beightol 2004
To expand on that a bit, do you recall a distinct moment when you were thought "I can combine these two interests into something weirdly beautiful" or were you just the kind of guy that was always doodling your favorite logos in your notebook during class or coming up with designs for rollerblades or tee-shirts that'd look dope, then things eventually fell into place?
Well, I guess I kind of hit on that a bit in the first two questions. But, to expand, basically, I was lucky enough to have that combination of interests, rollerblading and art, just sort of happen naturally. I do remember "making a line of K2s" in my math notebook one year. But outside of that, I loved to rollerblade, but didn't really care that much about "rollerblading".
Honestly, I didn't really relate to what I was seeing in videos or magazines. That's where Kaspa came in: I decided I wanted to make something I actually wanted to represent. I really didn't think it was leading to anything, it was just something for my friends and I to wear and represent our crew. There were kind of all of these "crews" around us; skateboarding crews, writing crews, punk bands, metalheads with their jackets all painted up. So, I figured, "We're a crew too. We're the scumbag rollerblader kids. Might as well distinguish ourselves." And it went from there.
Everything theme-wise with Kaspa pretty much came from my third biggest influence outside of rollerblading and art: music. For example, the first Kaspa logo/icon was a heart and lightning bolt inspired by Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, but then Mystery Skateboards came out. So, I put that one to bed. "LITD" comes from an Alice Cooper album title mixed with the Heartbreakers LAMF album title design. And there are a few Kaspa shirts quoting the Stooges, who are still to this day my favorite band. Not to mention the Misfits references, the Velvet underground references, etc. etc.
I pretty much followed the design templates of my favorite album covers and band shirts and taught myself design from there. Later, I mixed in learning basic composition and color theory from fine art and illustration, and that pretty much laid the groundwork for what would eventually develop into my visual style.
Basically, if I went to Media Play and was looking through cd's to buy, I'd ask myself why certain album covers jumped out at me. "What was the template?" I'd wonder. "Why does this work?" Then I worked my way backwards from there to learn the rules of design. I still don't know what those rules are called, but I know they're there. Also, I can't stress this enough, if you love doing something, do it at 100% as much as you can. Once you think you've got one element of whatever it is you love to do down, do it 100 more times just to make sure. Then move on to the next thing and do that 100%, then 100 more times. Do that daily. Also, a lot of times, luck is made through all that work you put in. If you see an opportunity, grab it. Nothing worth a damn comes free. Don't take your time for granted.
Kaspa design by Jeremy Beightol 2003
You've got a well deserved reputation in blading for producing some of the most intricate yet signature graphics for a lot of beloved brands. To the point where "Jeremy Beightol style" is probably something that's been mentioned numerous times by aspiring tee-shirt companies. So how did you get your foot in the door?
Erie finally got a skatepark in 2000 or 2001. The same guy that owned the sports shop that I got my Lightnings from opened it. I was so excited to see what was going on that I drove by to look in the windows one night while it was being built. On a whim, he noticed me at the window and let me in to show me around. I asked for a job and got hired by chance, I think I was 17 at the time.
Fast forward a year or three and I hear Razors is on tour. I hit them up and they put us down as one of their stops. They show up and, to hopefully be taken seriously, I pretend to have absolutely no idea who any of these guys were. It was Shima, Elliott, Dunkle, Treseder, Mike Johnson, Bones, Jan Welch, and Wes Driver. Of course I knew who everybody was, but, I didn't want to come across like the other kids there at all. Especially representing my local park and crew.
So, I skate with the Razors team in the demo and I'm doing all this weird shit all over the park. I've got black pants on that are my waist size, a black cut off Kaspa shirt, and hair down past my shoulders. I stood out. At that time in rollerblading, I really stood out. So, after the demo, Jon invites me to hang out on the bus and bullshit. He asks me if I'd want to ride for Ground Control. As we're talking, he notices my Kaspa shirt and asks me what it is. As I'm explaining, Shima asks where he can get one from. I say I've got some in my trunk, and I go grab one and come back on the bus. I hand it to Brian and say, "20 bucks." Brian gives me the money and Jon starts giggling: I just SOLD a shirt to Brian Shima, the baddest dude on the planet in rollerblading, especially at that time.
Jon mentioned later how much that grabbed his attention off the bat. But, in this moment, he mentions a wheel company he's thinking about starting with Brian and Jan, and asked if I would be interested in putting something together for them to check out. We exchange phone numbers.
Fast forward a few months, Jon's flying me out to San Diego for ASR to hang out in the Ground Control booth and maybe film a little bit. This is where I first meet Micah Yeager, but that's important for a whole other story. Back to it: On my flight out to California, I had drawn up the 4x4 Metal shirt with a bic pen on some computer paper, just to not show up empty handed. I land. I show the drawing to Jon and he really digs it, so we pretty much started to get everything established from there.
I think Elliott's and Haffey's wheels were next. About a year later, I was the head artist for the next full line that Christmas season, The Sandman line. I think it was the Summer before that line came out, 4x4 flew me out and Jon and I signed a contract in blood over some Gentleman Jack. If you remember that 4x4 ad with me holding the balloons, it mentions that going down. That's no bullshit. We actually cut our arms open and signed that shit in blood. The Sandman line got the industry's attention, and Kaspa was this underground boogeyman of a company from someplace called Erie, PA that big name pros supported. All drawn by this long haired dude dressed in black all the time. I couldn't have asked for a better start.
4x4 “metal” logo by Jeremy Beightol 2003
Why did you decide to reproduce these two 4x4 prints? Was it purely a matter of demand or do they hold some special significance with you?
The Metal design was the first design I ever did for 4x4. So, to me, the reprints had to start there to begin this new timeline of the art being out in the world again. That was important to me. Snake eating its tail so to speak. As far as the Cheers V.1 graphic, it is the most asked about or brought up design out of all of the 4x4 designs I ever did, followed by the Ye Be Warned. Just this year, I'd say I've gotten over a hundred messages from skaters all over the world asking if I'd ever reprint any of these. Basically, you asked, I listened.
Rollerblading will always be a home to me, I owe it a lot. So I'm always down to help give back and push it forward whenever I can. I'll be doing two designs at a time through pre-orders so there aren't any left over in off sizes. The money that pays for each shirt purchased goes right back into the next ones being made. So, the more support this project gets, the more designs I can afford to put out. Simple as that.
Before I let you go, I’d love to know more about your recent collaboration with Chroma Wheels on their Stefan Brandow pro wheel and tee-shirt?
For sure. No sweat! Ive known Stefan for a really long time through him coming to the skatepark I worked at. His dad would bring him down for contests whenever we had them. Stefan always had a great attitude towards skating and his dad was one of the nicest guys Id met, on top of being so supportive. Which is always great to see. They’d scoop up a Kaspa shirt whenever I had some and Stefan would come in and just fuck up the park on the reg. He was pretty much the only non local, local.
Now, fast forward a few years, Stefans gone from this 15 year old kid to this absolute badass in the industry via skating and his art. Not to mention his work ethic and attitude. Meanwhile, Im still doing Kaspa and freelancing for different companies in rollerblading, but my focus is more on fine art. So I was a bit out of the loop, a lot of that had to do with me renouncing having a cell phone for 5 or 6 years. Got rid of all my contacts. So I wasn’t getting any of the news in real time like I used to, and I made it really hard for people to contact me for the most part.
I got a phone again Spring of last year and start catching back up with people. One of the first people that hit me up about work was Matt Mickey at Intuition. Matt said a rider for his shop dug my work and wanted an illustration for his new pro shirt coming out. That was Derek Henderson. I had seen some clips and I was extremely down to do something metal as hell for him. Once that came out, I think it kind of sent up a flare I was still alive.
Intuition Derek Henderson pro shirt by Jeremy Beightol 2020
So, back to Stefan, I hit up Stefan about a new Kaspa line Im putting out and after a bit he tells me about a new wheel project he’s working on with Lawrence Ingraham from 50/50. He wanted me to design it. I got in touch with Lawrence and he laid out such a great plan to me. Between the great idea, and Stefan being the first pro, I really couldn’t help but be part of it, honestly. The idea of the visuals and marketing being a big part of it, along with properly taking care of your pros, is really reminiscent of my time designing for 4x4.
Chroma Wheels Stefan Brandow pro wheel by Jeremy Beightol 2020 via chromawheels.com
If you’d like to pre-order Jeremy’s 4x4 “Metal” and “Cheers” reprints (available until Oct. 30th and shipping Dec. 1st) or the Stefan Brandow Pro wheels from Chroma Wheels you can do so by following the links below.
