The Lightning Bolts show is over and was a huge success. There have been tons of posts going around the blogsphere with photos and info from the show and it’s great to see BMX getting so much exposure. We have artists statements from all the artists that were in the show and it’s pretty dope to read their bios and see how much BMX influenced their lives. We’ll be posting all the statements through out the week, so keep checking back. Check out some more photos from the show and bios from Lee Basford, Jeff Tremaine, Greg Higgins, Joe Polevy, and Kevin Wilkins after the jump.

Overview of the course.

A serious lineup!

Here are the artist statements and bios:

Lee Basford

ARTIST STATEMENT:
I was totally immersed in BMX culture from the age of 12 onwards, it was the main thing in my life for such a long time, most of my teenage years were spent riding every minute I could find.
Growing up interested in art and design, that aspect of the culture had a significant influence on me while my artistic and musical tastes were still developing. American and English BMX magazines like Freestylin’ and R.A.D. were a huge influence on me, but it was Homeboy magazine especially that fuelled the desire to create. The whole culture seemed to merge together into one perfect entity with that magazine. I think I connected with everything they were into; music, writing, design, film, BMX, skateboarding and a different way of looking at the world. With BMX the outsider attitude of being apart from the mainstream, never wanting to be part of the mainstream, is something I think all riders share, and in most cases never lose.

ARTIST BIO:
Lee is an art director at Fluid, a design company in England. Working in and around the overlap of art and design, producing work for arts, video games, fashion and music companies that include Sony, Capcom, Sega, EMI, Parlophone and Electronic Arts.
Over the years he has written and illustrated for the magazines Paper-Sky, Dazed and Confused, Tokion and Level and designed typefaces for T26 (Chicago) and Fountain fonts (Sweden). Since 2000 he has exhibited both as a solo artist and as a member of the Outcrowd in England, Japan, Germany and Ireland. His work has featured in numerous books and design journals, including Graphics International, Creative Review, +81, 200% Cotton, Indie Fonts, Concrete 2 Canvas and Graphic Britain.
In 2007 he was invited by UNIQLO to their Creative Awards ceremony in Japan where he received a Judges Choice Award.
www.meisai.co.uk

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Jeff Tremaine

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Freestyle BMX set the course for my life. I lived to ride my bike from the age of twelve, and the people who I met through BMX had a huge influence on me. Through them, I discovered punk rock, art, and skateboarding and landed my first job art directing at a BMX magazine. To this day, I work with BMXers whenever I can.

ARTIST BIO:
The son of an army doctor, Jeff Tremaine was born in North Carolina and moved around a lot until his family settled in Rockville, Maryland when he was 11. After graduating from Washington University with a degree in Fine Art in 1989, he landed a job as art director for Freestylin’ magazine and moved on to run the seminal skateboard magazine Big Brother for eight years. In 1999, he co-created MTV’s Jackass. After 24 episodes, he quit making it for TV and moved it to the big screen with Jackass: The Movie in 2002 and Jackass Number Two in 2006. His continued to work in television, creating MTV’s Wildboyz and Rob & Big, which just finished its third season on air. He recently launched jackassworld.com and continues to develop both television and film projects.

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Greg Higgins

ARTIST STATEMENT:
BMX, in particular Freestyle, instilled in me at and early age two very defining factors in my life: the importance of creativity and the discipline required to pursue it. Freestyle kept me (mostly) out of trouble, toughened me up, cultivated my sense of humor, and introduced me to my finest friends to this day. I employ these factors in every aspect of my life, and the relationships that have been built around them are priceless.

ARTIST BIO:
Born and raised among the tumbleweed fields and casinos of Las Vegas, a penchant for bad bets led Greg Higgins to a career in the visual arts. Caricature bordering on portraiture is a common theme, as is improvisation, documentary and the play of wit and humor in the face of adversity. In the course of his career as an artist, Greg has enjoyed publication in Freestylin’, GO, BMX Plus, Big Brother, and Las Vegas Citylife, among others, and has had solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Osaka and Tokyo. In addition, he has done graphic design for companies such as Elwood, Prana, and Starlingear, and for many Las Vegas resorts, including Planet Hollywood, The Venetian, and Mandalay Bay. Besides the recognition of satisfied clientele, he has also received and award for Best Illustration from The Nevada Press Association in 2004, and an ADDY award for Best Illustration in 1994. Greg lives in Las Vegas with his wife and two daughters.

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Joe Polevy

ARTIST STATEMENT:
“BMX Sucks” was the catch-phrase du jour during my skateboarding adolescence. Being an impressionable young man desperately searching for a tribe, I swallowed the attitude hook, line, and stinker. Anti-anything-but-skating-and-hardcore was the blueprint of the day; in reality it was just another uniform. BMX’s rising popularity during skating’s decline fueled jealous hatred, but actually helped to keep skateparks and ramps — and therefore everyone’s scene — alive.
It wasn’t until landing a job in the action sports industry, and actually getting paid (thanks to Andy Jenkins and Mike Daily and Jeff Tremaine) to shoot photos of the world’s best riders, that I realized it wasn’t about the number of wheels you rode. Getting rad was what mattered. That and fun with friends and flexibility.
Now I ride with bikers and skaters (almost) every week, hoping my generation sees a return to DIY ethics and attitude.

ARTIST BIO:
Joe Polevy is a creative director and founding partner of the Boston-based ALMIGHTY — a multi-disciplinary, media-agnostic sweat lodge for generating ideas that transcend regular notions of advertising. His efforts have garnered him recognition from Cannes, The London International Advertising Awards, Communication Arts, and I.D. Magazine. He is working on a book about the effect of radiator noise on children in New England, and is currently obsessed with drum kits from the 1960’s.

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Kevin Wilkins

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Kids around here rode BMX bikes and kids around here skateboarded.
I was a kid around here.
This is not news: Sometime around fifteen or sixteen years of age most kids quit being kids and start driving cars. Then they are men and women.
That’s also when the bikes and skateboards start getting dusty. By total coincidence, around this same time I’d started to identify myself to myself as a skateboarder … and my bike broke.
BMX bikes and skateboards got me to my driver’s license, skateboards got me through everything else up until now, and riding bikes—non-BMX ones—keep me skateboarding.
Loser.

ARTIST BIO:
An auto-bio? Wouldn’t a simple bio be better? Then someone else could speak about all kinds of me related stuff and I could just sit back, roll my eyes, and mumble that it was all wrong, but, “Yeah, thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it.”
“Wilkins was a dick.” They’d write. “Still is a dick, and in between feigned bouts of injury, age, and paranoia he’s had a few lucky situations fall into his lap.
“He accidentally met Cheryl twenty-two years ago and they’re still together—now married and with two cool kids: Miles and Cian. He accidentally got a job working on a magazine [Homeboy] and when it ceased to exist, he accidentally got another job at a magazine [TransWorld]. The feeling of not having a job for a second combined with the feeling of magazine building became somewhat habit forming so for the last twenty years, he’s quit jobs and then tried to get essentially the same job back again. Bad plan, but accidentally it’s worked out for the best because four years ago when some of his friends started a new skateboard magazine [The Skateboard Mag], they asked him to be a part of it.”
“Now he can’t quit.” My biographer would type. “He’s locked in. But that doesn’t make him any less of a dick—an injured, aging, paranoid one and a lucky one—accidentally having something written about him that he won’t appreciate and won’t thank anyone for.”
Yeah. Maybe you should get someone else to write about me.
—Kevin Wilkins

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