The teal head of a cartoon dinosaur protrudes above a door frame in an otherwise beige stretch of Camp Washington. Beside it, the word “fun” is brightly painted with an arrow aptly pointing toward the entrance.
It’s the site of People Liberty’s new storefront gallery on Colerain Avenue, and the current home of SkateAble vs Non — an indoor skatepark that merges the creativity of skateboarding with community. (It runs through Oct. 17.)
Inside, the space is filled with handmade quarter-pipes, various ramps and spines awash with bold colors. The sound of skateboards landing tricks — or skaters wiping out — is in harmony with the wafting lo-fi Punk music, reminiscent of Surf Rock. Creating all this was a large undertaking, built mainly by four people: Ali Calis, Scott Licardi, Zach Kincaid and Jill Cleary. Though the group has created similar DIY parks in the past, they’ve generally been in someone’s driveway or garage. But this time they were backed by one of People’s Liberty’s $15,000 Globe Grants.
Most of the construction work happened offsite in an Over-the-Rhine workspace called Felsenhaus.
“We were there for two months before we came here (for two weeks),” Cleary says. “We wanted to get in here and have our opening as soon as possible so we could utilize the whole grant period. We’re used to hustling — making a lot of the stuff in a short amount of time.”
In that window — a mere two weeks — they installed the entire skatepark, painted the ramps and hung rows of skateboard decks painted by local artists. Cleary says the SkateAble team came together through different stages, slowly forming as a cohesive group through a mutual love of skateboarding.
But they all have different day jobs. Two of them work as scientists (Licardi and Kincaid), the others as graphic designers (Calis and Cleary). At the time of the interview — four days prior to their Aug. 22 opening — Cleary motioned to the then-unpainted ramps, noting that she was excited to see the project come together as Licardi unloaded materials from a pickup truck. In terms of why they chose to do this work, he chimes in that, “It’s more like, ‘Why not?’ Why not do it?”
“Skateboarding made all this, you know?” Cleary says. “We just enjoy it so much that — like Scott said — why not? We just did it. You can go on and on about what this means to me, but as an artist it just means everything to be able to do these cool projects through art and skateboarding and be able to know these people.”
On opening day, patrons milled in and out, pointing to various “skateable” art, be it a collection of lilac scrunched-up faces rendered in plywood, a jagged skull or a bowl painted as a lime-green gator.
For the team members, the grant is part of work that they’ve been pouring themselves into for years. Across the river, a similar (and permanent) skatepark found a home under a bridge in Newport.
“(The process) is natural. Ali has been doing this for decades,” Cleary says. “We came together as the group we are now probably four years ago. I’ve been doing these on and off. But you can do it for a long time and people will still be shocked like, ‘Oh, this is a new idea.’ ”
In the fenced-in backyard of the Camp Washington space, the “non” comes into play: a skee-ball ramp shaped like Fiona the hippo is joined by wavy pastel pink benches, which surround a rocking yellow wooden cow inspired by the story of Cincinnati “Charlene” Freedom. (She’s a 1,050-pound cow that leaped over a fence at a local slaughterhouse in 2002 and not only escaped death but gained fame, too.) There’s also a basketball court with a backboard shaped like a twilight-hued bat.
To have People’s Liberty fund their work, Cleary says, was “awesome.” And for the next three months, they’ll be able to spend more time — with financial backing — doing what they love: skateboarding and creating.
“Cincinnati is definitely unique. And to have people like Ali (and the team) keep facilitating SkateAble art just makes our city a little cooler than everybody else’s,” Cleary says.
SkateAble vs Non is on view at 2840 Colerain Ave., Camp Washington. More info: skateablevsnon.com
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 5, 2018.