Matt Parker shapes surfboards in San Clemente under the name Album. He grew up inland in Orange, California, surfing Newport, and made his first board at twenty-five because the shop selection felt like a closed argument. The first twenty were built entirely with hand tools. He sold one on consignment at Surfside in Newport. Album grew from that refusal: a surfboard should not have rules.
The boards are the work. Asyms, twins, fishes, pintails, 80s beak noses, color that would get you thrown out of a plain-wrap factory. Models in the current language include Sunstone, Moonstone, Lightbender, Twinsman, Darkness. Parker came up through art school as a graphic designer. The glass jobs read like editions, not logos. Josh Kerr has ridden Album in Hawaii. The shop at 1709 N. El Camino Real is part studio, part showroom, part argument that foam and resin are sculpture that has to survive water.
He is self-taught as a shaper and obsessive as a designer. The interesting part, for the series, is not the surf industry. It is a person treating a finite number of waves as a reason to keep drawing in three dimensions.
We go to San Clemente because if a sculpture has to work in eight-foot surf, the decorative argument is over.
