Alaska News

Photos: Rico Worl brings Tlingit art to skateboards, skis and snowboards

JUNEAU -- It could have been just the hobby Tlingit artist Rico Worl chose: painting formline designs -- art where lines taper and swell, creating shapes to depict human and animals -- on skateboards for friends and relatives.

Instead these boards -- or "decks" in skating parlance -- anchor a broad collection of art found on skis, snowboards, earrings, T-shirts, playing cards and even basketballs.

Each hangs on walls or sits on shelves in Worl's Trickster Co. store in downtown Juneau. Jewelry is his passion, but the decks bring him national acclaim among museum curators and those melding art with sport.

For now, a set of decks hangs in the Burke Museum at the University of Washington and the University of Alaska's Museum of the North in Fairbanks. Burke also sells Worl's boards in its gift shop. And soon the set in Fairbanks will be on loan to the Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Back home, Worl toils over his 6-by-3-foot work bench set against the shop's back wall with a painted raven that appears to keep a watchful eye over Worl as he works.

READ MORE: Decked out -- Skateboards, skis are Southeast Alaska artist's canvas

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