Skateboard decks by US-artist Steve Marcus at the Galicia Jewish Museum

Jewish Quarter Pipe: Kosher Pop Sk8 Art by Steve Marcus is the newest temporary exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland. The show will run until mid-January 2024.

Using the skateboard deck as a canvas, this New York City artist explores the themes of tradition, spirituality and local Jewish history in a series of artworks made especially for the Galicia Jewish Museum. Marcus’ unique style, inspired by cartoons and underground comics is a fun and refreshingly accessible approach to contemporary Jewish art that is masterfully showcased on 40 whimsical and thought-provoking skateboard decks.
Why forty decks? The number 40 has great significance throughout the Torah and the Talmud and represents transition or change; the concept of renewal; a new beginning and has the power to lift a spiritual state.
It took Marcus less than 40 years and more than 40 days to create this collection of hand drawn creations transferred to skateboard decks. The skateboards are accompanied by a Shabbat candle set assembled with skateboard wheels and parts and the exhibit in its totality express his own personal journey of transition and change and new beginnings. Marcus contributed to the counterculture before his own midlife renewal and the several music festival inspired posters, like the skateboards, pay homage to his rebel youth.

—
NYC artist, Steve Marcus (aka smarcus) has received honors and awards from the American Society of Illustrators, has several works in the permanent collection of the Oakland Museum of California, The Jewish Museum of Florida–FIU, The American History collection at the Harvard Library, The Yiddish Book Center, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and private art collections in the United States and abroad. He has collaborated with Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, The Norman Mailer Estate, The New Orleans Jazz Museum and The Red Hot Chili Peppers and created artwork and illustrations for The New York Times, High Times Magazine and the infamous Cannabis Cup, The United Nations, MTV, Tattoo International, The Source, and Esquire. He’s exhibited numerous times at Art Basel in Miami, Florida, The Museum at Eldridge Street in NYC, The Maine Jewish Museum and The Bernard Heller Museum in NYC as well as other prestigious institutions and art galleries.

More information can be found here:

Galicia Jewish Museum 
Smarcus