Turning the Surfboard Into a Canvas
 Bjorn Iooss Photos
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(8/12/2008) “I’m spilling life,” Billy Hamilton said, beaming and peering down at the bits of lobster meat his Hawaiian print shirt had collected during a feast on Saturday at the Montauk residence of Chuck Weimar, Mr. Hamilton’s neighbor on the north shore of Kauai during the winter months.
He was also “talking story,” as the Hawaiians say, a 59-year-old surfing and surfboard-shaping legend excited like a little kid about his first art exhibit now under way at the Inlet Seafood restaurant and gallery in Montauk.
A number of the master shaper’s pieces, as well as art by other Hawaiian artists and craftsmen, will be on display today through Saturday at Inlet Seafood, which is at the end of East Lake Drive in Montauk.
Between bites of surf and medium-rare turf, Mr. Hamilton said that since the 1960s he had thought of the surfboards he shaped as sculptures as well as “frames” within which other mediums can be brought to bear. But it was a more recent awareness that he was “standing in the footsteps” of past surfing pioneers with a unique understanding of where the sport had been and was going that inspired him to venture into pure artistic expression.
It’s hard to fathom the depth of Mr. Hamilton’s experience. “I was born in 1948 to be a man who loved all the aspects of the ocean and form my life around them, from diving to fishing and netting. My bed was filled with sand from childhood.”
Billy Hamilton grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., and while still in high school gained a reputation for being one of the foremost surfing stylists.
A Surfer magazine poll in 1966 named him number six in the world. That was the year he moved to the North Shore of Oahu, where he joined a generation of elite big-wave riders, including Jose Angel, Ricky Grigg, Greg Noll, Tiger Espere, Butch Van Arsdalen, Joey Cabell, Jock Sutherland, and Eddie Aikau.
It was in 1966 that Mr. Hamilton met his future wife, Joann, and stepson, Laird Hamilton, whom he raised. “I gave him my life,” he said on Saturday of his stepson, who grew up in the town of Hanalei on the north shore of Kauai and is credited with creating, with a small group of friends, the extreme sport of big-wave, tow-in surfing. He is considered its greatest practitioner.
In addition to playing an integral role in the evolution of surfboard shapes over the past four decades, Mr. Hamilton also experimented with materials. Tapa cloth designs on the material used to wrap the rails of Billy Hamilton surfboards are a trademark.
“The surfboard as an artistic canvas has been used since the beginning with carving or paint,” Mr. Hamilton wrote in the gallery’s brochure. “The artist over hundreds of years has left his prints along the way. Most importantly, the surfboard has evolved as sculpture where form gives in to function.”
 As though born from a redwood plank, Billy Hamilton’s sculpture “Birth” pays homage to Duke Kahanamoku and the roots of modern surfing.
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Up until now, form has always flowed from function for Mr. Hamilton. “Birth,” one of the pieces on display at Inlet, is the first sculpture created solely for form alone. The redwood used is 700 years old and comes from a plank cut from a tree in Northern California that fell in 1906.
“A mill was created to cut it back then. A contractor had some and gave me an 11-foot plank. I moved it around over the years. The big black bees got into it, so I was left with eight feet of beautiful wood, heart redwood.”
Mr. Hamilton’s “Birth” sculpture shows a shaped and polished surfboard being born from the rough-hewn redwood with the painted word “Duke” like a distant cloud on its surface. “I wanted to have this beautiful surfboard morphing out of the ancient piece of wood and leaving the trunk as contrast to the rich grain.”
Duke refers to Duke Kahanamoku, known as the father of modern surfing, who one day in 1969 asked to meet the young surfer from California. “I enjoy very much how you surf, you’re like an ocean bird,” said the Duke.
“We shake hands, my hand becoming a small child’s inside a huge glove,” Mr. Hamilton wrote of the moment. “ ‘Birth’ is my first sculpted piece of work. It’s inlaid on the deck with Tahitian shell, a board morphing out of something so old.”
The Inlet exhibit also includes a 9-foot-6-by-22-inch surfboard table with inlaid Australian agate. The table literally glows in the dark by virtue of chemical glo-sticks that slide into holes drilled behind a removable tail block.
There are 12 boards all together, along with Aboriginal art from Australia and an exact replica of the tow-in board that Laird Hamilton rode at the Tahitian spot known as Teahupu on a giant day captured on film. The ride has been called the most significant one in surfing history.
The artist-shaper has also brought along works by other Hawaiian artists, J.P. Willis, Mark Daniels, Lee Clark, and his son, Lyon Hamilton, and by an Australian, Tony Hart.
Why Montauk? Mr. Hamilton said he liked the energy of the Montaukers he’d met, surfed with, and befriended on his home turf. He said he wanted to come and feel the energy here, and the ocean. “I call these places God’s soup.”