STEFFAN MACMILLAN

Steffan is Welsh. But that doesn't explain why he takes photos of himself lying naked in landscapes that look like they've been torn from the cover of some 1970's prog rock LP. When he's not spread eagled across some beauty spot, Steff's busy designing logos for imaginary corporations and occasionally real ones. He also makes typefaces. And takes wedding photos. If you need a website built look no further. Yes, Steffan Macmillan. A one man empire.

OPENING IN CHERRYVALE, KANSAS

Cherryvale, Kansas, birthplace and spiritual home of Cherryvale Skateboard Company is where the show will open. Come January 2007, we reckon we'll be good to go and exhibit all the skateboards in an abandoned store or similar lo-fi space we can turn into a makeshift gallery. All the pieces are falling into place and our hearts and tummys tell us its the right way to go. Needless to say we're excited like little girls on their first pony ride. Once we're done in Cherryvale, we'll bring the whole show to London and, with a bit of luck, New York. Then, who knows where...

COMING SOON

More boards are on their way to Cherryvale and will no doubt find their way onto this blog. You may have noticed we haven't posted full images of the skateboards. Call us teasers, but we don't want to spoil the show by going and posting everything online before its had a fair airing in the off-line world. People have worked too hard on their boards and besides which, nothing beats seeing these decks in real life. So please just hang in there for the show. Which, er, incidentally, may be, um, slightly later than anticipated. More to follow.

JODY BARTON

First thing I ever saw from Jody Barton was a big black circle shape that said in the middle of it: Even on the sunniest days it's dark inside my head. Out of that darkness has come a scarily good skateboard. Cherryvale smothers you in whipped cream with cherries on top and then lovingly licks it from your body Jody, your naked body. Yes its that good.

SIMON PEPLOW

Mr Peplow comes to Cherryvale via Birmingham, England, where he draws and paints alot and dreams of life in the country. We saw some cloudy headed people pictures he did and thought, now here's a guy we can relate to. Sure enough, soon after, a friend suggested he would be good for us and us for him. And so it proved. Pleasure to make your acquaintance Simon.

FRENCH

Metal and drawing. Drawing and metal. More metal. More drawing. And then tea. That's what French likes. And we like French. So its all good then. Great, in fact. Yep. French is great.

CHRISTOPHER WEBSTER

Six years ago I picked up a comic called Wormwood. It was crammed with compelling ideas and striking b&w imagery. This was my introduction to Christopher Webster. Trying to track down more of his work put me in contact with the man himself and we stayed in touch. When the Cherryvale project began, I knew Chris had to be involved. I showed his comics to Valerie and she immediately said, sign him up. Lucky for us he was into it. His graphic novel, Malus, is a real good intro to his work. It's intensely drawn and bursting with strange thoughts, go find a copy and just see for yourself. By comparison, his board for Cherryvale is oddly calm, but somehow as strong and involving as his comics. We like how you did that Chris.

YUKO KONDO

Take a look at Yuko's book published by Pocko. It's really different. His work doesn't seem to come from a specific era or country (he's Japanese by the way) it occupies its own time and space. Valerie is obsessed with aviation and it was an image of an otherworldly airport that first brought Yuko to her attention. Me, I'd been impressed by his work on the Roll Deep album cover. He's done a super odd looking skateboard that we don't even pretend to understand but we love every last weird bit of it.

JOHN TALLON

We saw John's work at a Central Saint Martins degree show and were blown away by his commie-death-robot-madness (as he describes it). We tracked him down to Liverpool and recruited him for Cherryvale. His was the first board we got back and it will always remain special in our hearts. Thank you John.

INCOMING

A bunch of decks have arrived here on the Cherryvale Skateboard Company doorstep these past few weeks. Thanks heaps to all you folks who've let us know your boards are ready for collection. If we haven't collected them yet, we're working on it.

OZ vs AP

Valerie and I went to Oz for a few weeks in October. We saw the mighty Ariel Pink play Melbourne and Adelaide with a superb band of Aussie musos who had totally nailed his sound. It was stunning and confirmed his status as musical genius. You gotta check him out. We had a really good chat with Ariel in Adelaide and he reckoned he was gonna do something with his Cherryvale board. We're keeping our fingers crossed. On the way back to London we stopped for a day in Hong Kong and were blown away by that city. We really need to get a Hong Kong artist to contribute to Cherryvale. Suggestions welcome at cherryvaleskateboardco@hotmail.com. Meanwhile, lots of artists have been in touch and we've got back about half a dozen boards already. And they all look absolutely incredible. They're all so different and so amazing that they kind of make us feel a bit sick to our stomachs.