Artist Profile: Jeff Canham

"As a kid growing up in Hawaii, artist Jeff Canham was an avid reader of Surfer Magazine. Some years later, he landed a position as art director at the Orange County-based magazine. But after six years, it was time to leave the O.C. for San Francisco, an easy choice for Canham because, "there's surfing right at the end of every bus line." These days, Canham works hard at his day job as a sign painter for the New Bohemia Sign shop, a city relic known for its stellar roster of artists who have worked there. After hours, Canham often uses the shop (with his boss's blessing) to create his own work in the form of collages filled with text, often in self-designed typefaces, and symbols of wind, water and waves. The mix of surrealist, sideshow and Schoolhouse Rock imagery in his work is something people might not associate with surf art, though Canham believes it's this particular jumble that makes the San Francisco surfer/artist scene exciting. At the center of this scene is the Mollusk Surf Shop featuring the work of Canham and other great San Franciscan surfer/artists, including Thomas Campbell, Andy Davis and Clare Rojas, who are all making art that goes beyond the insular vision of airbrushing and Dick Dale. Surf-loving New Yorkers can see Canham's work at the brand-new Brooklyn Mollusk annex in Williamsburg, marked by an original Canham sign hanging out front."

- Joe Rudy, Papermag.com