Go Bid Or Go Home: NECKFACE Talks Special ebay Auction Of His Nike SB Dunk Low

Once an anonymous street graffiti artist, NECKFACE has become a globally recognized multi-media creative who’s just as attention-grabbing as his art.
 
Born and raised in Stockton, California, NECKFACE has left his mark on different cities across the world. Walls, sides of buildings and more in New York, Montevideo, Uruguay and everywhere in-between have served as canvases to the artist’s heavy metal and latrinalia-inspired pieces. For his next visits to these places, NECKFACE hopes to bring along his skateable sculptures, a goal on which he’s collaborating with The Skatepark Project, an organization founded by Tony Hawk in 2002 that aims to develop safe, legal skateparks to underserved communities. Both parties also tapped ebay in their efforts, with the after-market platform hosting an auction of four one-of-a-kind presentations of the recent NECKFACE x Nike SB Dunk Low.
 
Ahead of the auction’s closing (3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, November 16th), Sneaker News spoke with the “Demon Hunter” himself about everything from his first collaboration with Nike to the importance of skateparks in the process of self-discovery. The conversation, which took place over Zoom on Monday, November 14th, has been edited for length and clarity. You can place your bid on one-of-four NECKFACE Nike SB Dunk Low + Handmade Steel Plated Box right now at ebay.com/neckface.

How would you describe yourself to someone who isn’t familiar with you or what you do?
Uh, witches and hairy things.
 
Is there one particular work of art that you’d direct people to that complements that answer?
I think just [my] collective body of work. I’d probably say just log on to the number one website in the world – www.google.com – and hit image on there and check it out.
 
Great answer! In comparison to earlier work with Nike SB, your recent Dunk is a lot more expressive. Was this a conscious decision?
Well, the first one was…since I’m in the museum [moves out of frame to grab an item]…is that what you’re talking about?
 
That one, yup.
Those shoes were for the Chronicles video, which is a video that Nike came out with, and so I was doing the art direction for that video, and when they hit me up to do those ones they were like ‘Hey, we’re doing a shoe and your artwork is going to be on it.’ And I was like “Okay, cool.” So yeah, I had those ones on the books, but technically those are the SB Chronicles shoes and I would count this one that just came out now as the first official NECKFACE Nike shoe.
 
As far as expressiveness on it, [those SB Chronicles Blazers] is just everybody who’s in the video, their names in my font, and these ones…when I decided to do these whole crazy idea with all the patches going everywhere, I was like “okay, I wanna design every single patch on there…just have my artwork all over the shoe in a unique way.”

Was there any pushback on that?
None! No pushback. I had some house shoes [I had done that to already] so when they approached me to do this Dunk I had shown them the shoes I had put patches on before and said “Hey, I wanna do this, exactly what’s on these shoes, but I wanna design every single patch” and they were all super psyched on the idea and super down…which is crazy.
 
Do you think SB had to warm up to that? It seems like in recent memory, Nike has been a lot more lenient with some of the stuff it’s put out whereas before it would’ve had strict design guidelines.
I’m not too sure what’s going on over there but it seems like it seems like yeah, they’re a little bit more, you know, warmed up over there; I mean, people are putting the swooshes backwards, they’re hand drawing the swooshes, they’re tripling up on the swooshes…I think they’re [just] letting people get more creative and do their own thing which is super sick because, you know, we get to do our own stuff on these things now and express ourselves in a different way, and I think [Nike’s] starting to see how much power personal expression has on the community.

Segueing into the ebay stuff, as of earlier this afternoon, those four [NECKFACE Nike SB] pairs have over 270 bids. How does that make you feel?
Taking it to the next level – that’s what I’m all about. You know, it’s like you got this opportunity to do something cool, are you gonna leave it at the bar that it’s set at? Or are you gonna take it to the next level and go all out for this thing, and do new things with it. You know what I mean? Are you just gonna drop a shoe and call it a day? Or are you gonna try to do some crazy sh*t? That’s what I’m all about, you know? I’m not about doing anything normal – obviously. You know, I already had this boxes planned out before I even designed the shoe, so that when the shoe came I, I knew exactly what I was gonna do…and we tied it all in with ebay and The Skatepark Project.
 
What do you think it is about skateparks that’ve helped people like you and countless others discover themselves?
Well, first of all, you go to a skatepark and, just you going there, you’re instantly down with the crew. You’re down with skateboarding, you’re going to the skatepark – our people are there. No skaters are gonna talk smack on the way you skate or any of that. Everyone’s there to skate…it’s dope that you go there and you find your people.
 
Have you decided where your skateable art sculptures…your skatepark are going?
The first thing that comes to mind is just “the whole entire world,” you know? I want these things to go everywhere, but the more realistic answer for now is “I’m trynna build this things wherever they
re gonna let me build ’em.” Wherever they do get built, it’s gonna be a travel destination because us skateboarders, we travel around the world to go skate certain parks, you know? We drive miles, and miles and miles to go skate a park that’s famous, that has a cool obstacle in there, that’s legendary. And I have no doubt in my mind that that’s what’s gonna happen here. So anywhere we build these things, people are gonna travel to go skate ’em.
 
We’re tryna go global with this thing.