Talent on deck: Skating and art intersect for local artist

Local artist Logan Terry has recently been learning firsthand the importance of being in the right place at the right time.

“One of my favorite pro skaters, Willis Kimbel, just so happened to be visiting town last winter for snowboarding,” Terry said. “I was actually going to grab a beer in the Alaskan and he was standing outside smoking and when I saw him, I was like, ‘There’s no way that’s him, like why would he be here in January?’ And so, I went in and had a beer and when I was leaving, he was still outside, so I walked up and was like, ‘Hey, are you Willis Kimbel?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, who are you?’ And I was like, ‘I’m Logan.’ And then we just ended up kicking it around town.”

Thanks to that chance encounter, Terry is currently the featured artist for Thrasher Magazine’s latest edition. Terry, who is Tlingit, said that after meeting and befriending Kimbel by showing him around town, Kimbel reached out shortly after leaving to request Terry’s portfolio.

“I ended up becoming homies with him and hanging out the whole time he was here. I showed him around town, and I showed him my art studio and the Elizabeth Peratrovich mural that I helped put up with Crystal (Worl) and he was super stoked on all of that,” Terry said. “So, after he had left, we stayed in touch and he hit me up and was like, ‘Yo, you should send me a portfolio, send me an edit, like a video of you skating, give me a bio and I’ll forward that over to Thrasher.”

Terry said that while the prospect of being featured in Thrasher Magazine, a publication he had been a fan of since childhood, he never actually expected it to pan out, but after just roughly a month they got in touch to tell him that not only was it happening, but they were big fans of his work.

“I was like, ‘that would be sick, but I don’t have like high hopes for that.’ I just didn’t want to get my hopes up because I’ve been reading Thrasher and obsessed with it since I was like eight-years-old, it’s like the skateboard bible,” Terry said. “But then like a month later I got hit up by (Michael) Burnett who’s the editor of Thrasher and then he linked me over to the guy that runs the canvas page, which is a monthly thing they do in the magazine where they highlight an artist, and most of the time it’s an artist that skates within the skateboard community. They got back to me and said they loved all my stuff and they’d be super stoked to run it.”

Born and raised in Juneau, Terry and his family has been in Southeast for generations. Though he grew up in Juneau, Terry said he moved away when he was 19-years-old and only returned within the last year, but since his return, things have only continued to work out in his favor.

“I moved down to Bellingham for about six years and lived in Seattle for about four years and then after COVID and everything I came back to visit two winters ago for like three months and fell back in love with Juneau and saw that it was very different than when I left,” Terry said. “I think it has become more like my generation’s town. There’s a growing art scene, there’s a growing music scene, it kind of feels like a blank canvas for people to make what they want of it right now.”

Terry currently bartends at the Narrows, which Terry said was, yet another connection owed to his years of skateboarding. Through his connection at the Narrows, that led him to yet another chance encounter with a well-known Juneau artist.

“Growing up skating here and making videos, I didn’t know Stuart (Wood) and he hit me up on Instagram and was like, ‘Hey, I saw you were moving back up here, you don’t know me but I know you, I grew up watching your skate videos, you should work here (the Narrows) with me,’” Terry said. “Then from there, it just so happened that I met his girlfriend Crystal (Worl) and I was telling her how I wanted to get an art studio and she suggested getting one together so it’d be cheaper. And it’s like now I get to help her work on murals and all the crazy stuff that she’s been doing, she’s doing stuff for some major large companies, she’s blowing up like crazy right now. So, it’s been fruitful moving back home for sure.”

While living in Washington, Terry said he got burned out on as an electrician working on large construction projects such as hospitals and corporate buildings in Seattle. After quitting and moving back to Bellingham, Terry said he started taking artistic inspiration from another skateboarder-turned-artist as a potential path for himself.

“I saw a documentary about one of my favorite skaters who owns one of my favorite skate companies and his thing was he just collects stuff and collages with it and takes pictures of it and that’s what he uses for all of his graphics for his skateboards and clothing and everything,” Terry said. “So, I decided to start messing around with that just as like an outlet and it really helped with like my ADHD, it was something that I could really obsess over. I started going to antique stores and estate sales and trying to collect magazines from the ‘30s to the ‘70s and I eventually just started making stuff and figured out my style and how to use empty space with collages and then eventually started working on painting the backgrounds and doing different patterns and collaging on that.”

Terry said that since he’s never gone to school for art and is essentially self-taught, he started mostly doing art just for himself and the enjoyment of the process, but once he started posting pieces to his Instagram page and receiving positive feedback, he started entering art shows around Washington and Bellingham with the encouragement of a close friend. Shortly after that, Terry found himself back in Juneau doing even more art shows at In Bocca Al Lupo, Devil’s Club Brewing, and Black Moon Koven. Most recently Terry had an installation at the end of September at the Bearcade above the Crystal Saloon.

“They thought it would be cool for me to have something up there and my style would fit,” Terry said. “It’s six feet by six feet, I really wished I hadn’t picked the medium I went with after a while because it took me about four months of scrubbing at paper with acrylic mediums just to get the background done. I think they asked me around November of last year and I just recently got it finished and hung up. I decided I would do kind of a homage to Juneau, and I took all archival photos and yearbook photos from the two (Juneau) high schools from like 1916 to the 1930s and ‘40s and I had those printed and then I did acrylic image transfer onto wood, so it looks like it’s burned into the wood.”

Terry said while he loves bartending and staying connected to the community through his job, he’d love to be a full time artist someday. In addition to creating more collage art, he’d like to eventually make a transition into incorporating his work onto clothing and skateboards much in the same way pro skater Jason Dill did, who Terry said he takes a lot of his inspiration from.

“I’m doing like prints and stickers right now,” Terry said. “My hope would be that when these eyes are on my work from Thrasher, I can make enough sales with selling prints and stickers and originals that I could have a safe amount of money that I made just from those that I could put back into the art and hopefully either design my own company of making clothes and skateboards or be able to contribute to other companies in the skateboarding or clothing world, that would be awesome, but if not then I’m still making art just because I enjoy making art.”

• Contact reporter Jonson Kuhn at jonson.kuhn@juneauempire.com.