Hewn from a solid chunk of wood, as seen at Axhead Wood Carving, where you can also find hefty boards carved out of old table leafs, weighing in at 11lbs. Oh right, and also spoons. Ryan carves spoons too, usually out of wood that has fallen off of trees on his property.

Judi Oyama is organizing a show called “Praise the Board” at Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History from September 4 – 27. There’s a skateboard contest being held in association with the exhibit on the 19th. The show is designed to showcase the talent of local Santa Cruz artists and how they have contributed to the worldwide success of skateboarding as a sport. This isn’t an official NHS function, it’s more a case of contributing artists tooting their own horn. The image above is one of the things Judi has collected in preparation. Can’t make it Santa Cruz? Your generous benefactors at Skate and Annoy are working to bring the show to Portland after the run in Santa Cruz. We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, contest details after the jump.

Smile On Your Brother is a skate art auction to benefit Contributor, a Canadian initiative to donate skateboards to kids who can’t afford them. Looks like starting bid is $125 but hey, they’re completes! Featured board is by Devin Barrette. Auction runs between August 24th and October 25th, 2009.

Tribute to the Fallen Skater by sculptor Jud turner. Originally found on Skull a Day. – Thanks to Concretin Nik for the tip.

That’s right, MC is bringing the H.O.M.O.S. back to Skate and Annoy. There was no falling out, and thus no makeup sex, just.. uh… well I don’t know. Welcome him back readers! This comic above was my attempt at dealing with the loss almost a year ago. I actually enjoyed the process, but took me a half a day to do it. Stupid artists.

Artist, skateboarder and EPM Monday covergirl Ashley Anson is having an art opening at Cal’s Pharamacy aka The Dept on August 7th from 7-10pm. With the Lincoln City stop of the Trifecta cancelled, you’ve got no excuse not to be at 15 NE Hancock on Friday. Check the flier after the jump.

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Brian Baade, He mounted a camera the Greek’s board during a practice run for the X-Games skatepark event. If you watched the X-Games yesterday you might have noticed that is is actually a still image from the actual footage they played after coming back from a commercial. Check out the Shot of the Week, Bonus frame after the jump.

R.E.load Bags had a line of messenger bags called the 80’s skate series that was essentially bootlegs of famous skateboard graphics. The product description had said they were a tribute, but the “Hammerhead” bag is pretty much the only one that wouldn’t be considered copyright infringement. Fortunately, a friend of Neil Blender’s saw them and tipped him off. The bags were removed from the web site almost immediately. They look totally cool, they should have licensed them instead of just ripping them off. [Source: Freakbeatfuzz]

Nice skate inspired lettering by Christian San Jose illustration over on Letter Cult. This was part of a roundup of exceptional lettering for the first half of 2009. This both inspires and depresses me just like skating with a bunch of young rippers.

I was digging around for more skateboard guitars and someone mentioned the Ben Harper video for Ground on Down, which led me to the SK8 lap guitar from Cole Clark Guitars on some sort of loosely affiliated Ben Harper web site that isn’t the official one. That lap guitar has the good sense to have Indy trucks coupled with a poor choice of World Industries wheels. And then there’s the Ben Harper longboard, with artwork created by someone you’d never guess… Winston Smith, the man behind the Dead Kennedy’s logo and accompanying photo collage artwork.