“In The Lineup” introduces our readers to some of the friends and connections that we made along the way during these past five years of running the Surf Tribe.
While these interviews - despite the misleading title - did not literally take place in the lineup, the sentiment remains the same:
You're paddling around, looking to the horizon for the sign of a set, and you see a familiar face bobbing in the lineup, waiting for their turn. You might not necessarily know this particular surfer but you've seen them around in the water. Quite often, now that you think of it.
But hey, how do this people manage to spend so much time in and around the Ocean? "Don't they have a job?" you think, while simultaneously realizing the fact that you're also in the water almost on a daily basis. "Don't you have a job?".
In The Lineup highlights the stories of people that decided to pursue a slower lifestyle by the Ocean. Feeling the pull not only of this pointless and enriching wave-riding activity called surfing, but mostly of a life that's more aligned to their personal goals and values - rather than what society expects them to do.
First up in this serie of interviews is Felipe Caplan Gottardello. We met Felipe through his designs, spread on t-shirts and shop fronts around the surf town of Baleal, Portugal. We loved his style, at the same time playful and with strong classic surf influences and asked him to do a t-shirt design for us.
Read on to learn more about Felipe.
Hi Felipe, tell us a bit about yourself; what do you do and where did you grew up and how did you get into surfing?
Hello The Surf Tribe friends! My name is Felipe Caplan Gottardello and I’m currently 31 years old. I’m born and raised in Brazil, more specifically in Curitiba, Paraná. 1 hour away from the sea, unfortunately, I’ve always been interested in visual design and street fashion even before I knew which any of these were. I went to university for advertising but quickly realised that design was much more my thing, and so that’s what I’ve been working for the last 10 years!
Growing up I was surrounded by friends that were very big on surfing, but it didn’t really catch too much of my attention at the time. There was something about their crew that didn’t really interest me that much, I was more leaned to art and ideas and that specific group was more into the partying lifestyle. I paddled out a couple of times with a shortboard and had horrific sessions 😂. My surfing journey really started in 2021 when I decided to buy my first longboard. There is just something about longboarding that absolutely struck me in a different way, the first time I saw it I felt very in sync with how smooth everything looked and the adaptability to the wave that it required. Longboarding has a different language than progressive surfing, how you ride a wave matters way more than what you do on the wave, and that really resonated with my designer mind.
How did you end up in Peniche, Portugal?
In 2022 I was living in a van and a group of friends invited me to visit Baleal. I first stayed at, the now extinct, van park. Even though it was completely disconnected from the rest of the community, it was an amazing pseudo-anarchist society and I’m really glad I got to experience that while it still existed. Baleal is where I really started taking surfing more seriously and my love for longboarding only increased given the logging friendly waves that we have here. When winter arrived that year I rented an apartment and here I’ve been ever since.
If you changed something about your life/lifestyle, was there a specific moment or event that made you realize you needed to make this change?
Definitely. I was living in Barcelona from 2018 until 2022 when I realised that I had certain emotional baggage that needed to be resolved. It was a weird and long process of staying comfortable in an uncomfortable situation for too long. At this time I’ve looked around my surroundings and realised the live that I had built for myself wasn’t what I actually wanted to live daily. I’ve achieved certain financial and career goals, and even though that’s what I wanted at the time, it wasn’t what I really needed. The big city rush and chaos didn’t attend to my necessities anymore, so I went looking for something else.
Your style is very beach and surf related, how does your lifestyle and your connection to the Ocean inspire your art?
My art is a reflection of the current state of my mind, so whatever I absorb is what comes out. After moving here was actually the moment that my designs start becoming much more inspired by the coastal living, I’ve also started using a lot more of colour and smiles, which now is interesting to reflect on
What’s the inspiration for the art you created for the surf tribe?
The art we created together is one of my favourites! I remember I sketched out a few different ideas that were generic, but this specific design that we followed was so connected to what you guys do. It’s a portrait of the “real” surfing scenario. It’s all about these in between moments at the beach, with our friends, in the ocean... There are a lot of small details inserted in the design that are real moments that I’ve seen at the beach, and just so happened to replicate it in our design.
What kind of influence and what role do you think art plays today in the surfing world? (if you think about psychedelic 60s surf art and the surf movement of they time, I feel like they were very closely related, while now it somehow feels to me that more than art inspiring surf and viceversa, art is more at the service of brands and corporations and surfing is somehow risking of becoming just another tool to sell products and services)
This is something I think about often. The way I see it, there are two points to this:
1) In the grand scheme of things, I’m relatively new to surfing; and even though I believe I have been doing my due diligence to learn about the culture and its origins, I feel there still is so so much more to learn. However, I see a pattern in surfing that I really dislike. Since I’ve been very young I’ve looked at the world through the lens of skateboarding. Skateboarding provided me not only a new way to look at architecture and urbanism, but also at self-expression and how art could be expressed through a cultural movement. One thing that I believe skateboarding has done well, in the past, is to maintain its industry independent by the generation of culture; specifically through the creation of skate films, photos, events, art exhibitions and support of professional skateboarders. The culture dictates the movement and vice-versa.
Surfing, as its current state, seems to have another entity in which is the corporations. Specifically the one that I find the most odd coming from the skate world is WSL and the power it has inside surfing. Things that happen in the WSL events often tend to send shockwaves through the surf world. I find this a bit odd of how a media corporation can influence the perception of surfing so much. The surfing that is done on WSL is such a small part of the culture but yet it seems to carry so much weight (and money) to so many people. I was listening to a podcast interview of Nat Young where he describes how the “winner” of surf culture used to be someone that could afford to live on a farm and surf anytime they wanted. This perception and relationship to nature is what connected me to surfing as well. So to see kids from a young age with numerous surf coaches, practice schedules, workout days etc with the sole purpose of cashing in the big bucks seems very odd and disingenuous to me. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong in being a professional surfer in any form. If you can live out of what love, more power to you! The bottom line is: Shouldn’t surfing be a practice in your life because you truly enjoy it? If there were no way to make any money out of it, would you still do it?
2) Now as for the art influence on the surf world, I would say it is the same influence art has everywhere else. I believe the main role of artists is to make others see/hear/experience in a way that other people haven’t before. For me as a visual artist, what I like to achieve by creating is to make other people access a vision of existence that they didn’t have before. If we look at the design that we have created for The Surf Tribe, I brought a perspective that is familiar to many people. The cliffs, the sea, the surfers. But no one else could have created the way I did, because I was the one doing it. I’m not talking about technique, you see, I’m talking about expression. Only I can express myself the way I do because no one exists inside of me. Every choice I make as an artist is connected to my life experience and how I have experienced the world before. The work that artists create is only a result of that.
What are some of your ispirations on surfing and art? (you can drop some Insta @s)
There are certain things that kind of live rent-free in my head and I think often about. I have a few of these for skateboarding and basketball as well.
For surfing it must be:
Harrison Roach surfing Bells Beach
Bryce Young - Following the fall line
Jay Moriarity wipeout at Mavericks
The insanity that Laird Hamilton did on Teahupoo
What advice would you give to someone looking to follow their passion and live a more fulfilling life close to the ocean?
Put a timer of 10 minutes on. Sit down. Write. Learn what are the non-negotiable things you would like to have in your daily life and how can you support that financially. Prioritise what is the most important to you and learn to sacrifice what’s not. Career and material gains are important, but no amount of achievement or money will ever fix poor mental health and lack of purpose.
There is a certain quality about living that is directly related to jazz and the improvisational nature of it. In general, the obstacles that always affect us are always the ones we weren’t ready for. And you can’t be prepared for everything. That makes me truly believe that to live with the practice of this improvisational attitude and fluidity of accepting reality is what will make you get to where you need to be.
