This is rad.
A Duluth-themed snowboarding glove featuring artwork by Superior's Patrick Sharrow is being sold exclusively by Damage Boardshop, 1904 W. Superior St. in Duluth.
The 5-year-old Lincoln Park shop was one of eight chosen to
market individualized gloves by Celtek Gloves, a company that delivers specialty snowboarding gloves to stores in 15 countries.
The Damage glove evokes a sense of Duluth in winter, said Jack Boyd, co-owner of the shop.
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"Anybody that's been in Duluth during the winter -- you know some of those creepy, foggy mornings when it's really foggy and kind of misty?" Boyd said. "That's what we got from looking at it, and it was, oh, man, this is super rad. ... There's a lighthouse and this spooky guy on the bottom. It was just like a spooky-Duluth-morning thing."
Sharrow, 21, a Superior High School graduate who is studying printmaking at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, has designed posters and promotional materials for the boardshop before, but never a glove.
"It was a pretty different composition to work with rather than just kind of a basic rectangle layout," Sharrow said. "I still wanted to keep it pretty cohesive throughout the gloves so if you put them together it
would be like one image rather than two separate blocks."
Celtek was founded in 2003 in Salt Lake City, Utah, by professional snowboarders Erik and Bjorn Leines, brothers who are Minnesota natives. The other stores chosen for what Celtek calls its SLSH (Shop Local Shop Here) Collection are in Salt Lake City; Waite Park, Minn.; Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; Chicago; Eugene, Ore.; Bozeman, Mont.; and Seattle.
Celtek is fussy about where its gloves are sold, said Ben Olson, Damage Boardshop's other owner.
"They want to be in shops that are rider-owned and operated," Olson said, adding that the store shares their philosophy. "We're very particular about what we sell."
Celtek offered Damage its own glove because of the store's reputation, Boyd said. The shop sponsors events and local riders and premieres snowboarding videos. "We were chosen, from what they told us, for being so proactive and supporting snowboarding in general," he said.
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And the shop chose Sharrow to design its glove, Boyd said, because he's a shredder (aka snowboarder) and a loyal customer who can draw.
Sharrow said creating snowboard art has been a longtime dream.
"It's quite exciting to think of being a little middle school kid who doodled skateboard/snowboard logos all over my homework and then finally actually to start doing things like this," he said.
Damage Boardshop received 140 pairs of the gloves. They're priced at $40.
