Skateboarding, Experimentation, Fashion, and the Early Education of an Inventor
Long before Georgio Sabino III became known as a visual artist, photographer, designer, educator, and interdisciplinary creator, there was a skateboard beneath his feet.
There was also a question.
What happens if I try it again?
And again.
And again.
Between roughly 1982 and 1987, skateboarding became more than recreation for Sabino. It became an informal laboratory—a place where failure was not failure at all, but data. A trick that did not work simply meant the experiment needed to be adjusted: change the angle, shift the weight, alter the timing, try again.
Before he had the language to describe himself as an innovator, he was already behaving like one.
He was testing hypotheses with his body.
He was learning through repetition.
He was imagining something that did not yet exist and then attempting to make it real.
That mindset would eventually become one of the defining characteristics of Sabino’s artistic practice.
The Skateboard as Laboratory
Sabino’s story begins in Columbus, Ohio, where he was born, and continues with his move to Findlay, Ohio, in 1985. But one of the most formative experiences of his youth came through skateboarding and the cultural explosion surrounding it.
In 1982, Sabino traveled to New York City with his brother Marrico. They weren’t simply tourists. They brought their skateboards.
The streets became a stage.
Sabino remembers performing tricks with his brother and drawing the attention of people passing by. At times, people would literally throw money because they were entertained by what the brothers were doing.
That experience matters because it introduced a young Sabino to an idea that would become central to his life:
Art does not always need a frame.
Sometimes the artist is moving.
Sometimes the audience is moving.
Sometimes the artwork happens in the street.
And sometimes the audience decides what it is worth.
New York offered Sabino a glimpse of a future in which creativity, movement, performance, fashion, music, technology, and public interaction could coexist.
The soundtrack was equally important.
Punk rock. Hip-hop. Alternative music.
These were cultures built around experimentation, identity, rebellion, rhythm, and reinvention. Skateboarding belonged naturally in that ecosystem. It was physical, visual, musical, and improvisational.
For Sabino, the skateboard became another artistic instrument.
The Young Scientist on Four Wheels
There is an important distinction between simply learning to skateboard and experimenting with skateboarding.
Sabino approached the board almost scientifically.
Try.
Fall.
Observe.
Adjust.
Try again.
Change the movement.
Try again.
Perfect it.
This is essentially the logic of experimentation: observation → hypothesis → testing → failure → modification → repetition → discovery.
The skateboard became a laboratory in which Sabino learned something that would later become foundational to his art:
You cannot always see the finished idea before you begin. Sometimes you have to create the process that allows the idea to reveal itself.
That is a profoundly artistic way of thinking.
Sabino describes himself as interested in “future thinking”—not merely imagining the future as science fiction, but actively asking what could happen if existing materials, disciplines, and ideas were combined differently.
Skateboarding taught him that innovation often comes from repetition with intention.
A move becomes possible because someone was willing to attempt what had not yet been mastered.
That philosophy would eventually move from the skateboard to the canvas, from the canvas to fabric, from fabric to fashion, and from fashion toward technology and AR/VR.
The medium changed.
The method did not.
The Artist as Futurist
Sabino’s development as an artist is therefore not a straight line.
It is more like a network.
Skateboarding connects to movement.
Movement connects to photography.
Photography connects to fashion.
Fashion connects to textiles.
Textiles connect to painting.
Painting connects to sculpture.
Sculpture connects to materials.
Materials connect to experimentation.
Experimentation connects to technology.
And technology eventually opens the door to augmented and virtual reality.
This is why the word “polymath” is useful when discussing Sabino, but perhaps even more important is the word “experimenter.”
He has repeatedly refused to accept that creativity belongs to only one category.
A photographer can paint.
A painter can design clothing.
A fashion designer can make jewelry.
A sculptor can work with clay.
A photographer can work with silk.
An artist can work with AR/VR.
And a skateboarder can think like a scientist.
That interdisciplinary thinking was not something Sabino suddenly discovered as an adult.
The foundation was already being built in his youth.
Findlay High School: Where Imagination Became Material
After moving to Findlay in 1985, Sabino encountered another formative environment: the art program at Findlay High School.
In Mr. Patterson’s art class, Sabino began creating clay sculptures.
But sculpture was only one part of an unusually broad artistic education.
He explored:
- Drawing
- Painting
- Clay sculpture
- Ceramics
- Fashion design
- Jewelry making
- Leatherwork
- Fiber arts
- Basket weaving
This breadth was critical.
He was not simply learning how to make things.
He was learning how materials behave.
Clay could be shaped.
Fiber could be woven.
Leather could be cut, stitched, folded, and constructed.
Fabric could become clothing.
Jewelry could become an extension of the body.
A painting could tell a story without words.
A fashion design could become a sculpture in motion.
This was an education in material intelligence.
The Ralph Lauren-Inspired Leather Bag
One particularly revealing project was a large leather bag Sabino created after being inspired by the design language associated with Ralph Lauren.
The significance isn’t simply that a young artist admired a fashion designer.
It is that Sabino saw something he liked and then asked:
How could I make something myself?
That is the difference between consumption and creation.
He did not simply look.
He studied.
He imagined.
He experimented.
Then he built.
That pattern would follow him throughout his career.
Basket Weaving: Art as Family
Basket weaving introduced another dimension to his education.
Sabino created baskets for family members.
Here, art became intimate.
It wasn’t necessarily about galleries, critics, collectors, or prestige.
It was about making something with your hands and giving it to someone you loved.
This is an important counterpoint to the mythology of the artist as an isolated genius.
Art can be public.
Art can be political.
Art can be experimental.
But art can also be an act of love.
The Ohio Savings Bank Exhibition
Sabino’s early development also moved beyond the classroom.
He participated in an art exhibition at Ohio Savings Bank in Findlay, where his family attended.
Imagine the significance of that moment for a young artist.
The work was no longer sitting inside a classroom.
It was being placed before an audience.
Family members were present.
The artist was present.
The work had entered public space.
That experience offered an early lesson in what it means to share one’s imagination with the world.
The Forest-Green Chiffon Dress
Then came fashion.
Sabino created a beautiful forest-green chiffon prom dress and presented a fashion show in the library.
The location is almost poetic.
A library is traditionally a place where knowledge is stored.
Sabino turned it into a runway.
The dress transformed fabric into movement.
The fashion show transformed design into performance.
And the library became a temporary cultural space where imagination could become visible.
This was not merely a school project.
It was a rehearsal for the interdisciplinary artist Sabino would become.
The Importance of Not Choosing One Box
Looking backward, the significance of Sabino’s Findlay education becomes clearer.
He was being taught that he could enter different creative worlds without asking permission to remain in only one.
Drawing did not cancel sculpture.
Painting did not cancel fashion.
Fashion did not cancel jewelry.
Jewelry did not cancel photography.
Photography did not cancel technology.
This became a philosophy:
Don’t limit the imagination to the category someone else created for you.
The young Sabino was learning to move between disciplines before the contemporary art world made terms such as interdisciplinary practice, mixed media, wearable art, experiential art, and immersive art commonplace.
His education was fundamentally about turning imagination into physical reality.
The Artist as Scientist—and the Scientist as Artist
There is something particularly revealing about connecting Sabino’s skateboarding years to his later artistic development.
The skateboarder asks:
Can I do this?
The scientist asks:
What happens if I test this?
The artist asks:
What if I imagine something that does not yet exist?
The inventor asks:
How can I make it real?
Sabino’s story suggests that these are not four different questions.
They can be one question.
What if?
That phrase is at the center of innovation.
What if the skateboard could move differently?
What if the body could perform a new trick?
What if fabric could become a painting?
What if photography could become fashion?
What if a painting could contain technology?
What if an artwork could be experienced rather than simply viewed?
That is the intellectual bridge between the kid experimenting with skateboard tricks in the 1980s and the adult artist experimenting with contemporary media.
The Role of the Artist
This idea places Sabino’s development within a much larger history of artists who understood creativity as more than decoration.
Paul Robeson famously declared:
“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.” (PBS)
Robeson’s statement is particularly powerful when considered alongside Sabino’s trajectory. The artist is not merely producing attractive objects. The artist observes society, absorbs culture, experiments with possibilities, and communicates what might otherwise remain invisible.
James Baldwin offers another powerful framework. In discussing the artist’s responsibility, Baldwin described the artist as an “emotional or spiritual historian” whose task is to reveal what it means to be alive. (Wikiquote)
Baldwin’s thinking becomes especially relevant to Sabino’s practice because Sabino’s work repeatedly brings together memory, identity, culture, movement, technology, fashion, and visual storytelling.
And Baldwin’s famous formulation is even more direct:
“The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as that of the lover.” (Wikiquote)
The artist sees something others might overlook—and attempts to make the audience see it, too.
That is precisely what experimentation does.
From Findlay to the Future
What makes Sabino’s story compelling is not that he became proficient in many forms of art.
It is why he pursued so many forms.
He was learning that creativity has no fixed border.
Clay taught him structure.
Drawing taught him observation.
Painting taught him color and composition.
Ceramics taught him transformation through material and heat.
Fashion taught him the relationship between body, fabric, movement, and identity.
Jewelry taught him scale and adornment.
Leather taught him construction.
Basket weaving taught him pattern and patience.
Skateboarding taught him movement, repetition, risk, balance, and experimentation.
Photography taught him to capture the moment.
And all of it taught him to ask the same question:
What else is possible?
The Future Was Already in the Experiment
It is tempting to look at Sabino’s contemporary work—his photography, painting, fashion, textiles, collaborative art, AR/VR concepts, and other innovations—and see these as separate achievements.
But they are not separate.
They are chapters of one long experiment.
The skateboarder of the early 1980s who repeatedly attempted to perfect a trick was already practicing the discipline that would later define the artist.
The teenager who shaped clay in Mr. Patterson’s classroom was already learning to transform imagination into matter.
The young designer who created a forest-green chiffon dress was already discovering that art could move.
The student who made a leather bag was already thinking like a designer.
The young artist who created baskets for family members was already understanding that art can connect people.
And the young man who performed skateboard tricks with his brother in New York City—while strangers watched and threw money—was already learning something profound:
When creativity moves into the world, people respond.
Georgio Sabino III: The Artist Who Refused to Stop at the Canvas
Perhaps the most important part of Georgio Sabino III’s story is not that he became an artist.
It is that he never accepted a definition of art that was too small.
His early years reveal an artist developing through experimentation rather than specialization.
He learned by doing.
He learned by failing.
He learned by repeating.
He learned through music, street culture, fashion, school, family, movement, materials, and imagination.
And perhaps that is where the skateboard becomes the perfect metaphor for his artistic life.
A skateboard has no predetermined destination.
You push.
You balance.
You fall.
You adjust.
You try again.
Eventually, something happens that did not happen before.
A new movement appears.
A new trick becomes possible.
And once someone discovers it, someone else can build upon it.
That is innovation.
That is art.
That is the scientist inside the artist—and the artist inside the scientist. (Sk8boarding)
For Georgio Sabino III, the journey from the streets of 1980s skate culture to the contemporary art world was never really a departure.
It was the continuation of the same experiment.
Imagine it. Test it. Make it. Reimagine it. And never limit what the imagination is allowed to become.
Next his college years at Kent State University for BA and Master’s at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Institute of Art for art education with Director and friend Tim Shuckerow. Defining the art career with experiences.
www.GS3.us
