Ed Templeton
In Memory Foam, Ed Templeton takes a close look at his hometown of Huntington Beach, California, a sprawl of suburbia, “mile after mile of walls that form a hard shell around the housing tracts where beige brick dividers represent the barrier between people’s backyards and the major street,” or less obviously perhaps, a division between the sanitized ideals of a planned community and the real world. Templeton’s choice to focus specifically on the "downtown" and Main Street, once a boulevard of skate shops, bikini stores and dive bars, where “people would hangout watching the fights between skinheads, jocks and local boys,” represents a journey back to his old stomping grounds, redefining not only the artist’s own personal relationship to his past, but to a larger cultural tapestry. Through these images, Templeton navigates his own unique history, and his experience as a professional skateboarder, painter and photographer, defined by Huntington Beach’s particular brand of beach culture, now gentrified, yet still energetic and vital.