The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick

Born in 1981 on Oahu, Mark Healey started surfing at age three, turned pro by the time he was 17, and made his name in heavy, scary waves, first in Hawaii, then around the world. But big-wave surfing was only part of it. An avid diver, Healey won the World Cup of Spearfishing in La Paz, Mexico, in 2008. And then there were sharks. In 2011, he traveled to Mexico’s Guadalupe Island to dive with great whites for a Nat Geo TV shoot. Outside magazine called him “the greatest athlete you’ve never heard of.” Recently, he founded Healey Water Operations, synthesizing all his singular skills into a personal brand. In this episode of Soundings, Healey sits down with Jamie Brisick on the North Shore to talk about his first Pipe session, the nuances of discerning the personalities of sharks, weaving together experiential and scientific knowledge, chasing after big surf, the ins and outs of spearfishing, and staying composed in heavy situations.

Kylie Manning is a painter, surfer, and fisher based in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were both art teachers, and, while she was growing up, the family moved between their home in Juneau, Alaska, to various regions in Mexico, which would inform her artwork—and her surfing. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts with a double major in philosophy and visual arts. While she was getting her MFA at the New York Academy of Art, she had a captain’s license to operate 500-ton commercial fishing boats on international waters, and spent her summers catching salmon on the Pacific coast. Manning has gained global respect for her abstract figurative paintings, which embody powerful yet delicate compositions with brushstrokes that seem to be in motion. Her work is held in numerous collections worldwide, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; and the X and Yuz Museums in China. In this episode of Soundings, Manning talks with Jamie Brisick about weather and wonderment, beauty and brawls aboard commercial fishing vessels, atmospheric fascination, style, her proudest artworks, the nuances between grit and growth, and her collaboration with the New York City Ballet.  

Born in 1950 in San Diego, California, Jeff Divine is one of surfing’s preeminent photographers and photo editors. Divine began photographing anything and everything around his hometown of La Jolla, California, as a teenager. Surfer magazine first published his photos in 1968, and by the early 1970s his work was all over the surf sphere. He shot everything—water and action, portraiture, lifestyle, landscapes, travel. He was the photo editor for Surfer from 1981 to 1998, then occupied the same position at The Surfer’s Journal until 2016. He’s published several books, among them Masters of Surf Photography: Jeff Divine, Surfing Photographs From the Seventies Taken by Jeff Divine, and Surfing Photographs From the Eighties Taken by Jeff Divine. His work has been featured in many gallery and museum exhibitions. In this episode of Soundings, Divine talks with Jamie Brisick swimming at Sunset Beach, the legacy of Ron Stoner, the beauty of the North Shore, art and artifact, Windansea, photographing Andy Irons, color palettes, the evolution of lens technology, and the transition from film to digital.   

Lee-Ann Curren is a freesurfer, musician, and artist. She grew up and lives in Biarritz, in the southwest of France. Her father is three-time world champion Tom Curren. Her mother is Marie-Pascale, a top-ranked European surfer in the 1980s. Her grandfather is the late Pat Curren, one of the pioneers of Waimea Bay and shaper of big-wave elephant guns. Her aunt Marie-Paul is the 1967 French national champ, and her aunt Marie-Christine is a six-time French national champ. Though she’s won a couple of French national championships herself, Lee-Ann is primarily known as a freesurfer who has woven traveling, music-making, and art into that moniker. In this episode of Soundings, host Jamie Brisick meets with Lee-Ann in the Basque Country to talk about her family’s influence, touring with her band, finding her place, maintaining artistic purity, criticality, and the poetics of movement in sound and water.  

Thomas Victor Carroll is a surfing godhead from Newport Beach, Australia, known for his radicality, focus, and power. He competed on the world tour from 1979 to 1993, winning the world title in 1983 and 1984, and taking home a total of 26 event victories, including the Pipeline Masters in 1987, 1990, and 1991. In 1988, he made history by signing surfing’s first million-dollar contract. He won the 1984 Surfer Poll and was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in 1990. In the aughts, he teamed up with Ross Clarke-Jones to chase big waves around Australia. In his 2013 autobiography, TC: Tom Carroll, written with his brother, surf journalist Nick Carroll, Tom was very forthcoming about his drug use. Now 62, he’s been sober for many years. A calmer, quieter presence, Carroll meditates daily, but still surfs voraciously. In this episode, Carroll talks with Jamie Brisick about the evolution of performance at Pipeline, his first Pipe Masters win, competing in the face of tragedy, helmets, battling addiction, the complexities of a hunger for attention, and his favorite surfers to watch. 

Ed Templeton is a professional skateboarder, contemporary artist, and photographer. A teen skate prodigy from Orange County, California, Ed turned pro in 1990, just before graduating high school. He did a lot of touring for skate demos, along the way picking up a camera and documenting the scene around him. He painted and drew, and later incorporated his artwork and graphics for Toy Machine, the skateboard company he founded in 1994, which he continues to own and manage. Templeton’s visual artwork first gained recognition in the late 1990s as part of the Beautiful Losers collective loosely gathered around Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He and his wife Deanna—also a photographer—are the subjects of the 2000 Mike Mills film, Deformer. Templeton’s subject matter focuses on the ethos of suburban and street life, which sometimes includes beach culture, surfers, and surfing. He has published over thirty books and zines of his photographs and artwork, including one of his most famous titles, “Teenage Smokers.” His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world, most recently at the Long Beach Museum of Art, in an exhibition titled: Wires Crossed: The Culture of Skateboarding, 1995-2012. In this episode of Soundings, Templeton and Jamie Brisick talk about crafting a sustainable career as a skateboarder, capitalism, skateboarding’s DIY ethos, documenting skate culture, becoming a painter, identity, individualism, and Mark Gonzalez. 

Leah Dawson grew up in Florida, and moved to Oahu to attend University of Hawaii, where she earned a BA in Creative Media in 2008. Soon after, she started work as a production assistant for the Vans Triple Crown, launching her into a career behind the camera. As a surfer, Dawson’s approach is grounded in freedom of expression and dance, on all manner of crafts, with nods to the surfers who have informed her wave-riding odyssey—Rell Sunn, Margo Oberg, Jericho Poppler, and Lynne Boyer, to name but a few. She is the cofounder of Salty Sensations, in which she and her partners, Kassia Meador and Makala Smith, host surf retreats at select spots worldwide. She’s also a co-founder of Changing Tides Foundation, a women-led organization that celebrates diversity and inclusivity. In this episode of Soundings, Dawson talks with Jamie Brisick about the importance of believing in something, attaining longevity as a surfer, the Blue Crush generation, the freedom of the glide, lineup dynamics, the power of uplifting others, and the most memorable moments she’s captured through the viewfinder. 

Matt Warshaw grew up surfing in Los Angeles at a time when surf and skate culture were beginning to meet in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. After a stint as a pro surfer in the 1980s, Warshaw became the editor of Surfer magazine. In 1990, he left his editor’s post at Surfer to attend UC Berkeley, where he got his BA in History in 1993. He remained in the Bay Area, parking himself in an apartment in the Sunset District and in countless Ocean Beach barrels. As if personally expanded by all those tubes, Warshaw’s writing expanded into lengthy essays, profiles, and books—many books—among them Maverick’s: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing, Above The Roar: 50 Surfer Interviews, Photo/Stoner, Surfriders: In Search of the Perfect Wave, Surf Movie Tonite! Surf Movie Poster Art, 1957-2005, and more. His Encyclopedia of Surfing, first released in 2003, is the most comprehensive tome of surf culture in existence, and he followed it up with 2010’s The History of Surfing, a beast of a book that makes music of Warshaw’s encyclopedic knowledge. His most recent venture is the EOS dot surf, which is an invaluable online resource for surf obsessives, and features the “Sunday Joint,” a reflective op-ed style email that Matt shoots out to subscribers every Sunday. In this episode of Soundings, Warshaw talks with Jamie Brisick about the golden days of Los Angeles, establishing a career as a historian, the value of exploring someone else’s world, the importance of preserving history, the challenge of creating a database, his first Jeff Ho board, the Encyclopedia of Surfing, and the art of writing economically.

Born in 1990 in Bangalow, Australia, not far from Byron Bay, Torren Martyn is hailed as one of the great stylists of our time, riding all manner of surfcraft, and with a special penchant for twin-fins. He’s also one of surfing’s great explorers. In 2016, he and his filmmaker pal Ishka Folkwell spent three months circumnavigating Australia in a Land Rover, riding A-grade waves and documenting their trip in the first installment of the film series Lost Track. In 2018, the duo did a similar trip around New Zealand, this time on motorcycles. In 2019, they bought a Ford Transit and drove it from Europe down to the west coast of Africa on a surf hunt. In 2022, Martyn and his partner, Aiyana Powell, bought a sailboat in Thailand and spent an entire year exploring surf breaks in and around Indonesia, culminating in the film Calypte. In this episode of Soundings, Martyn and Jamie Brisick talk about surfing in the middle of nowhere, forging a free-surfer’s path, finding clarity and direction, cultivating a cartographic mindset, gaining confidence as a sailor, his quiver, and the logistics, preparation, and knowledge that went into planning for a year at sea.

Carolyn Murphy is a supermodel, actress, and environmental advocate. Her Vogue shoot with Steven Meisel in the late 1990s launched her into a fruitful, three-decade long career. In 1998 she was named VH1/Vogue’s Model of the Year. She played Dubbie in the 1999 feature film Liberty Heights, directed by Barry Levinson. She was also one of the “Modern Muses” on the November 1999 millennium cover of American Vogue. She’s also a surfer, and moved from NYC in the late 1990s to be closer to the waves in LA. Today, Murphy is an ambassador for Surfrider, The Wellness Foundation, Animal Haven, Edible Schoolyard NY, Ocean Unite, and No More Plastic. Along with being a mom, activism is a key component in her life. In this episode, Murphy talks with Jamie Brisick about the shock of New York as a young model, the shoots that changed her career, splitting time between Costa Rica and New York, the fashion industry, performativity, the challenges of introversion, surfing, and going against the grain.