cameron demarco — adolessons

Freelance art director for Shoyoroll Martial Arts Uniforms, and I also do a lot of freelance for various musicians. Consisting of art direction for merchandise, album packaging, and styling.

Outside of work, I almost have too many hobbies. I don't really know how to place them in order of which I like the best, but I do a lot of waterfowl hunting, fly fishing, surfing, and jiu jitsu.

Where did you grow up?

West Orange, NJ

What year did you graduate high school?

2011

How would you describe your childhood?

it was great. Yeah. I mean I played sports for the most part. Wrestling was my main focus for the majority of my school career.

I also grew up every summer going down to the Jersey shore. My family had a house there for 25 years. From the day school let out to the day before school, I was there. The shore is where my dad taught me how to surf when I was 8. I started skating in the second grade. I had a whole different group of friends down there than it did up home. It was cool with them, you kind of just picked up where you leave off, even after not seeing them the whole school year.

What were you into? What inspired you?

I always give a lot of back what I know today to skateboarding. So, whether it is art, fashion, or music. Even now, today I hear a song and I kind of throw it up on Shazam and I'm like “Oh man. That was in this skateboarding video and I didn't know that was The Smiths.” From there I moved into buying sneakers like Nike SB’s, Jordan’s, Airmax runners. Then of course I started shopping at Supreme in the sixth grade. In high school I didn't have a job, I bought and sold Supreme. This was between 2008 and like 2011. I would run it off the blog strictlysupreme.com. Just buying things, wearing it a few times, then selling it. I was really into that culture.

What would we see if we walked into your high school bedroom?

A mess! There were a lot of sneaker boxes and a lot of clothes everywhere. Definitely a couple of skateboards. Up until I was a sophomore in high school, I had this horrible light blue accent wall with a light yellow border and this graphic of skaters throughout my whole room. I had this wild background and then skate stickers on the backside of my door. I had some surf posters up from signings I went to as a kid. I had this one poster on the side of my bed, it was an awkward spot on the side of my bed, and I did a forward roll onto my bed when I had a party at my house one night and I put a huge hole in it. So I just stuck this Lee Scratchy Perry Supreme poster over. Years later, my parents eventually found it.

If you could go back and relive one day, or one era, from your childhood, what would you be doing every day?

Summer of my sophomore year. It was another one of those summers where I was at the Shore from the day school got out until the day before it started again. It was like same routine. I would go out drinking with my friends, wake up 7:00 AM, check the waves, go surf, probably with my dad or a couple of my friends, go home, eat breakfast, fall asleep, wake up and kind of just do the same thing over and over again. We got into a little bit of trouble. We used to run from the cops when we were drinking on the beach. It was great. We had a really good time. We would go up to this one beach entrance and we would lug a keg up there and put it in a garbage can. There’d be like 30 or 40 just hanging out on the boardwalk drinking. Of course the cops would come and we would just run to the other beach, because it was split townships, and wait for them to leave, then head back and just keep drinking. So, yeah, it was an era.

Is there a specific moment or thing someone said during your childhood that for no apparent reason ended up having an outsized impact on your life?

It was something that was said to me by my coach during wrestling that has translated into everyday life. We had these warm-ups in practice, and we would do sprints, then 30 pushups, 30 crunches, and then like 30 like flutter kicks. I remember my coach saying like 30 is the minimum. So, I always translated that, even if I did one extra push up or 10 extra, going past the standard is what real improvement was. What you put in is what you're going to get out. I think that was always something that I enjoyed because it was a positive thing. Even today, say for instance if I'm getting ready for a competition, I try to keep that mindset.

What do you think 16-year-old you would think about your life today?

I think you'd be pretty psyched. I think he would think that I could still push a little bit more, but yeah, I think, he’d be pretty psyched.

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