Letty's Blog

How Tavarua Helped Start the Faces of Surfing

Five years ago this month, Nowak traveled to the heart shaped island of Tavarua, Fiji for her first visit. The remote island is home to celebrated world class surf breaks such as Cloudbreak, Restaurants,and Tavarua Rights. At the time, Nowak was working on plans start next body of work, the Faces of Surfing. During that specific week of her stay, she found herself surrounded by a few subjects that would be perfect for the first series of paintings including Richard Woolcott. His portrait became the second finished for the series and was first exhibited at the Hal Bromm Gallery in NYC. A few years later, Nowak was fortunate enough to fly back to Tavarua for the same Tavi Trippers week. Here she met more subjects including Bob Hurley and Aamion Goodwin. Her introduction to Bob lead to him offering to debut the entire first series at his Hurley Headquarters. This launch was instrumental to her paintings, the new studio in California, and all of the great and new people she has met along the way.

Tavarua recently hosted the 2012 Volcom Fiji Pro during the same week in June of Nowak's stay, where Cloudbreak greeted many of surfings top names last week such as Julian Wilson, Owen Wright, and Taj Burrow. Congratulations to Kelly Slater for finishing first at the Fiji Pro.

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