Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator was a film by Helen Stickler about Mark “Gator” Rogowski, the pro skateboarder who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s friend. I created the art for the film, but I also helped inspire Helen to make the film. When she was making her documentary about me in 1995, I had a sticker that took the old Gator graphic, with the type changed to “Giant” and Andre’s face added to the psychedelic swirl in the background. Helen asked what the deal was with that, and I told her the story of Gator. She was fascinated by the story, enough so to research it and ultimately make this movie.

Per Helen Stickler:

Shep’s old friend and former pro skateboarder Blaize Blouin was working with Shep at Alternate Graphics when he made the “Andre Gator” graphic using the Vision/Gator spiral, and it was really Blaize and some other skaters’ telling of the Gator story that inspired me to make the film STOKED. Most people accepted that Gator was responsible for his actions, but Blaize was the first (of many) skaters I met who thought Gator was innocent and had somehow been framed, or even more frightening – that the girl who was killed somehow “deserved it.” This pervasive disconnect between the actions of Gator, and his friends/fans ability to accept reality, inspired me to pursue the truth and tell it in a way that would help people comprehend it.

The run size is 500. Some were incorrectly numbered by Obey as being edition of 250, but most should be numbered as 500. There may be a large number of AP’s because of the mistake.

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