The power of a 15-year-old behind your favorite LOST surfboard.
15-year-old Ryder Biolos has a very enviable job.
As the daughter of Matt Biolos of Lost Surfboards, it was inevitable that Ryder Biolos would pursue a career in surfing, riding a lower, white quiver. While Ryder certainly surfs, she has also forged her own path and become a surfboard artist.
As children, Ryder and her siblings spent a lot of time at the Lost surfboard factory, messing around with the foam blanks and paints that the employees cut. While her brothers simply enjoyed painting boards, Ryder ” loved the paint and discovered she had a natural talent for it.
"I think I just had a knack for it," Ryder says, adding, "My dad is really good at art and my mom is really into design, so I got the creative design part and the actual artistic part from both of them."
Biolos (rider) visited the shop regularly, experimenting with different paint colors and designs and began to develop her own style. With the guidance of Lost surfboards' main artists, Terry Shin and Drew Brophy, Biolos (rider) quickly got the hang of it and her skills developed rapidly.
At age 6, Bioros (Rider) painted her first realistic painting, which ended up being used by Coco Ho.
By age 9, Biolos (the rider) was a paid employee, regularly painting boards for Lost's team riders.
"I'm excited that Ryder has become an artist to do her own art for Lost surfboards," says Coco, "and because she's known most of us since we were babies, I feel like there's a personal connection to the art she chooses for everyone and every quiver. A special one was last year's winter quiver; she copied some of the art her dad's uncle Derek had done for his gym, and then Mason and I created a replica in honor of Uncle D on her winter quiver."
"Ryder has been one of my favorite artists since I was six years old," says Mason Ho. "When she first painted my board, I was amazed because I knew she had her own artistic style. I tried to copy it, and I tried to get other people to do it, but it just didn't look the same. So now she does almost all of my boards. She's my favorite."
Bioros (the rider) attends an online charter school, so her schedule is very flexible. She works in the shop three to four days a week and has found a routine. When she arrives, she checks the orders and talks with the surfers about what they want in their boards. Sometimes they have a specific request, and sometimes they just leave it up to her.
Once Ryder has an idea, she draws, tapes, and mixes colors to create the design, then begins painting. While artists like Brophy prefer to paint directly onto the glass, Ryder prefers to paint directly onto the foam. Each board can take anywhere from 30 minutes to six hours, depending on the complexity of the design.
"A lot of surfboard painters have a free and loose style," Ryder says, "but mine is very special. It's a style where everything has to be perfect. Perfectly imperfect."
Ryder is a self-proclaimed perfectionist, but she's made her fair share of mistakes over the years. While she tries to pay attention to detail, she sometimes gets confused and accidentally swaps orders. Luckily, she's good at correcting her mistakes.
“My father taught me that there is always a way to fix a mistake,” Ryder says. “If you mess up somewhere, you can add something or change the way the design was originally done.
At just 15 years old, Ryder's resume is incredibly impressive. She's painted boards for four-time World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Carissa Moore, two-time World Champion Tyler Wright, Olympians Caroline Marks and Kolohe Andino, WSL Junior Champion Kirra Pinkerton, EAST pilots Mason and Coco Ho, Erin Brooks, Sopia Medina, Noah Beshen, and Olympic Skateboarding Bronze Medalist Sky Brown. Take a moment to consider the absurd amount of talent included in that list.
Ryder enjoys working with all surfers equally, but of the more than 500 boards she has completed over the years, a few stand out as her personal favorites. She is proud of her recent Sakura board series with Kirra Pinkerton. She is also a big fan of the tie-dye line she created for Mason Ho and the Mandalorian boards she painted for her brother. While Ryder prefers spending her time backstage, she also travels the world with her family and surfs mostly on surf trips or with friends. When she's not in the ocean or at the shop, she's usually found grabbing her skis or snowboard and heading to the local mountains whenever possible. Ryder took some art classes in elementary school, but her work is primarily the result of the tutelage of Brophy and her father. She was inspired by their game and has learned so much from them over the years.
"Working with my dad is both fun and challenging," Ryder says. "He tells me the truth. If I mess up, he's not afraid to admit it and laugh about it. As for the future, I just accept things as they come." Her current projects are Catch surf and snowboarding. She plans to continue working for her father, but in the long term she hopes to pursue some kind of design, architecture, or graphic design career. But for now, she's happy to have her in the California surf community.
