Dave Tourjé: You Have to Destroy What You Create to Become Free

When Dave Tourjé was two years old, he had a box of wooden blocks. Every day he'd dump them on the floor, stack them into towers of color, admire what he built—then destroy it and start over.

That ritual never stopped.

Tourjé is a painter, a punk rock musician, a skateboarder, and a founding member of the California Locos—a collective of LA artists who represent the city's raw, multicultural energy. When he sat down with me for Audio Signals Podcast, we talked about survival, rebellion, and what it really takes to stay free as an artist.

"You have to learn to destroy what you're creating to really become free," Tourjé told me. "Otherwise you're gonna be trapped by your own creation."

He calls himself a lucky survivor of the eighties. Born in 1960, raised in Los Angeles, he hit the punk rock scene at 19, got his first skateboard at 7, and was riding swimming pools by the time urethane wheels made it possible. He studied art on scholarship but quit when they asked him to do papier-mâché in college. "That was third grade for me," he said. "I just said, fuck this. I'm outta here."

He's the only practicing artist from that program.

When galleries started selling his concrete and steel furniture around the world, Tourjé thought they'd embrace his paintings too. Instead, they told him to stick with what was selling. When collectors wanted commissioned work in different colors, he walked away. "I was not built to do it," he said. "So I bowed out."

Instead of finding a patron, he built one. A construction company that runs without him—a machine that pays him without requiring him to owe anything to anyone. "It's going to be my patron," he explained. "It's a similar model, but without all the social implications."

That freedom let him focus on the California Locos, a collective he assembled around 2011 with friends who were all leaders in their own corners of LA culture—surf, skate, street art, tattoo, photography. "We are basically Los Angeles," he said. "A very honest reflection."

Their book, Renaissance and Rebellion, tells the story from the sixties to now. It's published by Drago in Rome and distributed internationally. They're currently showing at the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, with museum shows lined up for 2027 and Spain on the horizon.

But the moment that stuck with me came at the end of our conversation. We talked about how musicians destroy as they create—every live performance disappears the moment it's played. "It's like painting a painting that as soon as you put it down and you go to get the next paint, the paint is gone."

And when someone looks at his paintings and sees something he never intended? He doesn't correct them. "The story is the painting," he said. "As soon as the artist says what it's about, everybody has to abide by the rules."

He refuses to impose meaning. Once he's done, he becomes an observer. The work is no longer his—it's an object from the past. He's already onto the next thing.

That's what freedom looks like after a lifetime of rebellion.

Stay tuned. Subscribe. And remember—we are all made of stories.

-- Marco
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Audio Signals Podcast 🌐 https://www.audiosignalspodcast.com

Dave Tourjé 🌐 https://davetourje.com/

Marco Ciappelli 🌐 https://www.marcociappelli.com

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