'Physical Manipulations of Structural Surfaces - A Homage to Skating' by Richard Vosseller. (Photo: Jay Westcott)

Though Cynthia Connolly had been tossing around the idea of a skateboard-themed art show for a few years now, a germ of the idea was planted during a quiet evening in San Francisco, years before the current Artisphere was even a gleam in Arlington’s eye.

“I remember seeing this skater in San Francisco on a dark night. I heard the skateboard cutting through the silence, and him moving through this landscape and thought about how this place is a different place for him,” says Connolly, who used to skate, too. “He was seeing that place in a different way. It shows how we can all see things differently.”

Connolly cultivated relationships with skateboarding artists for years in preparation for Skateboard Side Effects, the inaugural show at the Artisphere, which opens today at 5 p.m. with an artist talk followed by a reception. The work ranges from the colorful abstract paintings of Sean Greene, to the massive sculpture she commissioned by Richard Vosseller that serves both as a sculpture and a skateable ramp.

Connolly hosted a group of skaters to skate the ramp last week — they’re featured in a video in the gallery — but it’s too dangerous to have anyone come in and try it. Like Skateboard Side Effects, other skateboarding shows that have featured sculptural ramps and bowls, like the Free Basin piece that Deitch Art Projects hosted in 2003. That bowl was also part of the Beautiful Losers traveling art exhibit in 2004, which chronicled the DIY/punk/skateboarding movement, and in which Connolly also participated.

Connolly also avoided the image of the skateboard deck in her show, preferring instead to focus on the ways that skateboarders depict how they travel through a space, and the objects that help or hinder them. She hesitatingly embraces the term “skateboard art,” because a lot of art that’s made by people who skateboard — such as Obama portraitist Shepard Fairey — has more to do with the DIY aesthetic than the sport and its culture.

The Artisphere isn't the first gallery in D.C. to open their doors with a skateboard-themed show. Just two years ago, the Eastern Market gallery The Fridge opened with the Graff-Skate Auction, a brief show of skateboarding street artists such as STER, BORF and Con. The show was a benefit for the Bridge Spot, a skate park in an old basketball court.

"DC has a long history of punk music, skating and the art scene going together," says Alex Goldstein, the owner of the Fridge. "I got to meet a lot of artists that way."

One of the places where artists and skateboarders would come together is the now-shuttered Fight Club, an indoor skate bowl in Blagden Alley. Fight Club hosted the work of artists and photographers, and sponsored shows like the popular Foto Week exhibit Fixations. Fight Club would also send out tongue-in-cheek invitations to the "FC Gallery” where visitors could see “a massive interactive installation piece”: The skate bowl, with skaters in it.

Goldstein skates too, and he's noticed the broadening of skateboarding's appeal in recent years. "It's not just white suburban kids, like when I was growing up," says Goldstein. "It seems to be a sport that has gained credibility and mainstreamed, but it still has an underground edge to it."

And that is one of the reasons it is christening the Artisphere space. That slightly underground vibe is exactly what Rosslyn needs to make a new space in a previously-stodgy area cool.

“Skateboarding will always be skateboarding and it has to be done in the streets and the cities, and someone will always say that you can't be there,” says Connolly. “It's kind of underground and not totally legitimate. But because it's in the space it is, we're saying it's legitimate.”

Skateboarding art is also for young people, and it's for people who wouldn't otherwise find themselves in a gallery — especially a gallery that's part of the establishment. And especially in Rosslyn. But those young creatives are exactly the types of people that the Artisphere is looking to attract.

"It would be nice if it reached everybody but I don't know if it can," says Connolly. "Older people have said, 'I don't like skateboarding culture because I don't like how my children were involved in it.' I would talk to them and say it has a positive side to it. We're seeing it in this exhibit."