M.M. Murdock: Welcome to the Wigglestick

Presented by Utah Museum of Contemporary Art at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

The Wigglestick Pretend Co. is an imaginary skateboard company, fictional storefront, and ongoing art project created by the artist M.M. Murdock, and started as an homage to, what Murdock describes as, “a silly wooden toy that has shaped so much of my life.” Fashioned from found objects and discarded pieces of wood, Murdock creates handmade skateboard decks, trucks, wheels, and various other parts. The boards fluctuate between painting and sculpture, functional and non-functional, and like a skateboarder thinks about obstacles in a city, Murdock draws on a variety of materials, seeing potential beyond their intended use.

The project exists both in the store front and online, through humorous social media posts, which has grown a following of supporters and brand loyalists, dubbed “The Wigglestick Make Believe Club for Non-Fictional Members.” Murdock’s tongue-in-cheek fictional store and online platform both pokes fun at established norms, and the commodification of objects, in the art and skateboarding world alike, while nodding to artists like Claes Oldenburg and Keith Haring, who made similar “stores” for people to experience their work.