Templeton embodies the juxtaposition between modern art and suburban culture. He’s one of the few pioneers at the cross-section between street art and street skating, an intersection that has gone on to produce a new generation of artists and skaters. Actually, he is the cross-section. Just as skating took a leap toward innovation and singular expression, the art world began to embrace the same principals. It was also not a bad time to be a rebelious teenager, with little or no interested in an office job. Templeton, a latch-key kid with a rattled home life in middle-class Orange County, found his way into a pro skate career which allowed him the ability to explore the European artworld, a world desperate for new ideas. Ed Templeton’s mid-90s art career grew alongside Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery, which was open terrain for people like him to explore. Now, he successfully traverses the cultural overlap between being a skater and using the inspiration of that culture to create. This week ESPN’s Michah Abrams highlights Templeton’s career, and the series of strange (seemingly) oxymorons that come from a world-class artists living behind the greyed-out sprawl of deep Orange County, Calfornia.

Templeton was born and raised within this vast grid and, despite all that’s happened in the 36 years since, he refuses to leave. You can argue that he owes his twin careers—a skateboard pro approaching legend status and a fine artist with a growing international following—to this place. You could just as easily argue that he’s earned the right to live in a place that better suits his quirky sensibilities, a place that lacks the troubling personal baggage this one carries. Templeton has these arguments with himself all the time. He’s still not leaving.

Regardless what his provenance, Templeton defines the meta-culture of our new history. Suburban mall rats are the new runway models, skaters are the new masters.