Daniela Artmengual Shannon Reporting interview on surfboard making

The Daniela Artmengual Shannon Reporting interview covered Artmengual’s plan to build her surfboard brand from Xalapa, Veracruz, while shipping boards and traveling to make them elsewhere. Speaking with Reporting for Women Making Waves, she also described what she learned from shapers and glassers in Oahu and how leftover resin becomes part of her artwork.

How is Daniela Artmengual starting her surfboard brand in Xalapa?

Daniela Artmengual plans to keep her surfboard workshop in Xalapa, Veracruz, and send boards to customers in other places. She wants that base to support a more mobile practice: traveling for periods of time, making boards where she goes and taking orders beyond her home workshop.

Xalapa is a small city about three hours from Mexico City, she said. The sea is not next door; she put it at roughly an hour away. That distance has not changed where she wants to establish the workshop or her intention to ship boards out from it.

Her larger ambition is to travel the world while keeping Xalapa as her base. She described the possibility of spending time in Europe, making boards there and taking orders from that location before moving on. The workshop, in her plan, stays in place even when the work takes her elsewhere.

Artmengual also wants her own boards to reflect both construction quality and her visual style. Rather than treating decoration as separate from shaping and glassing, she described a board that works as the surfer wants it to and carries a design the surfer wants to see.

How does Daniela Artmengual use recycled resin in her surfboard art?

Daniela Artmengual uses leftover surfboard resin to make sculptures and looks for ways to give damaged boards a second life. Her art grew alongside her boardmaking: she studied industrial design, learned to work with materials including ceramics and wood, and brought that willingness to experiment into the workshop.

Sculptures from a day’s leftover resin

After making boards, a small amount of resin can remain in the bucket. Artmengual described pouring that remainder into silicone molds instead of discarding it, then using resin left from daily production to cover sculptures. She sees the process as a way to use material that would otherwise become waste.

Her sculpture ideas include fish skeletons and snakes. Those forms give her another outlet for the visual work she has enjoyed since childhood, without requiring a separate supply of resin for every piece.

A second life for damaged boards

Artmengual also discussed boards that have been used, broken or badly dented and are no longer wanted. By removing the fiberglass, she can work with a board again rather than treating it as finished. For her, reuse is not limited to what remains in a bucket at the end of a working day.

What did Daniela Artmengual learn from shapers and glassers in Oahu?

Daniela Artmengual said her time making boards in Oahu let her learn from many shapers and glassers working near one another. She was encouraged to absorb knowledge without dismissing another maker’s methods, then test what she learned while working on boards for different brands.

That advice mattered because the work put different approaches within reach. Artmengual described taking in what each person knew, putting it into practice and learning to distinguish which choices suited a particular board. She specifically mentioned decisions about weight and rails.

Reporting raised Artmengual’s work for brands in Oahu during their discussion. Artmengual focused her answer on what that environment taught her: exposure to many makers gave her a wider set of techniques to evaluate, rather than a single method to copy.

She now wants that experience to show in the quality of her own boards. At the same time, she wants to give them an artistic touch. Her goal is a combination of the board’s construction, its appearance and what an individual surfer asks her to make.

How did Daniela Artmengual learn to make surfboards?

Daniela Artmengual first tried to make boards on her own, then sought out people who made them professionally. She recalled struggling to find useful instructions and to understand materials such as resin and catalyst. After making about seven boards, she approached a factory, observed its workers and kept practicing.

Summers in Puerto Escondido

Artmengual said she went to Puerto Escondido in the summers, sometimes for two or three months at a time. She also described getting into surfing without relying on a class. Her early approach to boardmaking had a similar do-it-yourself character, although finding clear information about the process was difficult.

Seven boards before the factory

On a later trip, she rented a place, bought materials and began making boards. She remembers those early attempts as crooked and unattractive, but each one let her see how the materials behaved. She was learning by applying resin, looking at the result and trying again.

When she visited a surfboard factory and was asked how many boards she had made, her answer was seven. She spent about a month observing, taking videos and notes before being invited to try making one there. Recalling how she felt on arrival at the place where she chose to stay and work, Artmengual put it simply:

yo aquí, me quedo

She remembered her hand shaking as she applied resin at the factory. From there, she said, she kept making more boards and building experience.

What did Daniela Artmengual say about her own brand and other women making boards?

Daniela Artmengual wants to give more attention to her own art and boards, work she said she had not always been able to prioritize. She also responded positively to the idea of bringing women together to try making boards, with a demonstration or shared session as a possible way to begin.

Making space for her own work

Artmengual said an earlier commitment had made it harder to focus on her art and boards. Now she wants to put her energy into both. The distinction matters to her brand: the art is not an unrelated project, but part of what she wants her boards to express.

A possible session for women interested in boardmaking

The conversation turned to the Ayun boardroom show and to the possibility of gathering women who want to make boards. Artmengual discussed a hands-on trial or demonstration rather than announcing a scheduled event. Cocojo came up as another woman making boards and as an example of the kind of participation they were considering.

Artmengual’s interest was practical: give people a chance to try the work and see what is involved. She did not present a date, location or confirmed group for a session.

Where can people find Daniela Artmengual’s art or make a board with her?

Daniela Artmengual said her art was available to see on Instagram, while she was working on a catalog for a future website. She also said she was interested in courses or an arrangement in which someone buys a board and helps make it with her, becoming involved in the process.

The catalog was still being assembled when we spoke, so she pointed people to Instagram for her existing work. Her comments about courses and collaborative boardmaking were plans she was considering, not a published schedule or a booking offer.

Those ideas fit the way she described learning herself: trying materials, watching experienced makers and improving through repeated work. For a customer who wants more than a finished board, she is interested in opening up some of that making process.