Teenage Smokers ed templeton a short biography / timeline sort of thing I was born in Orange County California in 1972. Grew up in Anaheim, then my family moved to a trailer park in Corona. Dad ran off with the babysitter. We moved to Huntington Beach. I began skateboarding when I was 13. I got sponsored by a company called Circle-A, then left them for Schmitt Stix, which then turned into New Deal. By the time I was 18 I had started skateboarding professionally. I left high school with a month left to enter skate contests in Europe. This was a very eye opening experience. Upon my return I started painting, it was 1990. In 1993 I started my own skateboard company, Toy Machine Bloodsucking Skateboard Company. In 1994 I had my first solo exhibition at Alleged gallery in New York. That is also the year I started taking photography seriously. I started making zines. 1995, Mike Mills makes a short film about my life in the suburbs called "Deformer." The name being an ongoing theme in my life. In 1996 Toy Machine's Welcome to Hell video comes out. In 1998 I started showing both photography and paintings together in my exhibition at Space 1026 in Philadelphia. In 1999 my first book was published, Teenage Smokers, along with my 2nd solo exhibition at Alleged Gallery. 2001 Thrasher magazine runs a retrospective article, "10 years of Templeton" In 2002 my first major book of photographs was published in Italy, "the Golden Age of Neglect." 2005 I finish work on "Deformer," my book about growing up in Orange County, due for release in 2006. To this day I still skate professionally and run Toy Machine. I live in Huntington Beach, California with my wife Deanna and our cat Ptah.