(bird chirping) (water sloshing softly) (sandpaper scraping) (bright piano music) - Joining the Navy was not a dream of mine.

It was a result of skipping school the whole time I was in high school and only going to the art room.

(upbeat music) My sister became sick with cancer my first year of high school, and I went to school every day, but I never went to class.

I used the dark room, I did silk screen, I did lithography, I did drawing, I painted murals.

And then when it was time to apply to college, I had zero grades.

My grandfather was an electrician for the Navy, but he was also a photographer as a real serious hobby.

I drove to the recruiter's office and I just bluffed him.

I said, "If you can make me a photo mate, I'll join.

Otherwise I'll probably go talk to someone else."

And then he said, "You tested very high visually and they wanna offer you that position."

My whole plan was photograph these naval situations and then make illustrations from them, and that's what I started doing, and an Admiral saw my portfolio and turned me in into an illustrated draftsman.

There was no war happening, so there wasn't a lot of work.

That's when I started drawing these guys.

(dramatic music) (upbeat electronic music) I got moved to a squadron called TACRON 21 and they were stationed outta Little Creek.

Around the same time I discovered Virginia Beach and there was this surf scene that I thought, "This is the culture that I want to become a part of."

And so I wanted to use art to infiltrate that surf community.

The original shirt was a cluster of surfers with no mouths.

The tall one was Wes Laine.

I don't know if Wes ever knew that.

There was the guy that always had his back to you, and if he didn't have a shirt on, he had a butt crack.

He was always making out with a girl.

And then there were the dudes flanking on the ends that always had the Flock of Seagulls hair.

And those were all based on the true surfers from First Street.

I went to meet Lee Jones at 17th Street.

Lee looks at the design and he says, "You make this one picking his nose and give that dog a cigarette and I'll buy it.

How much you want for it?"

And I said, "50 bucks."

And he says, "Okay."

And so they released it on Memorial Day weekend and they sold out right away.

It was the nose-picker being this slightly naughty thing.

A lot of families with high moral fiber wouldn't let their kids wear 'em.

Then I came up with a shirt called Surf Naked, and that shirt was banned in school, and because that shirt was banned, all the kids wanted it.

They were selling 500,000 shirts a year.

It became iconic.

That's a pretty great feeling when you're a 21, 22.

Fame is the wrong word, but well known, and I had access to every club.

I did all their flyers.

I did all their calendars.

I got to have this amazing life.

I was loving being Danny O.

(bird chirping) (chill music) At a certain point when the shirts are selling, one day I say to Lee, "Hey, instead of 50 bucks of design, can I get 75?"

And he had a bad reaction to that.

He says, "You didn't create this.

I did this.

I created this.

Get outta here!"

And basically fires me.

And he immediately started hiring high school kids who were knocking off my style already and he started paying them.

When I packed up my stuff and left town, that was crushing, going through those tunnels I could barely see, and when I got to the other side, I pulled over and I was just a wreck because I had given everything to it and I was leaving it, and I wasn't leaving like a winner.

It wasn't about the money.

It was about the family that I thought I was a part of and it was about this thing that I knew that I played a role in creating and it was over in in instant.

For decades I carried that welt.

It haunted me and affected me.

Then I realized, well, what did I get from that happening?

And it was the name Danny O was out everywhere and had a certain potency.

So to have that as a young artist allowed me to stay in the game when the well was dry, there was no money in the bank, when I wasn't selling anything, 'cause there was also a long period of time where I didn't have that.

(water sloshing softly) (bright chill music) Many years later, I got sick with cancer, stage four.

I had a big tumor on my neck and they whisked me into the Naval Hospital and they took care of me and cured me.

And when I recovered from that, I asked myself, "What was the happiest time of my life?"

And it was Virginia Beach.

Good morning.

I applied to Neptune.

I came down for that.

Came down two weeks later for the Boardwalk Show, had a great show.

And then this year they selected me to be the featured artist.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you.

Appreciate it.

To have the museum recognize me not for the work that I did in the '80s but for the work that I've been developing, that's everything an artist could ever want.

The nose-picker character itself, (customer laughing) which is this guy right here.

- Oh my God, I love it.

- [Customer] Yes, there he is.

- He's the one that really stuck.

Usually at those shows, there's a lot of downtime and that show is not like that at all.

I was on my feet the whole time, I was talking to people the whole time.

Being the featured artist and getting all the publicity that they give you, the signage they give you, and the t-shirt sold out before noon, and that was awesome for me too.

- We are with Danny O, our featured artist, as part of the Boardwalk Art show.

- To give the art talk at the museum with my painting behind me, it was the best art day of my life.

To be able to share with people my story and then to follow it up with signing prints, it's almost like a surreal moment.

For the Virginia Beach art community to love me the way they do is an amazing thing.

The tribe or the band that you hang with really shapes who you are and there's a really great group of people that I've been blessed to have show up in my life.

(chill music) There was a time where I made a prayer that I wanted to be an artist and I didn't feel like I had the intellectual property to inherit that crown, but I had the work ethic of my mother and my father, and I said, "I'll do good things."

And because of that, opportunities come to me.

Over time, I have learned to take a negative and turn it into a positive.

All these things that I could've looked at with an attitude, and I did maybe for decades, and when I came back to Virginia Beach, I was like, I don't wanna bring any of that bad feeling.

I wanna bring the lessons that I learned from that.

And because I was the person sharing the lessons and not the angst, I think I was able to grow that goodness.

The art world would say putting your art on shirts is like a low-level thing to do, and I say how big is the reach?

- Right.

- The reach is gigantic.

- Exactly.

- And affordable to everyone, it's wearable.

I can't really digest what has happened in the last two weeks that I've been here.

It still feels like I'm gonna wake up from it or I gotta get used to it, and I'm leaning more towards getting used to it.

(funky chill music) (funky chill music continues) (funky chill music continues) (funky chill music continues) (funky chill music continues)