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During his introduction of John Van Hamersveld, Pete Hoffman went through a litany of the artist’s achievements. Van Hamersveld created the Endless Summer movie poster, which is now in the Los Angeles and New York museums of modern art. He created the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street album covers. For the 1984 Olympics, he created a mural that wrapped around the Los Angeles Coliseum. His Freemont Street Experience in Las Vegas, a four-block-long light show of his art, has been viewed by over 90 million people, making it possibly the most viewed contemporary art installation in the world.
But for all of Van Hamersveld’s success in the greater art world, Sunday morning’s unveiling in downtown Hermosa Beach of his 75-foot long, 19-foot tall mural, “Hermosa Great Wave,” in appeared almost fated, observed Hoffman, a member of the Hermosa Beach Murals Committee.
“If ever there has been a work of art where the artist and place converged, this is it,” Hoffman said.
The mural, at 14th Street and Hermosa Avenue, is across the street from the Foster’s Freeze where Van Hamersveld and his high school surf buddies hung out five decades ago. Van Hamersveld grew up in Palos Verdes, immersed in the surf culture. He bought his first surfboard in 1955 from Hermosa Beach surfboard shaper Hap Jacobs. He learned to surf at Torrance Beach under the critical eye of lifeguard John McFarlane. Both Jacobs and McFarlane are members of the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame.
The unveiling served as a reunion for members of the three great surfing eras memorialized in the mural by images of three surfers standing with their surfboards planted in the sand. The mural’s story begins with the kookbox era. Jacobs, McFarlane and Van Hamersveld himself, first surfed on kookboxes — hollow, wood surfboards steered by dragging a foot because kookboxes didn’t have fins. Next came the Golden Era of the 1960s, represented at the unveiling by surfboard shaper and retired lifeguard Sonny Vardeman and by members of the Haggerty Surf Club, including John Joseph, Mike McIntire, and John Leininger.
The contemporary era of short board surfers was represented at the unveiling by Spyder Surf shaper Dennis Jarvis, ET shaper Pat Ryan, surfing’s first World Champion PT Townend and South Bay standouts Bobby Warcola and John Teague.
“Hermosa Great Wave” is the fifth in a series of 10 murals that the Hermosa Beach Murals Committee plans for the downtown.
Following the unveiling, murals committee president Chuck Sheldon conducted an auction of 10 signed and numbered art prints of the mural. The auction raised over $10,000.
Sheldon reminded the gathering that the mural was the creation of one artist, but the work of many selfless and generally unknown volunteers.
He mentioned Bolour Associates, owners of the mural’s building, city manager Tom Bakaly, Ells Freeman and Andrew Brosnic from public works, attorneys Baker Burton and Lundy, accountants Wayland and Vukadinovich, publicists Paolucci, Sallings and Martin, and Sheldon’s fellow members of the murals committee.
For more about the Hermosa Beach murals, including the four other murals in the series, visit HermosaMurals.org. ER
