The blue and white murals that adorn the shower area and seawall by the pier don’t bring to mind the bright lights of the tall columns in front of LAX. But they were both designed by the same LA-based artist, Paul Tzanetopoulos.
The Manhattan Beach project, built in 1997, predates the landmark at the airport, which was installed in 2000.
The tiles will be getting a refresh later this year and next year as part of the city’s larger rehabilitation of the pier. Tzanetopoulos will oversee the work, but he won’t be laying down tiles like he did the first time.
“I used to do all that myself,” he said by phone on Saturday from his home studio in Silver Lake. “Now that I’m older, I have other people to do it.”
In addition to the murals and the columns, Tzanetopoulos estimates that at least three dozen of his public works projects are scattered throughout the city. And as they age, he’s been helping to refresh them.
“I’m lucky enough to say my pieces survived,” he said. “It’s a major accomplishment, to be honest with you. It’s no small thing as an artist to have something out in the world and it survives.”
His lit columns at the airport are still the largest permanent public art installation in the world, he said.
“I do take public artwork as a serious responsibility,” he said. “It’s a significant responsibility undertaking a work that’s going to represent a population.”
Coming up with a concept can take months as he researches the area and people he’s building a piece for.
In the case of Manhattan Beach, however, he knew his art would reflect the water “almost instantly.”
“I was pretty sure it should reflect the ocean,” he said. “It would be pretty irresponsible to put up a seawall that had nothing to do with it.”
He was also already familiar with the town from living nearby while getting an MFA at UC Irvine.
The city awarded Tzanetopoulos the project in response to a proposal he submitted.
“I wanted it to be pretty and beautiful, but also a conceptual piece,” he said.
He chose geometric designs that exist in every culture, he said.
“The motifs deal with water and sand,” he said. “They’re patterns that exist on every continent.”
Besides reflecting the ocean graphically, the designs reflect it symbolically, too.
“The pattern keeps going to infinity,” he said. “It’s what the ocean does for us. Each pattern, if kept going, would go around the world.”
The universality of the patterns also reflects the wide range of origins of visitors to the pier.
“I had many people from all over the world comment on the patterns” while the pieces were being installed, he said.
It took over a month of working everyday with at least six other people to put up the 400-foot seawall, which stretches from below the comfort station to the other side of the pier, and the shower mural. Because the tiles were handmade, they don’t have perfectly straight lines, and so require more attention to get them to line up.
Tzanetopoulos said he designed the installation to last a long time and to be easy to restore.
“My goal was to make it so it could be refreshed without a lot of cost or time,” he said.
The seawall, for instance, doesn’t have any grout. Its sandstone-like tiles, whose different thicknesses create shadows, aren’t painted.
The mural on the comfort station was made out of traditional porcelain without a glaze.
That’s “as permanent as you can make it,” he said.
“Both materials have been used for thousands of years for the same reason,” he said.
Tzanetopoulos designed the comfort station piece, which shows a photographic-like representation of waves above five borders of geometric patterns, to be viewed from both far away on the pier and close up while showering or walking to the bathroom.
“I had to work in a microscopic and macroscopic way,” he said.
Born in Greece, Tzanetopoulos moved to Minnesota as a kid with his family. He attended college in Las Vegas and then applied to grad school for art.
“It was a choice between LA and New York,” he said. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t a NY person.”
He chose LA, and has been here since.
“It was very happening,” he said. “The art scene here was fabulous. It’s made a huge impact on the world in the last 20 to 30 years.”
His latest work is a sculpture the city of Pasadena commissioned for Green Street in the Old Town. As a 10-foot glass monolith with colored LEDs in the ground, it sounds more in keeping with his piece at LAX and his fine art practice, in which he often works with light and installations.
“It’s designed to be a bit of a beacon,” he said.
