During the ceremony leading up to the unveiling of the sixth installment of the Hermosa Beach Mural Project last Saturday, a pair of teenage volleyball players wandered through the crowd gathered just off The Strand on 13th Street. The barefoot girls seemed not to know what was happening as they made their way to the sand south of the pier, which was hosting the Queen of the Beach volleyball tournament.
But as project officials got ready to pull the curtain, it became clear that the young passers-by fit right in. The ceremony marked the unveiling of a mural honoring beach volleyball in Hermosa Beach, and offered a forward-looking vision of the sport.
Completed by noted local photographer Bo Bridges, the mural uses high-resolution photos on a vinyl-based material, and covers the south- and west-facing walls of the foot of the downtown parking structure. It dispenses with veneration of past stars — one image captures nothing above the knees—in favor of a multi-panel ode to the game’s athleticism. Anonymous players leap into the sky, sand exploding off the beach as though propelled by a land-mine.
The content of the mural was a deliberate reaction, Bridges said, to the abundance of local talent.
“The problem with doing a project like this in a place like this is that there are way too many talented athletes to choose from,” Bridges said.
Mural project members thanked Bridges for his contribution, lauding his reputation for innovation and effort.
“Bo is constantly pushing the boundaries of what it takes to get the perfect shot,” said Maureen Lewis, a mural project board member, alluding to time Bridges spent dangling from a plane while shooting the movie poster for “Mission Impossible — Rogue Nation.”
As if proving Bridges’ point about a glorious past, other speakers detailed the city’s beach volleyball history. The first Hermosa Beach Open took place in 1958, and a variety of hyper-local tournaments now take place each year on stretches of beach throughout the city. Local pros JoAnna Papageorgiou, Mike Dodd, Tim Hovland and Eric Fonoimoana were honored. (Fonoimoana, the organizer of the Queen of the Beach tournament, happened to be nearby.)
The mural project is on track to complete ten murals in ten years, and officials hope to eventually create city-sponsored tours led by docents. Previous subjects in the mural series include the city’s history with jazz, bathing suits and surfing. The volleyball mural is the largest and most ambitious installation the project has tackled so far.
“When you see the unveiling, it will blow your minds,” mural project president Chuck Sheldon said before the curtains fell. “This is arguably our finest hour.”
The mural made fans quickly. Shortly after the unveiling, the young volleyball players returned, enthusiastically telling anyone that would listen that they were the players depicted. Given the photos, no one could quite prove them wrong.
