Palos Verdes Resident John Van Hamersveld’s Iconic Artwork Comes Alive Again By Deborah Paul
Palos Verdes Resident John Van Hamersveld’s Iconic Artwork Comes Alive Again
By Deborah Paul
Palos Verdes resident John Van Hamersveld’s iconic artwork comes alive again at the LA Harbor International Film Festival on March 13.
Graphic artist John Van Hamersveld was never one to hide away on a remote island to search for deeper meanings to inject into his iconic posters, water towers, psychedelic album or magazine covers. Instead, the prolific artist who created one of the most famous movie designs of our time, “The Endless Summer,” poster was too busy living his life to the fullest and having a good time rubbing shoulders with surfers, rock stars and movie makers of his young life.
The soon-to-be octogenarian said he met everybody he ever wanted to know in the Hollywood rock scene in the late 1960s. As a kid he started surfing together with legendary surfer Phil Becker who used to shape and later sell surfboards in Hermosa Beach. He also started a dance hall called Pinnacle at the Shrine Exhibition Hall. Included in his large repertoire of works was the album covers for the Beatle’s “Magical Mystery Tour,” and concert posters for such notables as Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and The Who. He also designed the trademarks for the more than 200 Fatburger restaurants worldwide and Contempo Casuals clothing stores which also numbered in the hundreds. But it was a quizzical avenue that led him to the notoriety he enjoyed in the art world.
Van Hamersveld said he had academic problems due to having dyslexia. He grew up in Lunada Bay, but graduated from El Segundo High school. Afterward, he attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, then seldom had to worry about jumbled words or sentences, again. “Being dyslectic, everything is like a movie, Van Hamersveld said. “You memorize the visual information in front of you 180 degrees. Then you point that on a piece of paper, making a panorama movie, at the same time with exact patterns and processes. I’m multi-disciplined trained,” said the Lunada Bay resident who also attended the California Institute of Arts. “I’m a photographer, designer and artist. The designer in me made a lot of money in Hollywood.”
One of his latest graphic art endeavors, completed in 2018, is a 32-foot high, 510-foot-in-circumference water tower he designed for a Department of Water and Power tank in El Segundo. The rusted eyesore-turned-Goliath-like objet d’art pays homage to the surf culture and includes numerous pop icons he created throughout his more than half-century career.
“Creating art is like having a crew of people behind you, Van Hamersveld said. “It’s a gift to be able to visualize like that. It’s so strange. People didn’t know me -- only the names of the people I worked for. It took many years for my name to catch up with the product which was always connected to the stars. I was just a credit. No one knew me, only my products.”
Like prolific journalist, musician and art aficionado Bondo Wyszpolski who met Van Hamersveld while doing a piece about him in the Easy Reader when John and his wife Alida had taken over the old William’s Book Store in San Pedro and converted it into their shop. Wyszpolski tells this story:
“Over half a century ago, I ended up at a college in Virginia. I believe it was within the first couple of weeks, during Freshman orientation, we were herded into one of the auditoriums to see a film, and the film they showed was "The Endless Summer," the advertising or promotion of which featured John's iconic poster.
“I've always remembered that occasion, for some reason, maybe because we were watching a surf film, and I'd just come from Palos Verdes, where my family had lived throughout the 1960s.
“At the time, however, I didn't associate John with that film or the poster. I also didn't know that he had spent some of his earlier years with his family living on Chelsea Road in Lunada Bay, maybe half a mile at most from my parents' home on Via Zumaya and Palos Verdes Drive West.
“I also didn't know that John had designed the album covers for some of the 1960s most influential artists. Sometimes I find that a bit astonishing -- this fellow I know who, decades earlier, captivated me with his artwork. The way that John inspires me now is simply by how active he remains, still exploring new ways of making his art.”
As proof of how iconic and inspirational Van Hamersveld’s work has become, another local creative force, Director and Founder of the Los Angeles Harbor International Film Festival Stephanie Mardesich was directly galvanized to create this year’s LAIFF poster in honor of Van Hamersveld’s work.
“When I told a local surfer friend this year's 18th annual LAHIFF DocSunday closing film program is Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer” and the movie poster inspired the design of this year's LAHIFF official poster, my friend mentioned the artist for the iconic poster, John Van Hamersveld, is from the Palos Verdes Peninsula,” Mardesich said. “I was so intrigued I sought John out to reveal our mission.”
Thanks to a conversation with John’s wife Alida, Mardesich said she added the 11-minute short film, “John Van Hamersveld Crazy World Ain't It?” by burgeoning film maker Dave Tourje to precede Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer” which will be the grand finale at the March 13 film festival.
John Van Hamersveld continues to inspire his artistic peers and subsequent generations with his kaleidoscopic career and innovative techniques, but one thing is for sure, he said:
“There is no reason to retire, as long as I’m capable, I just keep on drawing,” the Great One said.
Deborah Paul has played with ink since she was able to read and write. At 19, after two years of college, she left St. Louis to fly for American Airlines, and later enjoyed a long career with Flying Tiger Lines in many capacities, including flying military and their dependents all over the world as a flight attendant. Paul returned to university in the 1990s earning a journalism degree from Cal State University Dominguez Hills and was eventually hired as a newspaper reporter for the South Bay Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times. A decade later she worked for Orange Coast Magazine as their Charitable Events editor. She also taught journalism and was advisor to the campus newspaper at CSUDH and still contributes as a regular stringer for Peninsula News on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Currently, she has self-published four-of-five children's books in her ballad series. Her poetic fictional stories are inspired by real people who have left an indelible mark on the quiet display of simple human kindness. She resides in Rancho Palos Verdes married to Jim, her husband of many adventures.