The Artists Come In

There's an old argument in surfing about where the culture really lives. Ask a shaper and he'll point to the blank, the planer, the dust on the shaping room floor. Ask anyone who grew up with a stack of SURFERs under the bed and they'll point somewhere else: to the photos, the paintings, the cartoons, the color on a page that told a kid a thousand miles from the coast what it felt like to trim down the line. On October 3rd at Los Molinos Beer Co., the San Clemente Boardbuilders Hall of Fame settled the argument the only sensible way. It made room for the artists.

This year three of them went in together, and they go back a long way.

The Seversons came to San Clemente in the 1940s the way a lot of families did, by way of a summer that wouldn't let go. Hugh Severson sold AC/Delco parts out of Los Angeles. He drove the family down the coast on vacation and eventually just stopped driving back. Hugh and Dorothy raised five kids in town, Jane, John, Jimmy, Jerry and Joe, and the boys grew up in the water and in the lifeguard towers. For John, Jimmy and Joe, the paintbrush came along with it.

With John, it's hard to overstate. Before him there was surfing. After him there was surf culture. There were the films, and in 1961 the magazine, and with them the whole idea that this thing could be documented and argued over and dreamed about from somewhere inland. He sold SURFER in the early '70s and went to Maui to paint and take photos, which is to say he went back to where it started for him. He passed in 2017.

Joe's road ran closer to home and closer to the ground. Lifeguard, carpenter, painter, and for a stretch a glasser in Dana Point, laying up boards for Hobie Alter back when the Hobie label was already in full production and setting the pace for everyone else. If you ever doubted that the line between craftsman and artist was thinner than the categories suggest, the proof is in his hands. Then there's the photo. In Joe's 1961 Capistrano Union High yearbook, there's a shot of him leaning into a soul arch bottom turn. Sixty-some years later, that image is the logo his sons put on everything they make.

And then there's Rick Griffin. John saw something in him early and brought him on at SURFER, where Rick's work gave the magazine its sense of humor and a good part of its soul. He and Joe became close friends. Rick carried that same hand out of the surf mags and into the concert halls, and his paintings, rock posters and album covers made him one of the defining artists of his generation.

Three guys who painted what the rest of us were feeling. It's fitting that they went in together.

Thanks to Damian Brawner and Los Molinos Beer Co. for building the Hall of Fame and making room for the artists. And thanks to Roy Gonzalez, an iconic San Clemente artist in his own right. It was only fitting that he painted the poster honoring these three.