The La Jolla Historical Society’s current exhibit highlights the origins and continued reverence for local surfing culture through film, photos and more.
Across the board, La Jolla is known for surfing, from the premium swells at Black’s Beach and the rugged waves at Windansea to the enthralling curls at South Bird in Bird Rock.
Venerating that inextricable element of local culture is “La Jolla Surf: Culture, Art, Craft,” the new exhibit at the La Jolla Historical Society, which invites visitors to meet artists, surfers and surfboard builders who have lived in or passed through La Jolla during their lives.
The exhibit is “a long view of a century of surfing,” said curator John Durant, a professional photographer and lifelong surfer who rode waves daily for years while living in La Jolla.
“La Jolla Surf” reveals its vision through boards, images and a short film created specifically for this exhibition, along with artwork, writings and more.
The exhibit is “a perfect fit” for the La Jolla Historical Society, said Executive Director Lauren Lockhart. “Surfing is so iconic to La Jolla and there’s so many still living legends in the area.”
Key boards
The first surfboards are recognized as such were made about 100 years ago, Durant said, adding the timeline of surfing and surfboards in the exhibit begins with a nod to Kumeyaay tule boats, which are similarly shaped but were used for fishing beginning millennia ago.
In another exhibition room, surfboards themselves line the wall, starting with artifacts from when “boards were made of wood, there were no surf shops and there were no companies that made boards,” Durant said.
“If you wanted a surfboard like this, you built it.”
Durant is proud of the inclusion of Bob Simmons’s 1950 board, made of balsa wood and fiberglass, that shows boardmaking technology “really hasn’t changed,” he said. “They’re still handmade. They’re still fiberglassed.”
In curating the display, Durant “was surprised how forward-looking a board made in 1950 was,” he said, noting the Simmons board has a deep channel in the center and two fins for traction on the face of a wave.
“Fast forward to the last board” on the wall, made in 2020: “It’s still two fins, channel bottom,” he said. “The successive layers of intelligence were really fun to reveal.”
Smiley and Son
John Durant
The “mascot for the entire show is Smiley,” a bright red pint tail board at seven feet, eight inches long, Durant said, hand shaped by Mike Eaton for Gary Keating and bearing a distinctive shark’s grin.
Board shorts
The photos presented in “La Jolla Surf” include one taken 1961 by Ron Church, showcasing Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist and big-wave surfer Ricky Grigg, surfing Windansea.
Another image, a 1971 photo by master surf photographer Jeff Divine of San Diego Surfing Hall of Fame member Tom Ortner at Windansea, is “a Renaissance painting,” Durant said, showing in one moment “the grace, the athleticism, … the elegance and the tactile nature of the entire act.”
Above board
The hallmark of the “La Jolla Surf” exhibit is the film, a 30-minute cut of “25 surfers from every walk of life and every age, from about 22 to 93,” Durant said.
The idea for the film surfaced from Lockhart wanting “a beautiful, polished production that then can be added to the archive” and augment the Historical Society’s oral histories collection, she said.
Durant asked each surfer to answer one question: “What is surfing?”
His question “was answered differently every time,” he said, “but every single person danced by or landed on the ineffable, spiritual quality” of surfing.
Board chairs
“La Jolla Surf” took Durant a year to organize and curate, he said, pointing to various components of the exhibit that bring together an overall sense of adoration for the craft and culture of surfing, like a life-size photo of Rusty Preisendorfer of Rusty Surfboards in front of all the materials and tools used to shape a board.
“It’s a diorama … of [Preisendorfer] in his environment,” Durant said.
“The takeaway is that there’s a little more to this than meets the eye,” he said, adding surfing is “not just like a suntan commercial or a spot for orange juice.”
Surfing is “more than a sport,” Lockhart said.
And with supplemental programming at La Jolla Historical Society including mindful movement workshops, surf film screenings, guided tours and more, “La Jolla Surf” is more than an exhibit.
The exhibition runs through Sunday, May 25 at Wisteria Cottage, 780 Prospect St. Admission is free; exhibit hours are noon to 4 pm Wednesday through Sunday.
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