The iconic Endless Summer movie poster and artist John Van Hamersveld’s highly
recognizable and sometimes psychedelic art began with the renowned color-saturated
sunset and surfer poster for the 1966 movie. Inspired by a sunset photo of a beach in
Orange County, it was destined to become an internationally recognized icon of
Southern California’s surfing scene. His works include famous album covers for the
Beatles and Rolling Stones, as well as concert posters for Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

Van Hamersveld’s journey took him from these sun-drenched beaches to the druginfused world of Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Laurel Canyon, hotbeds of countercultural activity and attitudes in the 1960s and home to many of the era’s top rockers – Frank Zappa, The Doors, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Love.

In his partnership with the Pinnacle Dance Concerts, “The Hammer” helped expose
larger audiences in L.A. to such acts as Hendrix, Cream, The Who, Pink Floyd, Blue
Cheer, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Grateful
Dead, and the Velvet Underground.

By 1969 it was all about Woodstock – not just an event, a happening, or a concert
with 400,000 people, but a pivotal moment of realization for an entire generation and an entire country.

The fantasy ended with Richard Nixon’s government and its concerted efforts to
divide generation from generation. Large holding companies in the finance business
bought up the Sixties, cheap, and sold it to following decades as nostalgia, repackaged by marketers. Love and peace were up for sale.

John Van Hamersveld was not just a chronicler, but a player and forger of the surf
culture that defined a generation and that continues to make an old world young again.

Throughout My Art, My Life, Van Hamersveld recounts his early life as a canvas or
archetypal modes that tell the tale of the beginning of an entire Southern California
culture that attracted and inspired youth West and East worldwide. His style is more
Kesey than Kerouac, recounting a past as an object of the present. It is an interesting life from both a participant and an observer, filled with bright images that gladden the heart.

Contents
Introduction
1: Velzy and Dora
I. The Trip of Surfing
II. Inside the Secret Life of Miki Dora’s Fantasy
2. Surf Gang
I. The SurfCult
II. Late Fifties
3. Dana Point Dynasty
4. Two Browns Counter-Culture
5. The Coronado Studio of 1966–1967
6. “God’s Man” Rick Griffin
7. The Jefferson Airplane Experience
8. My Johnny Story
9. The Stones, Dylan, Dead, and Kiss
Index

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My Art, My Life
JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD
Edited by David Lynn Clucas

176 pages, 6” x 9”
ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-523-7;
ISBN-10: 1-58731-523-8, limited
edition clothbound,
numbered and signed, $100.00 tx
ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-524-4;
ISBN-10: 978-1-58731-524-6,
paperbound, $23.00
introduction, illustrated throughout in b/w;
with a special 16-page color section,
index
world rights
publication date: December, 2010
biography & autobiography: artists;
art: popular culture