Henry Lund

Type in an internet search for "Henry Lund" and you'll come up with a site dedicated to the Clondalkin Paper Mill sit-ins of 1982-1987, along with a personal account by a man of the same name who emerged from the horrors of WWII relatively unscathed.

But the Henry Lund I was looking for is a legendary local artist who, among other achievements, had a deft hand in popularizing East Coast surfboard airbrushing during the late '70s and '80s.

No matter.

I specified my search by entering "Henry Lund Cocoa Beach Art" and was met with an even more befuddling list of articles mentioning the Lund I was looking for. Many cited him as a trusted, influential and rather august voice in the local art scene, but none of them gave me the well-rounded biographical sketch I sought.

In desperation, I spoke with a handful of in-the-know friends who uttered his name in the hushed tones one usually conjures for Gary Propper, Mike Tabeling and other pioneering East Coast surfing illuminati. When I tried to probe deeper into why he was such a beloved artist and surf culture figure, I was met with bemused shrugs. "You'll just have to talk with him and see for yourself," one friend said.

Although I felt a bit embarrassed going into an interview without having completed the necessary "homework," I realized it would've probably been more of a hindrance from the moment I shook Lund's warm, welcoming hand.

Henry Lund has a strange way of wiping clean all your expectations and worrying concerns. While confident and physically imposing, he uses none of the bullying psychic tactics one expects from a man of his stature. Within an instant, I was taken in by a disarming charm that seems to have gone the way of hat-tipping and Cary Grant-like gallantry. In fact, everything about Lund seems to fly under the proverbial radar.

After a few pointed questions, I learned that, yes, Lund did put his time in during the pioneering days of Cocoa Beach surfing with Propper and was instrumental in creating some of the first airbrushed surfboards in the area. Yet the story of how he got to this place speaks more volumes about his current aesthetic than any of those local episodes ever could.

Originally born in South Dakota, he moved to these shores back in 1963, where he immersed himself in surfing and beachside culture. While not the nascent, wholly consumed draftsman one usually reads about in tales such as these, it's clear (in retrospect) that Henry had an uncannily receptive spirit and eye for art in all its incarnations. "I could draw," he remembers, "but I think I saw more of the potential of what California airbrushers were doing back then. I just picked up on it, got involved in the form, and thought to bring it here."

A later run-in with childhood idol Peter Max in Kissimmee proved fruitful. "He was my hero," Lund explains. "I was in my early 20s and walked up to him when he was painting this airplane. We got along and he asked me to help him out. We worked together for a while and he recommended I get into art school, but I preferred to develop on my own. Since then, I've been pretty much self-taught."

While some of his current paintings nod toward Max's use of bold, clean lines and contours, Lund's other interest in cowboy culture and Western themes throws longing glances back toward his South Dakota childhood.

"I guess I really started getting into western themes when I was living in San Diego," Lund says. "There were a lot of ranches there, and for some reason I was really drawn to that lifestyle and that imagery. Everything from the costumes, the music, the films and the accoutrements." By that time, Lund was fairly ensconced in Southern California surf culture, and I wonder whether he got any flack from mixing two seemingly antithetical movements into his creations.

Outwardly, one is staunchly land-based and the other intensely ocean-oriented, but as Henry mentions, "they both ride something." That ingenious link helped Lund fashion the artistic ethos he practices today in his Cocoa Beach studio/home. I admit I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the surfer/cowboy connection, but once I plugged his recent work into the equation, the sum came up irrevocably whole.

Like Lund, this recent work is guilelessly simple: bust-level portraits of men holding aloft trophy fish. Using photographs as a starting point, the end result takes on an ancient, almost iconographic resonance film can never duplicate. This sense of everyday, run-of-the-mill heroism can be found in a sepia-toned sketch he's done of a rustler at the moment of being unhorsed and tumbling groundward amid a shower of kicked-up clods of dirt and gravel. While ably rendering movement and unharnessed power, what it really captures is a sense of man's inescapable humanity -- the equal importance of both the rise and the fall.

His pieces depicting surfers are just as telling. While other artists might try to harness the god-like mastery of a surfer's wave conquest, Lund, somehow, manages to show that as much as someone can catch a wave, he's just as likely to "eat" it in the worst possible way. He seems to be saying that it's not because of our superior arrogance or strength in the face of nature and beast that we can tame waves or bulls, but by our ordinariness and mere humanity; that the prospect of failure is just as important (if not moreso) as the audacious idea of our being able to conquer anything.

Heady stuff, to be sure, but when asked to expand on the fisherman series, Lund gives an answer that bears this laborious theory out. "I just like what it says: 'Man with Fish,'" he tells me. "There's some bragging associated with the image, but I like to think that it tells a long story that goes far behind whatever struggle played out on the water."

In addition to painting, graphic design, interior design, and promotions, Lund has custom created a line of Western-themed lamps, lamp shades, pillows, prints, sheets, clothing and wall hangings. An avid collector of Western memorabilia, from album covers, autographed head shots, guitars, and intricately-wrought silver belt buckles, Lund has also amassed boxes of original tin-type photographs and cabinet cards from the old West.

There is an element of kitsch to them, but as he sorts through large pile to find me a particularly striking image of two outrageously mustachioed twins in period dress, it's clear that for Lund, the stories behind their faces lend them their true value. I myself can't help but be caught up in scrutinizing each subject's gaze for signs of love, sadness, anger, or glee. "You just wonder what these people's lives were like," he muses. "What were they doing that day? What did they eat that morning? What were their occupations?"

By plumbing the secrets these photos hold and the even deeper mysteries they reveal, I'm convinced that Lund is able to create artwork that is just as enigmatic as the man himself.

But I have to laugh at myself as begin typing out the first notes from my interview, and it's as if I can hear Lund laughing with me over my shoulder. "Enigmatic"? "Mysterious?" Everything about him and everything he creates seems to be held aloft on a cloud of high-falutin' illusion, and what seems so complex and ridden with meaning is actually -- and, rather mundanely -- simple.

And thoughts like that are bound to dwell under the radar.

Visit Henry Lund's Western lamps and lamp shade site to view more of his creations at: www.lampranch.com, or call him at (321) 868-0416 to view other works or to inquire about custom projects.