Stones roll into Surf City

Dave Brooks

Donna Billick is a rock star.

The Davis, Calif. artist is finalizing her special blend of stone

mosaic for Surf City this month, with a public art display near the

new lifeguard station just south of Pier Plaza.

If you miss the opening reception, don’t worry. There’s still time

to see it.”These displays are really designed to last forever,”

Billick said of the sprawling exhibit that includes four separate

rock displays, each uniquely made from stone.

The southern-most exhibit, called Dive-In Plaza, features a bronze

figurine caught diving into a sea of concrete.

“I use a lot of female symbols in my work because it’s something I

am familiar with,” she said. “Men seem so mysterious.”

Another exhibit is Rescue Plaza, home of the new Junior Lifeguard

center. Billick and artist Mark Rivera have been crafting the tile

mosaic for more than two years, and they have included the efforts of

more than 500 junior-lifeguard volunteers who molded various sea

figurines out of clay for placement on the mosaic. The result is a

bright seascape re-creation of the pier and south coast splattered

with images of surfers, ocean life and beach recreation.

“Each of these images tells their own separate story,” Rivera

said. “The children who made them can come back one day with their

children and rediscover the display.”

In the middle of the plaza, a protruding whale’s tale rises from

what will soon be concrete flooring. This functional art piece, which

also serves as a daydreaming seat, was made with an Italian material

known as Terrazzo -- a mixture of cement and stones sculpted on a

rebar skeleton.

Next to the new lifeguard center, Billick helped design Beach

Play, a pebble mosaic built along an access ramp that utilizes small

rocks in another impressive presentation of sea images. Using

thousands of brightly colored polished pebbles from all over the

world, Billick helps trace out images of crabs, dolphins, sting rays

and a very stoked surfer girl.

Billick didn’t do all the pebble images herself. Several area

families designed their own sea-life creations, as well as a team of

craftsmen she brought from Davis.

“It was really a collaborative,” Rivera said.

The exhibition wraps up with Surf City USA, a permanent display of

Terrazzo-crafted surf devices, each adorned in flag designs of

various surf-friendly countries.

“I surveyed several countries and visited the Surf Museum to

distinguish what the best countries were for surfing,” she said. “The

idea was to carve out different sized boards to tell the story of the

growth of surfing over generations.”

Billick said that Huntington Beach will have to stay diligent to

protect the new art work, but if given the right care, it should last

forever.

“There are really no other mediums on the planet that are more

durable,” Billick said. “Stone is immortal.”