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Arts & Entertainment

Aggression Through Punk-Rock Art

A celebration of Hermosa and the South Bay's punk-rock influence on the world.

The Punk Art exhibit in Hermosa Beach is bound to shock and amaze visitors with the aggressive, raucous vibe of South Bay punk rock.

The Hermosa Beach Historical Society exhibit of punk-rock artwork fills the nostalgic museum with the edginess of a rock club. Black walls are covered top to bottom with concert fliers from South Bay bands.

The posted papers immediately hook your interest with shocking images. A sinister puppet holding a knife, cut-and-paste images with female models in unusual backdrops. Some drawings are too explicit to even describe in words.

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The images are emblematic of the Hermosa Beach punk rock vibe. Artists drew the punk-rock concert invitations not only to invite people to a concert, but also to elicit the intense emotions which characterize punk rock.

Jani Lange, a Hermosa Beach native who helped organize the exhibit, said all of the artwork was inspired by one concert flier artist.

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"That would be Raymond Pettibon, who did all the original Black Flag artwork," Lange said. "So he is the definition of South Bay, Hermosa Beach punk-rock art. It's borderline offensive. It grabs you. It makes you think. It makes you wonder. And it complements that raw aggressiveness of punk rock."

Lange said that the passion and emotion of the Hermosa Beach punk rock music went hand-in-hand with the skateboarding and surfing culture in the South Bay. The lyrics in these punk-rock songs often made references to hanging out on the beach sand or running around the town.

"It got you pumped to go skate," Lange said. "It got you pumped to go surf. And the greatest thing is, a lot of those punk rock legends you bump into at the store. You bump into them at the beach. So you're hanging out at the same time with living legends."

However, restaurants and surf shops wouldn't let people post up punk fliers. According to Lange, these bands ended up using pieces of the city landscape to post their fliers.

"We'd have to scavenge the community to find urban billboards to get the message across," Lange said. "Because this stuff wasn't on the Internet. We didn't have access to e-mail. This was it."

The museum even features an actual newspaper stand, a parking meter, a telephone booth and a light pole. All these items are tagged with the punk-rock monikers.

A short clip of a punk rock documentary film, "Common Threads," plays in the back room and features band members from such South Bay groups as The Last, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, the Deviants and Pennywise.

Concert posters, T-shirts, photos, gold records and antique memorabilia of South Bay bands are also in the museum. The rarest antique items are the original school homework drawings of the logo for The Descendants.

Punk Art will stay in the museum until April 1 and is only open on Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. According to one of the Hermosa Beach Historical Society directors, John W. Miller, this is one of many exhibits which will show the living history of Hermosa Beach.

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