Dream On

High noon. Glenn Chase settles down for his daily nap. He closes his eyes and curls into a semi-fetal position. His couch is a monolithic stone block in the Windansea parking lot. Here be wizards amongst the standing stones. The mid-day sun shines on his long silver mane. Light glints off the whiskers of his beard. Harsh glare casts dark, sharp shadow-lines on his weathered face. Slipping into sleep, Glenn dreams his wizard dreams. The ordinary world bustles around him, but he is somewhere else. Somewhere enchanted, somewhere far away and long ago. A surf report web cam scans the parking lot and the Windansea peak from an apartment building across the street. Glenn and his stone bench are captured in the frame and streamed out into the worldwide ether to appear on computer monitors across the land. It’s true that wizards can be in many places at the same time.

Time passes. Glenn awakens. He sits up, turns to face the ocean, cracks open a beer, has a smoke, and surveys the portable outdoor studio before him: wooden easel, paints, palette, brushes, and canvas. Every morning he brings it all down, on his bicycle, from his room on the east side of La Jolla Boulevard. He makes seascape paintings of Windansea and the La Jolla coast, selling them to passers-by on the footpath that fronts the renovated parking lot. It’s a daily hustle for Glenn. Selling paintings to get cash for the basic necessities: food, smokes, and beer. He hangs till sunset, then packs it up and heads home. He’ll be back in the morning to do it again.

It’s only a few blocks from Glenn’s room to the parking lot, a minor little back and forth routine. But it was a long journey through time and space to arrive at this looping cul-de-sac. The simple life he lives today was preceded by a youth of achievement, relentless experience, and sensory overload. Glenn spent his childhood in Florida in the late 50s and early 60s. His father was a sculptor. His mother, a painter, worked as the director of the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, where the family lived. Art happened in the Chase home. Glenn’s parents guided his development as an artist, but they didn’t pressure him. He took to drawing naturally, and found inspiration in early 20th century children’s books, especially Howard Pyle’s illustrations in King Arthur and His Knights and Nancy Barnhart’s in The Wind in the Willows.

The Chase family moved to Huntington Beach, California,  in the late 60s. Glenn loved it. When he was 17 they moved to La Jolla. Glenn loved it even more. Then, at 19, he was drafted for the war in Vietnam and sent back to Florida. Deeply opposed to the conflict, Glenn dropped two hits of double-dome acid prior to his army physical, an attempt to convince the doctors that he was mentally unstable. He also claimed to be gay. This exploitation of the army’s homo-intolerance was successful and young Glenn Chase was pronounced unfit for military service. 

Spared the brutality of Vietnam, he returned to La Jolla. The psychedelic surf counterculture was in full bloom. Longhaired with freak flag a-flyin’, Glenn was free to surf and make art. He joined the tribes of psycho-activated surf-niks and surf chicks and roamed the beaches of San Diego and the rest of Southern California. Bear and Nick Mirandon of Surfboards La Jolla took notice of his surfing ability and put him on their team, along with Butch Van Artsdalen, Ricky Grigg, and Chris Prowse. He surfed mostly at La Jolla Shores and Windansea, until the Mirandons turned him on to their secret spot, a place called Blacks Beach. The primeval beauty of Blacks blew Glenn’s mind, whetting his appetite for future forays into mainland Mexico, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. “Glenn was a great surfer,” recalls Nick Mirandon, “so Bear put him on our surf team. He was an artist, too. I used to hand draw all our ‘Twin Pin’ laminates in pen and ink, by hand, and when Glenn came along he took over that job. So Glenn drew a lot of our Twin Pin logos. He had great skills with a pen, and he drew our Butch Van Artsdalen model logo, too.”  

With La Jolla as a base (and the underground economy to sustain him) Glenn set out to wander the surf-hippy trails. After scoring virgin Blacks he spent winters in Santa Barbara with Greenough and crew, tapped into idyllic Honolua (he ended up living on Maui for 20 years), Puerto Rico, Petacalco, Puerto Escondido, and the rest of the mainland Mexico. By 1971 Glenn’s surfing and art had matured. He was highly skilled at both. His passion for surfing, traveling, and art formed his identity. He pushed the limits with his surfing. Legend has it that he pulled off at least two barrel rolls (there are witnesses). 

Glenn’s persona really came together in La Jolla, at Granny’s house. Granny was Jeff Divine’s grandmother. Divine and Glenn were good friends. Glenn stayed in a cottage on Granny’s property in exchange for caretaking and gardening. Divine was already getting his photos published in Surfer. Before long the magazine brought him on as a staff photographer. It was the dawn of the 70s, a time when Surfer entered its golden era. It was bi-monthly and loaded with images of timeless surfing backed by tasty layouts, fonts, and graphic design. Subtle, restrained, and beautiful, the magazine mirrored the style, creativity, and anti-materialism of the times. With Divine working for Surfer, awareness of Glenn’s art and surfing exploits began to percolate up to the surf media in San Clemente. Glenn Chase, aspiring wizard, barrel roller, traveler, artist, and all around cosmically progressive dude, was available for hire.   

At the time, there was one contributing artist listed on the Surfer masthead: Rick Griffin. From John Severson through John Van Hamersveld, from the Ferus Gallery through Finish Fetish, surfer artists had a profound effect on underground, and later, mass popular culture. The truth and validity of their work continues to gain significance over time. Griffin is a fine example. His Jook Savage/Bill Graham/Family Dog/Berkeley Bonaparte/Zap Comix work of the mid-to-late 60s will never be duplicated. It is the visual equivalent of what Cream and Jimi Hendrix were doing with music. Griffin and his cohorts set a precedent. Theirs was a surfing culture where creative expression and originality was encouraged, nurtured, and valued. Conformity and conservatism were avoided. “Respectability” was the pitiful plight of those un-jazzed souls still gripped by the iron fist of The Man.

And so, in the prime of his youth and at the peak of his powers, Glenn happened to meet Rick Griffin at his friend (and fellow surf art wizard) Jim Evan’s house in Vista. Griffin had moved back to Southern California from San Francisco, finishing up his “Man From Utopia” comix while resuming work at Surfer. Griffin was impressed by Chases’ drawings and immediately enlisted him to create a piece for Tales from the Tube, a comix insert he was producing for Surfer. “Just do four pages” Griffin said “and send ’em in.” Glenn headed back to Granny’s, put pen to paper, and got to work.

Glenn’s inclusion in Tales From the Tube put him in the company of the heavy hitters of the underground comix world. Tales is a unique and historic piece of ephemera: a surf-themed underground comix book, illustrated by Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, Jim Evans, Glenn Chase, R. Crumb, and Bill Ogden. Surfer Publications printed the first 5,000 copies. Print Mint (the legendary underground San Francisco poster and comix publisher) printed another 20,000.  

‘Spinning liquid chamber,

green emerald room,

baptized in cosmic juice,

deep within natures womb…”

So begins “Cosmic Shangri-La,” Chase’s intergalactic pen-and-ink surf fantasy for Tales from the Tube. We are transported via UFOs to the planet of the Aqua Elves, where King Aquadau the Green shares the wonders of his realm. Unicorns are the preferred mode of ground transportation. There are no conventional surfboards. The Elves ride living “foil creatures” that are streamlined, finless, and flexible. They feast all night and surf all day. Perfect waves are everywhere. Fine-lined spindrifters, with immaculate pointillism curls, pinwheel across the pages in one of the most enticing depictions of waves ever drawn. The idyllic beach scenes are beautifully composed. Languid vines drape over lush foliage, framing dreamy tropical lineups. UFOs, unicorns, elves, foil creatures, and perfect waves…in other words, a cosmic wizard’s vision of paradise, circa 1971.

Glenn’s surfing illustrations in “Cosmic Shangri-La” are remarkable. In a series of vignettes he somehow knowingly renders what surfing would look like years into the future. It’s as if he peered into a crystal ball and drew what he saw. Tales from the Tube first appeared as an insert in the February 1972 issue of Surfer but Glenn’s illustrations look more like the kind of surfing we see on the internet in 2017. The tight, front-side wraps and carving 360s of the Elves’ morning session, the airs and deep tube riding of King Aquadau’s solo session at Rush Reef (and the Bowl of the 16 Lotus Petals) are prophecies of things to come. Arising from Glenn’s surfing experience and imagination comes a vision of what surfing could be if all limitations on performance were removed. Like a true wizard, Glenn Chase saw the future and shared it with those who could not. Some has come to pass. Some remains to be fulfilled. Dream on.

[Feature image: “My grandmother was an artist and appreciated Glenn’s world. And he really was in another world…” [Jeff Divine] Glenn Chase, 1971.]