ARTIST FINDS A PLACE FOR HIS WHALES

The first time that Laguna Beach marine life artist Robert Wyland approached officials in that beachside community for permission to turn a blank wall into a huge mural featuring California gray whales, he sparked a battle that took him nearly a year to win.

But 5 1/2 years and 11 “whaling wall” murals later, Wyland (who uses only his surname) found that instead of a controversy, his latest whaling wall in Laguna Canyon was greeted with a proclamation from the city.

Wyland unveiled “Whaling Wall XII,” titled “Laguna Coast,” on Saturday, a 22-by-24-foot portrait of a California gray whale exhibiting the behavior called “spyhopping,” or propelling its head vertically out of the ocean.

“I was expecting there might be some problems with the city, but it turned out my hearing for the new wall was scheduled on the same night that the council was giving me a proclamation,” Wyland said. In the proclamation, presented on Dec. 2, the city cited his popular whaling walls in the United States and Canada and also expressed approval for his plan for another mural in Laguna, this one decorating a wall outside Wyland’s art studio and gallery beside Laguna Canyon Road.

“I was kind of surprised. I asked, ‘Is that all there is to it? Can I go home now?’ ” Wyland said.

Joining the 31-year-old artist at a ribbon-cutting was Laguna Beach Mayor Pro Tem Dan Kenney, who as a member of the city’s design review board in 1981 cast the deciding vote in Wyland’s favor for his original whaling wall, adjacent to South Coast Highway. .

“In reflecting, now it seems kind of silly to think there was any controversy at all,” Kenney told an audience consisting of about a dozen of Wyland’s friends and family. “But what he was proposing had never been done before.”

The “Laguna Coast” mural, Wyland said, “hopefully will be a reminder to people as they leave Laguna Beach about the city’s commitment to environmental concerns and preservation of our coastline--in fact, all coastlines.” The mural is similar to one he painted in 1984 at Marineland and whose future is in question since it was announced that the marine life theme park will close to the public on March 1.

Wyland has projected a series of 100 such murals in cities around the world. To date, he has completed projects in Laguna Beach, Dana Point, Honolulu, Seattle and at Marineland in Palos Verdes and Sea World in Orlando, Fla. In Canada, Wyland has painted murals in Vancouver and White Rock and plans to begin work in June on another whaling wall in Victoria that will depict the individual members of an actual pod of killer whales undergoing study by whale researchers there.

His largest whaling wall is in Honolulu and is 300 feet long by 20 stories high. That project was completed in 1985 after support from the public and state Senate overcame protests from Waikiki civic groups.

Wyland said he is still pursuing plans that may generate his greatest controversy yet in attempting to paint a whaling wall in Japan featuring sperm whales, the species still being commercially hunted despite international protests.

“The Japanese people have shown a lot of interest in the whaling wall in Honolulu,” he said. “Doing one in Japan would give a lot of people their first opportunity to see a sperm whale that’s not on a dinner plate.”