Surf ‘s Art : Santa Monica: More than 100 artists and celebrities caught a wave of charity by decorating surfboards that will be sold to help the nonprofit group Heal the Bay.

Not canvas, not clay, the medium was the surfboard, and the message was: Heal the Bay.

More than 100 artists, including Lita Albuquerque, Peter Max, William Wegman, Laddie John Dill and Joni Mitchell, were asked to create original works on surfboards to benefit the nonprofit group, dedicated to saving Santa Monica Bay.

At Monday night’s opening, surfboards of every description--luminous, ominous, sensual, whimsical, wheeled and even crucified--leaned or hung on the walls of Santa Monica’s James Corcoran Gallery.

It was an extraordinary quiver, as wave-riders call a collection of boards, and it drew more than 500 visitors, 65 of whom paid $50 for a chance to win one of the more or less functional art objects.

Like so many Westside openings, it was like a movie--a movie with a lousy plot but a really great cast.

“Is Justine here?” someone asked, alluding to actress and environmentalist Justine Bateman. Justine wasn’t there, but actor Raul Julia was, touring the exhibit with artist friend Muramasa Kudo, whose board features a beautiful swimmer, an octopus and an exhortation, in Japanese calligraphy, to clean up the seas. Julia is concerned about the oceans, he said, although he has never actually climbed atop a surfboard and ridden a wave. “Water skiing is as close as I ever got.”

With his splendid head of blond hair, actor and former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner drew almost as many stares as the startling board by Tim Smith labeled “Jesus Christ, Surfer Star.”

“He looks like a lion tamer,” one woman whispered as Gortner circled the gallery.

Surfers, artists, activists and people who were some of each converged at the opening, unified by their alarm over the worsening quality of Southern California beaches, the ones the whole world dreams about.

Long after most Westside infants had been tucked in, a few toured the gallery, riding a parental hip.

“What are these children doing up?” an observer asked.

“Art babies,” another explained.

“This is such a worthy cause,” said actor Michael Nouri, who contributed a board inspired by a Masai warrior’s shield. “When I can’t go swimming after it’s rained, in a body of water that is so beautiful, there’s something wrong. It’s a microcosm of what’s going on all over the world.”

Actor Russ Tamblyn and wife Bonnie both contributed to the show.

She is an illustrator, and her board was a tribute to her late mother, a painter. In a poignant bit of recycling, Bonnie Tamblyn used her mother’s paints to depict the goddess Gaia embracing the earth. “I got to journey again with my Mom,” she said of the project.

A star of David Lynch’s TV phenomenon, “Twin Peaks,” Russ Tamblyn said he had begun painting in earnest in 1964. Until then, he said, “I was too busy dancing.” Tamblyn said he was influenced by artists George Herms (another contributor) and the late Wallace Berman, who worked in the early ‘60s in Topanga Canyon. “I had been a Sunday painter before that. After that, every day became Sunday.”

Like the boys and girls on the beach in their Bodygloves, the artists could opt for various shapes for their boards. Tamblyn chose a symmetrical board, on which he repeated an image of an old man in a boat nursing a white-winged bird. He had seen the basic board in a book. When he discovered it was called a Lynch double-ender, he decided, “it’s definitely the one for me.”

Observer Peter McAlevey mused about the significance of the show. This wasn’t just another gathering of the pretty people, sipping gourmet water and free vodka and pretending to be fascinated by the work on the walls. McAlevey, a 30-something vice president for production with Stonebridge Entertainment, said surfing is one of the ruling metaphors of our times.

“Surfing is to our generation what the West or the frontier or outer space was to an earlier generation. It’s emblematic of the better world that could exist.”

McAlevey says he makes it a point to see the greatest surfing movie of all time--John Milius’ “Big Wednesday”--at least once a year, just as he tries to reread “The Great Gatsby” and “The Sun Also Rises.”

Even to kids in Kansas, whose perfect wave must be generated by machine, surfing speaks of freedom and individual expression, said McAlevey. Only motorcycles cast a comparable cultural spell, he speculated, and surfing has the moral advantage of representing a harmonious relationship with nature.

“These are the images that transformed our lives,” he said of the burnished iconography of the beach. He cites designer (and exhibit contributor) John Van Hamersveld’s famous Day-Glo poster for the movie, “The Endless Summer.” “That’s how you know that someone’s a good person. They have that poster in their office.”

For his part, Van Hamersveld contributed a piece that consists of a space-age surfboard pierced by a long wooden board of the kind favored by Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimmer turned actor who is credited with introducing surfing to the U.S. mainland.

“It’s the collision of 80 years of surfing,” said Van Hamersveld, a surfer-activist driven out of local waters by the proliferation of viruses. Van Hamersveld, who is in his 40s, said he has had 47 surfboards since he rode his first wave at 14.

Surfboard design is an evolutionary process, he said. “The new surfboard is always the latest thought,” he said, explaining that each board represents the surfer’s improved understanding of the science of surfing and his or her changing but durable love of the sea.

Laddie John Dill, who curated the show and whose board was sea-gray and blue, said he hopes the project will raise $1 million for Heal the Bay when the works are raffled off Dec. 1. “I’m really stunned by the quality of the boards,” he said.

Heal the Bay’s Cydney Mandel, who is chairing the project, looked around and smiled the smile of a woman who had just pulled off a very large, very complex party.

She had had to shift the opening’s venue from the Getty after the museum declined to display more than 16 boards, but gallery owner James Corcoran had come through. And the exhibit was an obvious success even though a couple of boards hadn’t arrived yet.

Jimmy Ganzer’s, for instance. Ganzer, a surfer, artist and the Jimmy of Jimmy’Z sportswear, said surfboards were a familiar medium for him. “What I usually do is put palm-frond legs on them and make a table.” His board, expected from the glassers any minute, looks like a very large bottle of Stolichnaya vodka.

“I would have done an Absolut bottle, but everybody’s done an Absolut bottle,” Ganzer observed.

Mandel confessed that her husband, Gary, will be happy when the project is finally, successfully over.

“Someone asked him if he had seen the boards,” she said. “He told her, ‘My wife is Cydney Mandel, and I’ve slept with most of these boards.”’

The surfboards will be displayed at the Corcoran gallery, 1327 5th St., Santa Monica, through Tuesday. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery will also be open Friday until 8 p.m. and Tuesday from 7 to 10 p.m. For information on the raffle, contact Heal the Bay at (213) 394-4552 or (800) HEALBAY.