The Art of Beach Life : It’s a Surfer’s Dream: Lifeguard/Artist Jerry Cibilic Lives at San Onofre

For Jerry Cibilic, home is the Trestles lifeguard tower with a view of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant.

“Look out at my front yard,” Cibilic said, pointing to a panorama of the brushy hillsides of Camp Pendleton to the south, the uncrowded San Onofre State Beach in front and the onetime Western White House to the north in San Clemente.

At night, he sacks out in a rickety ’67 Dodge van, where he carries necessities such as extra clothes and a typewriter. As part-time caretaker of the two-story tower, he uses its shower, bathroom and kitchen.

It’s an eccentric lifestyle, which takes another twist when summer ends and the UC Santa Barbara art graduate heads to Italy, where he has studied under Italian conceptualists Mario Merz and others since 1982.

Cibilic, 37, a painter and sculptor, has work on display at the Laguna Art Museum and in Los Angeles County. Bolton Colburn, the curator of collections, said the museum collects work both from California artists who have promising careers and those “whose work we feel is strong. And he falls in that category.”

When he’s not working as a lifeguard, Cibilic roams the sandy beaches looking for discarded objects that can be fashioned into art in the tower’s downstairs area, which doubles as a studio. Sometimes, inspiration continues long into the night and is broken only by a midnight swim or surf session.

Cibilic has always enjoyed a relationship with water. Born in Campbell near San Jose, he swam competitively in high school until he turned 16 and got his driver’s license. His new mobility took him onto Highway 17 over to Santa Cruz, where he learned to surf in the chilly and dangerous Northern California ocean.

“That’s when I started to learn about the coast and beautiful scenery,” he said. Often, he would surf alone at beaches known for surfing but also for sharks.

Seasons later, Cibilic is still beach-bound. His heart is at Trestles, although this year he also works at Redondo Beach because Los Angeles County has turned to the state for lifeguard services.

“You know, I’ve been a lifeguard now for 19 summers, and I’ve been coming here to Trestles headquarters for more than a dozen years. Wherever I go in the summer, whether it’s up to Redondo Beach to work or wherever, I like to come back here. It’s Trestles. Home.”

It became home just after the two-story tower was finished.

“They asked me if I could watch the place for them just after the building was built,” Cibilic said. “In fact, the night the contractor signed it over to the state in 1982, someone broke the door down and my supervisor, Steve Long, was nervous that once the state put in electronics and other communication equipment, they would be gone. He asked if it would put me out. Hey, I wasn’t put out. I thought it was a great deal!”

The same year, he traveled to Italy for the first time.

“It was a time when I lost my home, my girlfriend and my best friend, who took her from me, all in one shot,” he said.

A university professor who had heard that the artist Merz needed an assistant in Turin contacted him. Cibilic bought a plane ticket to Italy with a layover in New York. But weeks before his departure, Merz’s studio called and retracted the offer.

“I had sent them a letter asking for information about where I was going to live and a salary,” he said. “They told me my letter was ‘too complicated’ and pulled the offer.

“I ended up going to New York City anyway, where I stayed a few months,” Cibilic said, “and then realized that since I had this ticket to Europe, and since I was fresh out of college, I said ‘Why not?’ ”

In Europe, where he lives nine months of the year, he met other artists, also young and struggling, and cemented friendships that remain.

“As for Merz, I later met him there in Turin and have spent many a night drinking bottles of wine with him, and we’ve developed a friendship.”

Cibilic wanted to pursue sculpture, in both metal and resin, which is used in manufacturing surfboards.

“Resin, of course, was something I fell into because I was surfing. But I enjoyed geometric objects and I was interested in light and liked to document how the sun shone through these sculpture materials.”

As an artist, Cibilic also developed his fascination with ham radios and electromagnetic waves. One of his works, made of telephone poles and wire coil, essentially acts as a primitive radio, but it’s 15 feet high and has no power source.

People put on a headset and listen to whatever is out there: words, music, popping noises and even lightning, which, after bouncing off the Earth, emits a whistling sound, Cibilic says. “The art I’m interested in is all about waves and energy,” he said. “I believe my radios are a sensorial finger for the invisible.”

One of his radios is displayed off the side of a road near Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles County. A painting, titled “Hurricane” because of the rust-colored swirl similar to a storm, is part of the permanent collection at the Laguna Art Museum.

Curator Colburn said the “most common theme that Cibilic refers to in his work is naturally occurring events, like hurricanes. Because he is a surfer, it’s kind of a thing with him, if not consciously. I think at least he has a heavy-duty reference in his works to nature.”

Most of Cibilic’s art is simple.

“I use a circular saw blade, put some nails around it and dot it with saffron. Then I get a bucket of saltwater from the ocean, add more salt and pour it on. When it’s dry, the blade and nails are removed and the piece is called ‘Rust.’ ”

For Cibilic, part of the adventure is enjoying what he does. Since being featured in a national surfing magazine recently, he has received phone calls from people interested in buying his art.

“But any artist who gets into it with the idea that it’s only to make money isn’t doing it for the right reason,” he said.

“Look at this place here. I get to see one of the best surfing breaks in California. I love it here.”