Cher Pendarvis
by Cher Pendarvis
“Living in Honolulu in the 1950s was beautiful and sweet, a highlight of my young life, and this is where I first saw surfing. I was mesmerized by the grace of the surfers as they glided toward shore singly or sharing waves together. My Mom and I enjoyed playing in the waves.”
Often, I mustered up courage to ask to borrow boards when people were finished surfing. I learned to surf on my own by watching others. Riding waves was a dream come true as I had longed to surf for years. I began borrowing boards in 1964. My parents were against me surfing, and so I had to find my own way to the beach. Then, in the summer of 1965, I worked at a surf shop—repairing surfboards—and earned $45 to pay for an old 9’7″ that had been broken in half and repaired. This board weighed about 30 pounds, and I walked about three miles to the beach carrying it in all kinds of weather,” Cher remembers.
Based in San Diego, Cher explored the California coast, mainland Mexico and Baja California. In the early 1970’s, and over many years thereafter, Cher pioneered and surfed nearly every remote point in Baja California, except Mag Bay, which she attempted twice.
After graduating college, Cher became the first female staff member at Surfing Magazine, where she worked as an Art Associate from 1975–1978. Cher enjoys combining her art with surfing—painting on paper, canvas, digital painting, and on surfboards, as well as photography and video. Travels to paint and surf have taken her throughout California, the East Coast, Mexico, Hawaii, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Current projects include a series of paintings of waves.
Cher has designed, shaped and glassed boards, foiled fins, and been one of the first surfers to ride a Fish. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when so much creativity was going on with surfing and board-building in Point Loma and Ocean Beach (San Diego, California), Cher was an artist in college, and built surfboards to work her way through school. Later, in 1974 she met Mike Casey, the head shaper at Channin Surfboards. He appreciated her surfing and passion for surfboard design, and recommended her to for the Channin Surf Team. She was the only woman on the team and at the surfboard factory. At Channin, she designed and drew logos for the company brands, and also created surfboard and fin designs. For the Channin logo, she designed it using pencils and paper, and then hand-lettered the logo using french curves and ink pens. This logo was used as the primary logo for the Channin brand for many years.
On the competitive side, Cher was a founding member of Women’s International Surfing Association (WISA). A few of Cher’s highlights are winning 10th place in the Hang Ten Women’s Pro, the first women’s professional surf contest in 1975, at Malibu; 1st place at the Del Mar Championships in 1979 and 1980 (including a combined men and women’s division); 5th place in the Nissan Pro-Am longboard event in Solana Beach in 1985; 2nd place in the Pro Masters at Churches (San Clemente) in 1997; and 2nd place in the Women’s Masters at the WOW (Women on Waves) event at Malibu in 2000. In the last two events listed, Cher rode her beloved Fishes.
Cher’s husband Steve Pendarvis is an innovative surfboard builder (Pendoflex surfboards) and she enjoys helping him, and often paints his boards. They enjoy discussing surfboard design, fin templates and other design ideas. With a love of history and memories of different eras, she loves to ride all kinds of boards, from smaller fishes to longer boards.
Passionate about the history and people of our beautiful surfing community, Cher has made surfing history presentations for the Ocean Beach Historical Society and contributed to projects with the California Surfing Museum, the San Diego Maritime Museum and the Surfing Heritage Foundation and Culture Center.
Cher is a contributing writer with the Surfer’s Journal. The features she has written and organized include interviews and profiles of inspiring friends and mentors who are dear to her heart, including Dr. Walter Munk, Where the Swell Begins; Valentine Ching, Jr., Uncle Val, The Living link to Surfing’s High-performance Roots; and Stevie Lis, Home Grown, Steve Lis and His Fish.
She enjoys combining surfing with her arts, and her love of surfing’s pure joy keeps her in the lineups at Sunset Cliffs. She is thankful to have surfing in her life and believes that every wave that we ride is a gift and a prayer.
In 2012, Cher Pendarvis was honored to have her surfboard and story included in the spectacular California’s Designing Women exhibition at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, during which she received the 2012 Henry Award for a surfboard that she had designed in the late 1970s. It had taken years for the curator at the Museum of California Design to assemble the show, as he searched for women designers in various areas of design from furniture, to ceramics, clothing, graphic arts and more. Cher’s surfboard was the only surfboard featured in the show. Cher is grateful to the kind folks at the Surfing Heritage Foundation for referring her to the curator when he asked about early women shapers and surfboard builders.
“I am an artist who loves the sound of the sea, the motion of the waves along the shoreline, and all of the characters in and around the ocean. We have a wonderful family-ohana,” Cher says.
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© Cher Pendarvis 2014
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