100 years in art

Two local arts facilities are debuting shows to celebrate Huntington Beach’s centennial year.

Artist Bill Anderson’s eponymous Sunset Beach gallery is featuring highlights from several decades of painting and sketching local scenes.

At the Huntington Beach Art Center, historic artifacts take center stage in a collection that includes space rocket models and fragments of nearly forgotten history.

A local muse

For his exhibition at Anderson Art Gallery, Bill Anderson has selected his portrayals of the pier, the Golden Bear, the Newland House and other landmarks from 1965 to the present.

“I’ve done hundreds of drawings of Huntington,” Anderson said.

He also produced a series of linoleum block prints in the 1970s that continues to draw buyers.

Anderson said his work emphasizes the changes the area has undergone; in one work, early bungalows sit alongside an anonymous stucco building, but surfers walking by could have come from any decade.

His earliest works — moody, gray landscapes with oil derricks — gave way to vibrantly colored beach scenes in which the shadows are painted in warm tones, and the sunlight is even warmer.

Anderson is a longtime area fixture, having served in leadership roles on the Allied Arts Board and now-defunct Arts Associates.