DRAWINGS SUB FOR ‘SITE’ SCULPTURES

“Site specific” sculptures by their nature make special demands on museum resources. Related to architecture, landscape architecture and engineering projects (bridges, for example), they customarily require outdoor locations and building materials for their realization.

Museums have frequently resorted to the use of photographs and models to exhibit such environmental works, either finished or proposed.

Visitors to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art will recall its exhibitions, not long ago, of Seattle’s public art and Robert Smithson’s earth projects.

On Saturday, the museum will open an exhibition of works by four outstanding artists who make large-scale environmental pieces.

To obviate the problems associated with such works in this exhibition, entitled “Sitings: Aycock, Fleischner, Miss, Trakas,” the museum has elected to use drawings by the four sculptors rather than photographs, slides and models.

The artists, some of whose works have already been seen in the community, generally work in urban areas, altering neutral places so that they acquire a character of specificity. This is the first time that the four artists--Alice Aycock, Richard Fleischner, Mary Miss and George Trakas, roughly contemporaries who began their mature work in the 1970s--have been united in one exhibition.

Museum director Hugh Davies and senior curator Ronald Onorato, who conceived the exhibition about a decade ago and have worked on it intermittently since then, take special pride in being the first to use the artists’ drawings--a total of 51--in an exhibition to convey the artists’ intentions. Davies and Onorato feel that the drawings, ranging in size from a foot square to eight feet square, and in a variety of media including charcoal, pastels, ink, pencil and watercolors, will effectively introduce visitors to the artists’ concerns. Some of the drawings relate to constructed or proposed works. Others are exercises. Some are detailed renderings. Others are rough sketches.

By using drawings, which are in themselves autonomous works of art, Davies and Onorato seek to emphasize the conceptual stage of the creative process and engage visitors in it. In addition to the drawings, there will be a wood and metal sculpture constructed by Aycock using prefabricated parts shipped here. The work, made especially for this installation, will reflect the influences of Near Eastern architecture, illuminated manuscripts and game board patterns.

As the exhibition of drawings travels, Miss will build a sculpture for the Dallas Museum of Art and Fleischner will build one for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

A completed architectural work by Fleischner is available to visitors on the UC San Diego campus. A work by Miss, a trail with a seating area, is now being constructed on the north side of the San Diego State University campus.

And, coincidentally, Trakas is now building a major work on the southwest corner of the La Jolla museum’s property, on the site from which a Peter Voulkos bronze sculpture mysteriously disappeared some years ago.

Trakas’ intent, through the piece called “Pacific Union,” is to mitigate the effect of the museum’s vast, austere western facade and integrate the structure into the total environment.

Trakas, who specializes in creating accesses into neglected and abandoned urban sites, is working near the blighted service entrance of the museum, using painted steel, wood, granite slabs, concrete, plants (including four tall palms) and other materials to cover such eyesores as dumpsters and the air-conditioning machinery.

Upon first visiting the site, Trakas asked himself, “Why the hell isn’t this accessible?” And he resolved to create a number of viewing places to encourage visitors to use it. Working alone but with occasional assistance, Trakas plans to finish “Pacific Union” by the end of April. As he excavated the site, he discovered features from the original Ellen Scripps home, the plumbing for an old lathe house and an old stone wall, for example, which he has integrated into his own work. In conjunction with the exhibition, “Sitings: A Symposium on Public and Sited Art” will take place in Sherwood Auditorium from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. After a slide show and lecture on environmental art by critic Jeff Kelley, Aycock, Fleischner, Miss and Trakas will join Davies, Onorato and Mary Livingston Beebe, director of the Stuart Sculpture Collection at UCSD, in a panel discussion.

Onorato will lead a field visit at 10 a.m. April 12 to the UCSD Stuart Collection, beginning at the Niki de St. Phalle “Sun God” sculpture on the campus.

Davies will discuss public art issues, with particular reference to San Diego, in the museum’s Coast Room from 10 to to 11:30 a.m. April 19. Art historian Sally Yard will discuss works by Aycock, Fleischner, Miss, Trakas and others in the Coast Room at the same hour April 26.

An illustrated catalogue with essays by Hugh Davies, Ronald Onorato and Sally Yard accompanies the exhibition, which will continue through May 25.