ARTISTS LEFT HANGING AS WORKS ARE TAKEN DOWN

The abrupt demise after less than a month of “The People Corridor,” South Coast Plaza’s foray into public art, has left several of the participating artists confused and--in some cases--angry.

Fourteen Orange County professional artists were invited last July to create works with a “people” theme for display in temporary corridors connecting the mall to the new Nordstrom department store. They were to be paid a stipend of $200 to $250 to cover material costs. The corridors on the upper and lower mall levels hid construction of new storefronts and were originally scheduled to stand for several months.

Most of the works were installed Aug. 5, and a reception was held Aug. 17. Then, on Aug. 29, works by all but two of the artists (Jerry Burchfield and Almita Ranstrom) were taken down by work crews, even though the project’s prospectus stated that the artists would be responsible for removing their works. Most of the artists received no advance notice of the exhibit’s closing, and several say their works were damaged in the process of removal.

“My piece was basically wrecked,” said Jim Cokas, one of the artists involved in the exhibit. “It could easily have been avoided if they had just notified me and let me take it down.” Other artists who claim their works were damaged to varying degrees in the process of removal include Jerry Burchfield, Jim Lorigan and Janice Deloof.

Burchfield said he was called at 6 p.m. on Aug. 29, the Friday before Labor Day, and was told the corridors were going to be demolished on Tuesday and his contribution had to be removed immediately. The artist arranged to take the work down Tuesday morning.

When he arrived at the dusty, dimly lit construction area, a short section of corridor that supported his 8-by-16-foot work was all that still stood. His work had been damaged in an apparent attempt to take it down.

Burchfield has channeled his displeasure with the handling of “The People Corridor” into an eight-page letter, copies of which have been sent to South Coast Plaza officials, representatives of the Laguna Art Museum (which co-sponsored the exhibit) and local newspapers, including The Times. He and Cokas said they plan to seek monetary compensation from the mall for the damage to their works.

“There seemed to be a real communication gap from the beginning,” Burchfield said in a phone interview this week. “I’m sure it wasn’t malicious or intended, but they certainly didn’t take into consideration the inconvenience they were causing the artists they had sought out for this project.”

Cokas concurred. “It was a great idea, but it was badly mishandled. At the end, I don’t know what the hell happened. To this day, no one has even contacted us to tell us what happened. I think that could have defused a lot of this frustration.”

According to Maura Eggan, South Coast Plaza’s director of marketing, construction of the storefronts was finished well ahead of schedule, and the corridors had to be removed. “The work had to come down,” she said.

According to “The People Corridor” prospectus, sent to participating artists in early July, the exhibit would remain intact for about four months. As the project progressed, that time frame was scaled down, and at one point the artists were told that the portions of the corridors would be moved and the works reinstalled at a later date.

But the end still came sooner than expected. “It was a real surprise,” said Mike McGee, programs coordinator for the Laguna Art Museum. “I think it caught everybody off guard.” McGee was called at 10 a.m. on Aug. 29 and told that the corridors were to be demolished Tuesday and a work crew was on hand to take down the artworks. “There was no way at that point that they could have contacted all the artists,” McGee explained. Burchfield and Ranstrom were eventually notified because their works were difficult to remove due to the complexity of their installations.

Most of the artists were called the following week and told to pick up their works at the museum’s South Coast Plaza satellite facility. “We still haven’t received any explanation as to why the show was cut short,” artist Lorigan said. “There’s just a real lack of courtesy.”

Eggan said the mall has not contacted the artists because a reinstallation of the exhibit is planned, and the details have not yet been ironed out. Artists will probably be asked to reinstall their works in mid-October, and the exhibit will likely remain in place through much of December. Eggan also said the project would not have been undertaken if mall management had known it would have to be disassembled so soon after installation.

“It was an unfortunate set of circumstances. Whatever ill feelings resulted, there was never any premeditated desire to inconvenience the artists,” Eggan said. “It was hardly a typical gallery installation, and the artists involved knew that.”

Eggan said South Coast Plaza’s experience with “The People Corridor” will not deter the mall from taking on similar efforts in the future. “This was very much an experiment,” Eggan said, and she considers most of the results positive.

McGee agreed. “It was an experiment, and like all experiments there were drawbacks. If we did it again we would most definitely make some changes,” he said. “I hope the positive aspects of the project prevail. All in all, I think it was a really positive experience.”

“It’s a new venture,” artist Deloof said. “I think there were good intentions on the part of the museum and South Coast Plaza. They had just not done anything like this before. I would hope that something could be learned from this. I do think it’s important that commercial centers continue to be involved in these sorts of projects.”

Would Deloof be willing to give it another try? “I would want a clearer understanding of the duration of the exhibit,” she said. “But I still think this is the sort of risk that artists have to take if they want their work to be seen.”

Stan Lyon, owner of the Edge Gallery in Fullerton and a “People Corridor” participant, was similarly philosophical. “I’m very familiar with doing art in public places, so I knew a lot of the problems going in,” he said. “I got some publicity, I got my picture back, I got to talk to some movers and shakers (at the reception). All in all, I consider it a very entertaining experience.”