‘LEGEND’ AT ORANGE COAST COLLEGE : ARTWORK’S INVITATION: COME ON IN

Over the past decade, most of Los Angeles artist Lita Albuquerque’s ephemeral outdoor works have been experienced secondhand. Photographs were the medium through which most viewed her best-known pieces, such as the desert sand and rocks she dusted with powdered pigment in the late ‘70s, and the red chevron she dyed in the grass surrounding the Washington Monument in 1980.

In a permanent $30,000 piece called “Legend”--to be unveiled Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. on a one-acre site fronting Orange Coast College on Fairview Road--Albuquerque invites viewers to actively participate rather than be mere spectators.

She’s challenging them to travel to the bottom of a cement spiral 50 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep. Once there, Albuquerque hopes the peaceful atmosphere will prompt viewers to become aware of themselves and their place in the environment--a concern that has dominated her oeuvre (which includes painting, installations and performance art).

In an interview, Albuquerque, 40, explained her intentions for the college’s “site-specific environmental work” staged in conjunction with Costa Mesa’s Arts Month:

“I want to join two planes together. One, of daily existence, achieved by walking down the spiral, and the other in the context of larger celestial movements--the awareness that would be experienced by lying down and looking at the sky. The piece is not as visual as it is experiential, since when you walk down to the end of the spiral you are confronted with yourself.”

Edward R. Baker, dean of the college’s fine arts division, who helped secure the National Endowment for the Arts grant that partially funded the project, said the piece provides a “place for solitude, for contemplation.” Because of the piece, located on the campus between the Administration Building and the Peterson Gymnasium, Baker says the school “virtually has a park.”

In creating “Legend,” her largest permanent outdoor project to date, Albuquerque has given a metaphorical poem she wrote about traveling down a spiral to a golden mirror a physical counterpart.

The poem is engraved in copper on a cement slab that lies between two 10 1/2-foot cement columns that mark the entrance to the piece. Beds of bougainvillea and a circle of eucalyptus trees create a path to the spiral. The spiral’s grass ramp leads to a small bowl where a 20-foot cement column stands. The column is capped by a reflective copper oval that Albuquerque says represents “the mirror,” a frequent image Albuquerque employs in her art.

“Looking in the mirror is the key to your own center and to your own time,” she said. “Going down the spiral to find the mirror is going down to the center of yourself. The mirror also reflects the world as it is right now.

“Most people will go there and say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing here,’ and walk back up. Others will take it one step further and say ‘ I’m here,’ and start listening to themselves in the context of the environment. The mirror is a metaphor for that experience.”

The college was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Art in Public Places matching grant in 1983 to construct the work. Since that time, Baker says the college has raised $12,000 through private donations and fund raising, and anticipates raising the rest of the $3,000 needed to match the National Endowment for the Arts grant by the end of the year.

“Legend” was in the planning stages for almost two years before construction began in June, 1985. It was to be completed three months later, but, according to Baker, “natural, unexpected delays” such as bad weather and scheduling conflicts with subcontractors hired to build the work, caused construction to drag on for more than a year.

Born in Santa Monica to a Tunisian mother and Turkish father, Albuquerque spent most of her childhood in Tunisia and Paris. She moved back to Los Angeles when she was 13, and earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art from UCLA in 1968. She is currently exhibiting at the Saxon-Lee Gallery in Los Angeles and the Works Gallery in Long Beach. Over the past 12 years, she has exhibited at Washington’s Hirshorn Museum, San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and the Newport Harbor Art Museum.