‘FLOATINGHOUSE’ AT UCLA IS NOT EXACTLY A HOME

You might say Peter Shelton likes to move people with art.

His latest installation, “floatinghouse DEADMAN,” opening Tuesday at UCLA’s Wight Gallery (to March 8), is a “humanly scaled” building that sways and creaks as viewers walk about inside it.

“In general, there is that possibility to move around in my work,” said Shelton by phone recently. “The viewer completes the work in that sense, and this one is alive in that it moves while you’re walking in it.”

The “floatinghouse” is a lightweight paper-and-wood edifice suspended from the gallery ceiling by cables and pulleys. The latter are attached to 14 heavy counterweights sitting on the floor surrounding the work.

“DEADMAN,” a concrete spread-eagle figure elevated onto blocks, is the main counterweight. The floor plan of the house also resembles a spread-eagle figure with the addition of a large, rounded room in its midsection and a “leg” and an “arm” serving as entrance and exit.

Shelton is known for his studies in contrast, and he said the “floatinghouse” is no exception.

“The work was originally commissioned by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. They had a rather ponderous, sort of concrete space at the gallery there, a bit like a cement basement, so my first response to that gray, dense space was to make a very light, blond blend for an ethereal wooden structure.”

“Also,” Shelton went on, “the term deadman in the construction industry means a counterweight. But I also had this idea of combining a sort of buoyant, light figure (the “floatinghouse”) and this utterly dead, inert mass (DEADMAN).”

In addition to the “DEADMAN” counterweight, other anchor forms that help balance the installation appear in the shape of a gate, a bed, a pile of steel A’s and H’s, a chest of drawers, a chair, a boat, a pair of feet, a skeleton and a model of “floatinghouse” submerged in a tank of water.

Shelton earned an undergraduate degree from Pomona College and a master of fine arts from UCLA. He received one of the County Museum of Art’s 1985 Young Talent Purchase Awards.

“Murals are a gift, they are fine, free, splendid art. And I get kind of a religious rush, to tell you the truth, when I see them,” said Debbie Engeman recently.

And when Engeman, a local writer and artist, sees them disappear, she gets angry. She is one of several Los Angeles residents to despair over the recent defacement of Kent Twitchell’s “Old Lady of the Freeway” mural.

The mural, visible since 1974 to northbound drivers on the Hollywood Freeway near downtown, was painted out by an advertising company on Nov. 30. It may be restored or repainted, though its fate is still unknown.

Among others upset by the “Freeway Lady” incident is Barbara Oberman, who works in the health-care field. “We spend so much time in our cars, and art on the freeway elevates the mundaneness of driving. We don’t have a city that has a lot of architectural or natural beauty, but art gets us out of ourselves and into another time and place. It’s almost like a sense of the eternal,” she said.

“And everything is so transitory in our lives in Los Angeles. Any feeling of permanency is eliminated to keep current with the times; we’re the trend setters. Things change so rapidly, I think partly because of the movie industry and our focus on youth. Yet we still revere older people--they represent security to us and our heritage, and a sense of belonging that we don’t have. The ‘Freeway Lady’ seemed to embody all of that. I felt a peace of mind when I drove by her. That smile--she radiated love and a sense of continuity and in life.”

Writes Heberto Guillen in a letter to The Times: “Please tell Kent Twitchell, don’t give up for us . . . for the ones who still have hope in the human being. ‘The Old Woman of the Freeway’ is still there, because she is going to be in the memory of many who, going through cold ways of cement everyday, saw always the face of the lady with her colors saying to everyone, like a mother, ‘Take care of yourself,’ or just a friendly hello.”

“Pattern and Process: Nature and Architecture in the Work of Paul Klee,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, reveals the artist’s fascination with the visible world--plant forms, human figures, animals--as well as the unseen forces which give it shape.

The exhibition (through Nov. 29) explores relationships between sources and imagery in Klee’s work, as reflected in 26 drawings, prints, oil paintings and watercolors, from 1912 to 1940.

“Pattern and Process” is third in a series of exhibitions showcasing the promised gift from Carl Djerassi, the Djerassi Art Trust and the Djerassi Foundation, which form the core of the museum’s Paul Klee Study Center.

Graphic artists, living and working in Los Angeles County, are invited to compete for the Kay Nielsen Award for outstanding graphic work.

The Graphic Arts Council of the County Museum of Art is sponsoring the honor, awarding at least $1,000 in June in the form of a purchase award.

Interested artists who have not had a solo exhibition at a major museum should submit five slides, a self-addressed, stamped envelope and a resume by March 13 to Amy Goldman, Kay Nielsen Award Committee, 4721 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles 90016.