Roadside ‘Muralscape’ Is Still in Gear but Regulatory Officials May Ditch It

Last December, Jerry Burchfield and Mark Chamberlain made a “garbological study” of Laguna Canyon Road, collecting trash along its winding, eight-mile length and then photographing their finds.

Earlier, in September, 1983, they had “painted the canyon,” traveling the road with a police escort and 64 volunteers on a flatbed truck with a camera and colored lights to illuminate the passing scenery. Stopping every 45 seconds, they took a series of photographs from which they created a single, scroll-like picture of cows, trees and roadside brush that is 516 feet long.

Now the two Laguna Beach artists have a new project, a $200,000 “muralscape” that would be eight feet high and 300 feet long, consisting of huge photographs of the canyon to be placed along both sides of the road.

This “corridor” of photographs, planned for the summer of 1989 to coincide with Orange County’s centennial celebration, would be the largest photographic mural ever made and the most complex piece in their 10-year work, “The Laguna Canyon Project--The Continuous Project.”

By offering an image of the rustic canyon to people driving through it, the murals would “jog the mind,” Burchfield said, forcing travelers to consider “a surrogate landscape, a surrogate reality.”

But last week, another reality intruded on the project.

Last Sunday night, within sight of the proposed muralscape, three people were killed and a fourth was critically injured when a speeding car swerved into oncoming traffic north of El Toro Road. It was the latest in a string of accidents along Laguna Canyon Road, where more than 30 people have been killed in 10 years.

And last Tuesday, the Laguna Beach City Council refused to approve the project, calling the location unsafe and suggesting it should be moved--perhaps to a former city parking lot near the road, in an area called Sycamore Hills.

If the murals are to be built at all, they should be placed “a ways off the road,” Mayor Neil Fitzpatrick said after the meeting. His concern is that it could distract drivers. “I don’t want them (drivers) studying it as they go by,” he said. “But if you know it’s (in a side area), it would be no worse than having a drinking fountain over there.”

But Burchfield and Chamberlain have planned a project with considerably more presence than a drinking fountain.

“If we wind up being shunted off the road into a nonexistent space . . . a cul de sac where the only visitors will be coyotes and people with shotguns, we’ve lost,” Burchfield said. “But that will make an interesting comment about the state of art in Laguna Beach.”

Leah Vasquez, chairwoman of the city Art Commission, agreed. She called the council’s action “capricious.”

“Someone sees a great piece of sculpture and crashes?” Vasquez said. “But what about a girl in a mini skirt? What about the driver’s responsibility?”

For now, the artists say they will try to meet the city’s demands.

Other Approvals Needed

And city approval is just the first step in a two-year process. Over that time, they also must secure approval from the Orange County Centennial Commission, the California Department of Transportation and possibly also the major private landowner along the road, the Irvine Co.

Because of the bureaucracy their art entails, Burchfield and Chamberlain sometimes compare themselves to Christo, the artist who draped Marin County with yards of nylon to create the “Running Fence.” But unlike Christo, who secured landowners’ permission and government approvals for his work, they don’t consider the laborious permit process part of their art. “For us, the consenting process is the worst part of it,” Chamberlain said.

Burchfield, 39, and Chamberlain, 45, are serious about their art. Both are part-time photography lecturers at local colleges. They are also partners in BC Space Gallery and Photographic Art Service in downtown Laguna.

But Laguna Canyon Road and their photographic study of it have consumed their lives for the last 7 1/2 years. They admit they are in love with all eight miles of its asphalt roadbed, from the San Diego Freeway to the sea.

Chamberlain spoke of feeling a “subtle form of communion” with the road. Burchfield agreed and quoted a former Laguna Beach mayor who compared driving the road to having a cocktail after work: “It was this soothing, tranquilizing experience.”