‘Skypoem’ to Be Visible Over Santa Monica

“Skypoem,” an aerial work by performance artist and poet David Antin, will be visible over Santa Monica Bay at 2 p.m. Saturday as part of a series of public art events sponsored by the Santa Monica Arts Commission.

The 18-minute spectacle featuring five skywriting airplanes will be funded by the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the city of Santa Monica.

The show is one of several events being held to encourage public appreciation of poetry and the arts, said Henry Korn, executive director of SMARTS, a partnership between the publicly supported Santa Monica Arts Commission and the private, nonprofit Santa Monica Arts Foundation.

Other events include a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. May 28 to celebrate the installation of a sculpture by Phillip Augerson at Colorado Place, an office and restaurant complex in Santa Monica. Jazz will be provided by musicians Max Bennett and Freeway.

At 5 p.m. May 30, the first permanent sculpture will be installed in SMART’s Natural Elements Sculpture Park, which eventually will feature 10 works along a three-mile stretch of beach from Ocean Park to Pacific Palisades. The inaugural work, “Singing Beach Chairs,” is by environmental artist Douglas Hollis. The sculpture is composed of two futuristic high-rise beach chairs made of stainless steel tubes that produce melodic organ-like sounds in the wind. Other projects sponsored by the arts consortium include “Poetry on the Buses,” in which short verses by contemporary poets are posted in the advertising space on city buses.