Palm Desert Sculpture School to Cast Bronze Copy of Junipero Serra Statue

A $17,000 bid from a Palm Desert sculpture school to cast a bronze replica of Ventura’s crumbling statue of Father Junipero Serra has been accepted by the Ventura City Council.

Students from the California Sculpture Center estimated that it will take them about eight months to complete the 9-foot, 4-inch bronze statue, whose dimensions will be taken from a wooden replica that a team of volunteers has been carving in a downtown Ventura studio for more than a year.

The wooden version, which is expected to be completed next month, will later be displayed in the new City Hall atrium. The bronze statue will be mounted on a black granite base on the small traffic island in front of City Hall.

And the 52-year-old concrete figure of Serra that stands there now will probably be donated to the county Historical Society Museum or the San Buenaventura Mission, which the Spanish missionary founded in 1782.

Built by John Palo-Kangas, a Finnish-born sculptor from Meiners Oaks, the statue’s sand-and-gravel aggregate has been affected by impurities from Ventura’s sea air, causing it to crack on the outside and crumble from within.

Under the leadership of then-Councilman Russ Burns, the City Council voted in late 1986 to lend $15,000 toward the replacement effort until a fund-raising campaign could generate enough money to support the project.

Burns said the restoration committee has so far raised about $20,000--enough to pay for the bronze casting--but hopes to raise another $30,000 to $50,000 to repay the city and cover the costs of preserving the original statue.

The California Sculpture Center, which is part of the state community college system, submitted the lowest of four bids, which ran as high as $110,000 for the job.