ART / Cathy Curtis : Brea Gallery’s Chief Strives Not to Incite but to Reflect ‘Whatever the City Wants’

“We are a public service.” Marie Sofi, 46-year-old coordinator of the 8-year-old Brea Gallery in the Brea Civic Cultural Center, likes to repeat that phrase.

Sofi, who is responsible to the City Council and the Brea Cultural Arts Commission, seems completely at home with the overwhelmingly traditional-oriented art shown at No. 1 Civic Center Circle--art that she says is based on “whatever the city wants.” And not just the city: Sofi says people regularly come from as far afield as Lancaster in Los Angeles County and San Diego.

Visitors who fill out the detailed “patron evaluation sheets” at the reception desk are asked how they liked the gift shop (“Merchandise, Selection and Prices”) before their comments are solicited on whichever aspect of the current exhibition most impressed them.

Western art and watercolor shows are popular in this spacious gallery adjacent to the Brea Mall, though historical and scientific exhibits still claim the biggest attendence--up to 10,000 visitors to each one.

The art displayed includes work by local people as well as by nationally known figures, Sofi says. “Nationally known” in this instance, however, means members of the National Watercolor Society.

Works are generally labeled with their prices, a practice not normally followed by commercial fine-art galleries and never by museums. Sofi says prices were requested by visitors on the evaluation sheets.

“We do it as discreetly as we can on the label,” she adds. If artists object to the practice, prices are listed on a separate sheet available at the front desk.

Controversial subject matter is hardly at issue here. “We don’t censor art here, and we have very little nude subject matter,” Sofi says.

When there are nudes, “all are done in a very artistic style--you know, dramatic lighting.”

Asked whether she has mounted any really challenging shows, Sofi mentions “George Montgomery: The Actor and his Art,” which included movie posters and the actor’s bronze sculptures, paintings and furniture.

How was that challenging? “The wide variety and diversity of the show,” she replies, “in addition to his being a celebrity.”

Announcements from the Brea Gallery are chatty and folksy, a world apart from the specialized brand of hype associated with contemporary art. “Viewers will be amazed at the handmade quilts by 100-year-old black American Esther Preston,” reads a recent press release, “who completes these beautiful works of art in only a week’s time.”

Similarly, the general informational brochure mentions such details as the gallery’s lighting system and trumpets what it calls “dramatic exhibition space.”

This approach clearly has little in common with the portion of the contemporary art world that receives serious critical attention. But the Brea Gallery’s distance from that sphere seems to be precisely the point.

Sofi stresses that visitors to the gallery “are not intimidated by the real world of art. . . . People love to bring the kids here. It’s a warm atmosphere.”

Looking through brochures on past exhibits, a visitor may be struck by the more forward-looking tone of shows that predated Sofi’s six-year tenure.

In 1980, the gallery presented “American Images: New Works by 20 Contemporary Photographers,” a show organized by Independent Curators, N.Y. that included such nationally prominent photographers as Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt and Richard Misrach.

Two years later, “Human Interest” included work by Gernot Kuehn, Ellen Lampert and Andree Tracy, artists who approach contemporary life with a contemporary outlook.

Why was this promising beginning abandoned?

Sofi answers: “A new focus was taken for the exhibitions--more of a community interest--(because of) our patrons’ evaluations and city requests.”

Nowadays, though, there is some impetus to broaden the focus again. Sandwiched between the Watercolor West exhibition and the Holiday Boutique this fall, “Second Time Around” will feature what the gallery calls “significant assemblage artists (in) a tribute to those who transform found materials into thought-provoking pieces.”

Assemblage, which involves quirky juxtapositions of castoff ordinary objects, is a product of the 1950s and ‘60s. Much of it involves sexual references and non-mainstream attitudes toward social realities; it remains to be seen whether such pieces will be judged suitable for Brea’s audience.

Sofi says the idea for the show came from “brainstorming with gallery staff.” She sees it as a way of “expanding visitors’ awareness,” because they don’t usually check “contemporary” or “mixed-media” on the evaluation sheets as their choices for future exhibits (the other possibilities on the list include ceramics, drawing, ethnic, science and historical, fibers and traditional).

The gallery operates on an annual budget of $55,000: About $30,000 comes from the city, with the remainder coming through gift shop revenues, art sales and proceeds from such special events as a chili cook-off that was held in conjunction with a show of Western art.

Most of the money goes for salaries and administrative costs. About $15,000 (including an extra grant of $5,000 from the Brea Foundation) is spent on exhibits.

The figure would be higher, but exhibit materials are often donated. For instance, for an oceanography exhibit that featured videotaped “underwater sea adventures,” rare plant life, diving apparatus and “hands-on” materials, the gallery turned to such organizations as the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Los Angeles Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Institution.

The special events, such as the chili cook-off, are valued not only for the money they raise but also because of their community outreach--which is also evident in the gallery’s educational approach. Each exhibition spawns a workshop dealing with themes in the show. And the part-time staff and corps of volunteers are primed to give tours to anyone who wants one.

Exhibition assistant Heidi Nickishen gave a recent visitor a thoughtful tour of the current exhibit, a show of multicultural work called “We Are Orange County” (which continues through Aug. 12). She took pains to pronounce the ethnic names correctly, offered useful tidbits of information and gently pushed for appreciation of a tame abstract work that might possibly be off-putting to someone looking only for a “pretty” sight.

“Instead of someone walking in and saying, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty painting,’ we explain,” Sofi says. “So we give ‘em what we want and expand their horizons.”

In that sense, the Brea Gallery is much like Irvine’s and Fullerton’s art centers. But education is a matter of degree and focus. “Expanding horizons” clearly means something very different at the Brea center than at the one in Irvine.

Unlike Dorrit Fitzgerald, curator of the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and Norman Lloyd, curator of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, Sofi lacks an academic art background and does not talk about the shows she would secretly love to do if she were granted complete freedom. In fact, her personal take on the art the center shows seems closer to that of a typical visitor than that of a curator.

But judging from enthusiastic comments on stacks and stacks of patron evaluation sheets, the public likes what it sees and could not care less that there are vast and absorbing worlds of art immensely different from what the Brea Gallery has to offer.