Scripps Clinic May Have Prescription for the Port

You can almost hear the cries of public outrage should the San Diego Unified Port District consider installing William Tucker’s 13-foot-high cast bronze sculpture, “Okeanos,” on port lands.

Called “a work of astonishing power and distinction” by Robert Hughes in Time magazine, “Okeanos” resembles--well, you name it--a formless creature, a wave, or various bodily organs. It’s a much more demanding artwork than the two pieces that the port’s late arts advisory committee recommended in June and which the port commissioners depth-charged.

However, the port isn’t considering “Okeanos.” The sculpture was recently placed on the grounds of a hospital, the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla. Maybe the sculpture’s resemblance to organs makes it a natural for Scripps.

“Okeanos” has been the butt of jokes and the source of loathing from the day it was erected last month. But, ultimately, it is only one piece in Scripps’ growing collection of contemporary art that includes Sol LeWitt’s pastel silk-screen, “Lines in Color on Color to Points on a Grid,” and a photorealistic painting from Kyoko Asano’s “Moonstone Beach Series.”

But the willingness of Scripps to risk purchasing “Okeanos” speaks to the port, where a lot of tides have washed the San Diego Harbor beaches since the port shelved its public arts program four months ago. In frustration, the Port District’s arts advisory committee resigned en masse when the commissioners refused to approve contest-winning sculptures by Vito Acconci and Roberto Salas in June.

With $1.6 million in the bank, the Port District’s art fund could be a potent force on the local arts scene.

“Its obvious the port commissioners want to do something for the people of San Diego,” said Raymond Burk, the current chairman of the Port Commission. “I hope they realize we’re not dead on the vine. There’s thinking going on.”

Burk, who represents Coronado on the panel, said he expects to place the arts program on the agenda for discussion in one or two months. But rather than a public hearing, he prefers to have the public hear the commissioners discuss the program.

Commissioner William Rick of San Diego echoed Burk’s belief that the commission has been unable so far to do a good job with the public art program.

“I guess we managed to irritate everybody on the arts scene,” said Rick, a long-time commissioner. “I, as chairman, pretty much beat my brains out over it.”

The port commissioners, in planning to give art another chance, should take a cruise to Scripps Clinic, check out “Okeanos.” Maybe they’ll adopt a new motto, something like, “Fear No Art.”

Produced by artists David Avalos, Louis Hock and Elizabeth Sisco, the advertising posters were emblazoned with “Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation” and appeared on the backs of 100 San Diego Transit buses during the 30 days leading up to Super Bowl XXII.

The posters touched off a local controversy, drawing the displeasure of city officials and attracting national and international attention with their socially oriented message about the way the tourist industry exploits illegal aliens.

The bus posters were just one of dozens of projects in the city’s most innovative program to fund San Diego’s individual artists and small arts organizations. Administered by COMBO (the Combined Arts and Education Council of San Diego County), the National Endowment for the Arts program pumped $450,000 into the arts in the form of 116 individual projects and 40 artists’ fellowships over three years.

The city matched a $150,000 grant from the NEA, two-to-one with $300,000 during the period of the grant. Due to the internal reorganization of COMBO and regular criticisms of COMBO in the press during the period of the NEA local arts test program, it received little publicity.

But the program had some impressive fallout.

“We have improved the quality of grants writing by providing grants-writing workshops (over the past three years),” said Michael Lyon, project director for COMBO. “The overall quality of the proposals has steadily improved in the three years of granting.”

One of the major projects funded by the program was a Spanish language arts hot line that has since been taken over by the Centro Cultural de la Raza. The program’s “bricks and mortar” centerpiece was the establishment of the Arts Tix booth to provide discount day-of-performance tickets to cultural events. Run by the San Diego Theatre League for the past 119 weeks, Arts Tix has sold more than 54,000 tickets for about 70 arts groups and returned more than $640,000 to participating organizations.

The NEA-COMBO program, which just funded its last series of 42 projects and 12 artist fellowships, funded a number of projects that will probably continue after its demise. It helped underwrite a series of signed theater performances at local theaters for hearing impaired audiences, an adopt-a-school program by the Combined Organization of Visual Artists and an arts in correctional facilities theater program for inmates.

The city’s Commission for Arts and Culture may also benefit from the program by taking advantage of its successful peer panel process for evaluating applications.

One hopes the commission will develop a similar kind of program. With the exception of the NEA grant, COMBO does not fund individual musicians, actors, artists or dancers.