VISUAL ARTS : Saying No in Escondido Helps Set Higher Standards of Innovation, Originality in Public Art

“Just saying no” may not be the panacea for youths pressured by their peers to use drugs, but it may prove a fruitful approach to selecting public art.

The phrase has haunting implications to followers of San Diego’s short history in pursuit of public art who recall with disdain the port commission’s rejection last year of two adventurous waterfront proposals. But “No” votes took on new meaning last week in Escondido, when a committee to select finalists in a public art competition turned down every proposal for one of two sites in question. Here, just saying no was not a matter of stubborn resistance to anything but the bland and traditional, as it was in the port’s case. Instead, the Escondido vote sounded an affirmative call for higher standards of innovation and originality.

“I’d rather say no and be liable for it than say yes and have someone say, ‘You did that to the city?’ ” said Sheila Muldoon, who chaired the 12-member committee, made up of Escondido city staffers, representatives of the Public Art Partnership Panel and the Felicita Foundation and guest juror Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Whether bold or simply discerning, the decision sets a direction for Escondido’s new public art program, enacted in 1987 when the city imposed a fee of one-quarter of 1% on the construction of all commercial, industrial and office projects. The commissions under discussion last week were the first to address use of the funds--now over $500,000--collected for the program. A budget of $45,000 was allocated for a work to be sited on the traffic island at the intersection of Quince and Second Street, and $35,000 was earmarked for a work at Kit Carson Park. Both competitions were open only to artists living in San Diego County.

Proposals for static and simplistic works, both abstract and representational, dominated the 55 entries, but the selection committee wisely discounted such works as unresponsive to the site and the community. Proposals for the Quince/Second Street commission were to address the theme of “demarcation” or a gateway to the city of Escondido. The three finalists do so in a vital and compelling way, one that reflects current developments in public art, according to Howard Fox.

“Over the last decade, we’ve seen a tremendous expansion of what constitutes a work of art in a public place. In the old days, it was an equestrian statue. In the 1960s, it was usually an abstract sculpture used to edify the front of an office building. You got handsome sculpture but it was used like jewelry as if to prettify an office building.

“Now, we’ve seen that art in public places can still be a memorial or it can provide a logo or a point of identity for a city or a public building, and it need not be object-oriented. Some of the most memorable works in recent years have been parks and plazas, meeting areas for the community, points where people would gather.”

Though the traffic island at the entrance to Escondido doesn’t encourage heavy pedestrian use, the finalists were sensitive to the natural landscape of the area in a way that more traditional installations of public art haven’t been. Ellen Phillips’s “Oasis” consists of 20 palm trees of varying heights growing out of conical mounds of earth edged with red brick. The “living and growing sculpture” is intended to symbolize the city’s setting as a valley hidden by surrounding mountains and to evoke a sense of Escondido’s current growth.

Art Cole’s “Through The Passes Into Town” also responds to the dramatic crown of mountains encircling the city. Its undulating tile walls are meant to echo the mountain forms. The basic shape of the “Three Windmills” proposed by Marjorie Nodelman and Katherine Stangle pays homage to the palm trees already on the site. The rotation of the windmills’ curved blades, black with broken yellow lines, relates to the surrounding street and its continuously moving traffic.

Each of the finalists will receive an honorarium of $1,000. Maquettes of their proposals are due in mid-April and a final vote will be taken on May 8.

Proposals for the Kit Carson Park site did not fare as well; none was supported for the second stage of the competition. The committee eliminated the proposals fairly quickly, judging them to be, alternately, “sterile,” “inept,” “derivative” and “clumsy.” As the choices narrowed to only a few proposals, Muldoon reminded the committee members that if none of the works met their aesthetic, maintenance and safety criteria, they could reject them all. To do otherwise, one juror said, would be like “striving to be mediocre.”

The committee members laid part of the blame for the dearth of inspiring proposals on the eclectic nature of the site itself, which already contains play areas in the shape of a giant sombrero and snake. Most members agreed that artists faced too difficult a challenge integrating a work of art with the existing structures. The Public Art Partnership Panel will review the situation and more narrowly define the site for art within the park or abandon this competition in favor of an entirely new site.

One of the keys to developing a successful program in public art, Fox said, is to identify “ambitious sites.”

“The longer I’m in this profession, the less certain I am that public art is needed everywhere. Certain sites have a central focus, a ceremonial reason or public reason to be looked at.” The intersection of Quince and Second Street has that focus, he said, but Kit Carson Park does not.