Not a Pretty Picture for the ‘City of the Arts’ : Painters’ Session in South Coast Plaza Ends in an Unexpected Brush With Mall Security

Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love. Cleveland is the City of Lights. Los Angeles is the City of Angels.

Costa Mesa is the “City of the Arts.”

How can you tell? For one thing, it says so on just about everything the Chamber of Commerce sends out. For another, the City Council adopted it as the official slogan in 1984.

I live in Santa Ana where the official slogan, as I recall, is “the city of small-caliber firearms,” but thanks to Costa Mesa’s inspiring example, I’m going to petition my elected representatives in hopes of similarly transforming our town with a new slogan, like City of the Acutely Tasteful.

In the meantime, however, Costa Mesa seems to have the prestige image all locked up.

But don’t tell that to Esther Shaw.

Shaw lives in Costa Mesa and has a business there as an architectural illustrator. But that’s just her profession. For artistic fulfillment, she also paints--watercolors mostly. Usually she takes one morning a week and goes to the ocean or to the hills to capture landscapes on paper.

But on a recent rainy winter day, she and a friend headed instead to the great indoors, to the South Coast Plaza, where precipitation would be less likely to turn her sketches into modern-art masterpieces. (In which case she’d just have to sell them for outrageous prices and be forced to move to Newport Beach, City of the Exceedingly Well-to-Do.)

Anyway, Esther and her friend took out their sketch pads and began painting, using the mall’s carrousel as their subject. After a bit, a security guard approached the two women and told them to stop because what they were doing was not permitted.

What’s this--use an easel, go to jail? Shaw was quick to note that the guard was very polite. Nevertheless, she “was shocked. I thought he was kidding at first,” she recalled this week.

She considered it especially ironic that such a modest art endeavor evidently violated policies at a mall owned by C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, a major supporter of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the Costa Mesa Art League and dozens of other county arts groups.

So she wrote to--and received a personal reply from--Henry T. Segerstrom, managing partner of C. J. Segerstrom & Sons, Center chairman and all-around important guy. “Thank you for your sensitive letter to me regarding your frustration while painting our carrousel in South Coast Plaza,” he wrote. “While we do have strict policies controlling photographing elements of design inside the center, your experience has received the sympathetic reception of our management. . . .” Shaw also got a letter from Leah Marshall, the mall’s director of retail services.

Mall spokeswoman Maura Eggan explained that Shaw’s error was her failure to get clearance before initiating the alleged watercolor. That’s a mall requirement for anyone who wants to take photographs, do sketches or, presumably, otherwise reproduce, rebroadcast or transmit likenesses of South Coast Plaza or any portion thereof without the express written permission of the commissioner.

“We get numerous requests for photography,” Eggan said. “Persons are asked to sign a release form before they take pictures or do anything like that. Our first responsibility is to our shoppers and we don’t want people to do anything here that would impede shopping.”

But Eggan added: “I hope she’d come back. I’d like to talk with her and be able to give her the proper papers she’ll need.” An artistic visa, as it were?

Of course, it’s private property and they have the right to make any rules they like. But I never heard of anyone having to get a permit to spend his money there.

Shaw said she doesn’t doubt the sincerity of the responses she’s received, but said they didn’t soothe the concerns that the incident raised for her about the atmosphere for artists in Orange County.

“Art shouldn’t always be something austere--confined to a gallery or museum, or done by a few prominent names,” she said. “It should be all around us, and include us all. That is how I see art flourishing, and the only way that Southern California will ever be a major art center.

“If we had been in Paris or a European shopping area, would we have received the same treatment? I doubt it. Europeans encourage the arts. We would probably have been considered part of the ambiance.”

To address the philosophical issues that Shaw raised (with just a li’l ol’ watercolor; imagine if she’d tried to play some music!), I called Henry Segerstrom, who referred me to Jim Henwood, general manager of South Coast Plaza.

“Oddly enough,” Henwood said, “this is the first time this has happened in the 10 years that I have been at South Coast Plaza. Our policy,” he reiterated, “is that we will permit artists to come in for non-commercial purposes on a prearranged basis . . . as long as (their activity) does not have a negative impact on the quality of environment we create in any of our retail establishments.”

Shaw reports that Henwood called her later to offer his personal assurance that from now on she and other artists will be welcome at the mall as long as they’re not in it for commercial ends. And have their “proper papers,” of course.

Still, Shaw feels that with the burgeoning arts scene in Orange County, and especially in the City of the Arts, artists shouldn’t have to go through a bureaucracy to exercise their creative muscles.

“I’m not a big name, just a little artist here trying to do my stuff. I’m sure if I were a big name I’d have been treated differently. Like Christo (the artist whose latest project will place yellow umbrellas along 18 miles of Interstate 5). He’s going to put those umbrellas . . . on all sorts of private property. I guess this is just what we have to suffer when we’re not rich and famous.”

I’m telling you, Esther--grab your ammo and move to Santa Ana.