Saturday in the Park With Art

Amateur and professional artists--

exactly 1,317 of them--answered a call for entries to the “All-City Art Open,” a massive free-for-all exhibition that opens today at the Municipal Art Gallery. They came to Barnsdall Park this week with babies, dogs and as many artworks as can be stuffed into the spacious gallery.

“We’ll have to put up some temporary walls, but hopefully we can accommodate all the works submitted,” said Muni curator Marie de Alcuaz, surrounded by stacks of art.

The show, open to all Southern California artists 18 or older, attracted entries from as far as San Luis Obispo and San Diego. Though the fact seems lost on most of the artists at the Muni, they have revived a tradition that has been dead for 11 years. This year’s exhibition (through July 9) is the first “All-City” show sponsored by the city since 1978.

The revival may be short-lived, however. “I don’t know if it will continue,” gallery director Edward Leffingwell said. “What we would really like to do is start a biennial exhibition in cooperation with other institutions in Southern California. But a lot of artists expressed interest in having an open exhibition. I wanted to take a look at it and see if it would go.”

A new board of directors, now being formed at the Muni, will help Leffingwell decide on the future of the populist show, he said.

While the city gallery’s program generally consists of professionally curated or juried exhibitions, “we have a responsibility to be inclusive as well as selective,” said Aldolfo V. (Al) Nodal, director of the Cultural Affairs Department. “But this is not the first step to opening the venue to everything. That is not the idea. It is just one of the ways that we can include a lot of people.

“The bottom line is that we want to get people to remember Muni. Years ago it was a primary exhibition space, but it has been eclipsed by other institutions,” Nodal said.

Among the pieces to be displayed is “Cardinal Law,” a sculpture composed of Gothic arches around a box of condoms. This work by an Otis/Parsons student who calls herself Porchia was inspired by a Catholic leader who banned an educational film about AIDS because it included information about condoms, the artist said.

William Roper, a young man with no formal art training, also made what he termed a “comment on religion” in a small satirical painting called “Hocus Pocus.”

Carol Colin, a longtime painter and former gallery owner, patiently stood in line for an hour to submit an oil landscape depicting a lake in northern Italy.

Michael Smith, who became an artist after directing Caltech’s now-defunct Baxter Art Gallery, arrived on the scene with an artwork on a leash, called “Grounder.” The finely crafted piece, with a framed tennis ball mounted on wheels like a tiny wagon, is typical of Smith’s attempts to “balance the serious and the absurd,” he said.

Except for some of the art’s timely themes, the scene at the Muni could be a flashback to 15 or 20 years ago. Asked if the exhibition was a backward step, Nodal said, “This is not a thing of the past. If anything it’s a thing of the future.” Philadelphia and San Francisco are among cities that sponsor similar festivals, he said.

“I can appreciate that it might sound like a provincial notion, but I think the problems of regionalism and provincialism are coming from here, not elsewhere,” Leffingwell said. “The world isn’t keeping score on what we think and what we do. I’m resolutely not interested in the notion of Los Angeles as a regional art center.”

However, Leffingwell is interested in what he calls “the history of exhibitions in this area.” “It’s important for Los Angeles to be aware of the richness of its traditions,” he said, citing the history of the open exhibition, formerly called the “All-City Art Festival.”

That history, as documented by The Times, is rather patchy and peripatetic. An “All-City Art Festival” in 1948 at the Greek Theatre was reportedly the fourth such annual event and it continued at that location through 1952. Records indicate that these were juried affairs, pared down to 171 from 2,000 entries in 1951, for example. In those days the show attracted some of the city’s top artists, including Helen Lundeberg, Lorser Feitelson, Sueo Serisawa and Jack Zajac.

The “All-City Art Festival” was reorganized in 1953 at Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park, then moved to Barnsdall Park in 1955 and continued there to 1978 (except for 1967 at Elysian Park, when the Municipal Art Gallery was under construction).

Throughout most of its history, the exhibition attracted professional artists by offering purchase prize money provided by Home Savings & Loan. Winning artists received the purchase price of their works, which were added to Home’s art collection.

In 1968, for example, the show was divided into an open exhibition and a competition for professionals, judged by Gerald Nordland, who divided $9,000 among 16 professionals. By 1975, the purse had grown to $10,000, and winners of the purchase prizes included Astrid Preston, Jay Willis, Peter Liashkov and Douglas Davis.

“It was a very big deal” at the time for an emerging artist, Preston said. “That was one of my first sales and to have a work in a collection was an important bonus.”

In 1976, however, the money had dwindled to $2,500. By 1978, when the show died, there was no prize money and the quality of the art had suffered accordingly.

Josine Ianco-Starrels, director of the Muni at the time, said she couldn’t justify continuing a poor-quality exhibition that was the most costly event of her program. Part or all of the exhibition had traditionally been outdoors, but she moved the final show inside the gallery because she couldn’t afford to replace the dilapidated easels and other fixtures needed to display the art outside.

This year’s exhibition also is inside. Exhibition organizers tried to maximize participation in the 10,000-square-foot gallery by accepting deliveries only on Wednesday, allowing only one work per artist and restricting the size of artworks (no larger than 4x5 feet for two-dimensional work, 6x3x3 feet for three-dimensional pieces).

Cash awards totaling $3,500 will be made this year from the Muni’s exhibition budget. Five $500 Juror’s Choice Awards and 10 $100 Exhibition Excellence Awards will be selected by jurors Henry Hopkins, director of the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation, and Merry Norris, president of the Cultural Affairs Commission.

The awards will be presented on closing day, July 9 at 3 p.m. in a ceremony at the gallery. A free public reception on July 9 from 2 to 5 p.m. will include music by the Norman Johnson Trio Plus One. Viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except for Tuesday when the gallery is closed.