A Mural That’s Not Gone With the Wind

“It’s really a trip through the movie,” says painter Stephen Verona of his 100-foot mural commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the epic “Gone With the Wind.” “(By viewing the mural) you can walk into this movie and feel all those famous moments that we’ve grown up watching in clips all of our lives.”

Verona has spent a year making his acrylic-on-masonite mural, which is on view this week (Tuesday through Saturday) at the Andrea Ross Gallery, 2110 Broadway, Santa Monica.

“The mural depicts in chronological order the entire movie,” said Verona, adding that he has included such famous scenes such as Tara, the burning of Atlanta, the Civil War and Twelve Oaks. The “modular mural” also contains life-size cutouts of the film’s stars Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

Verona, who is also a film maker (“The Lords of Flatbush,” “Boardwalk”), said creating the mural enabled him to bring his two passions together.

The mural was commissioned by Turner Home Entertainment and is scheduled to go on display at Turner Broadcasting Systems headquarters in Atlanta for “Gone With the Wind’s” 50th anniversary celebrations in December.

GRANTS: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts has awarded $3.75 million in grants to six U.S. institutions as part of its continuing effort to restructure the way visual arts are taught in the nation’s public schools.

Each institution will receive $625,000 (which will be provided in five yearly increments of $125,000 and must be matched by each institution) to establish regional institutes to provide general classroom teachers, art specialists, and school administrators with intensive training in the theory and application of the Getty’s discipline-based art education program.

The Getty program advocates that art should be taught with the same substance and rigor as other basic subjects by integrating skills, knowledge and understanding from the disciplines of art production, art history, art criticism and aesthetics.

Those institutions receiving the grants are the Florida Institute for Art Education, the Minnesota Discipline-based Art Education Consortium, Nebraska Prairie Visions, the North Texas Regional Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts, the Southeast Institute for Education in the Visual Arts, and the Ohio Partnership for the Visual Arts/Regional Institute for Educators.

FRINGE: The third annual Fringe of the Fringe Arts Festival in Pomona Valley begins its month-long festivities on Saturday. Featuring about 500 artists from the inland communities, the festival will include exhibitions of art, music, dance, film, theater, poetry, puppetry and storytelling. The festival runs through Oct. 14.

More than 20 of the area’s galleries and museums are scheduled to have shows coinciding with the festival, and a series of artists’ lectures will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesdays in the Claremont Graduate School Art Building. Opening the festival on Saturday is a mask parade, sidewalk arts fair and concert at Claremont’s Memorial Park.

For more information or a schedule of events, call (714) 626-4009.

GRANT WORKSHOPS: The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department is holding a series of workshops to help artists and arts groups prepare applications for the city’s January 1990 grants. All workshops will be held from 10 a.m. to noon. The locations include: West Los Angeles Regional Library, 11360 Santa Monica Blvd, West Los Angeles, on Tuesday; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1804 Industrial St., on Wednesday; Sun Valley Recreation Center, 8133 Vineland Ave., Sun Valley, on Thursday; Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey, Bldg. D., San Pedro, on Friday; and Cultural Foundation, 21800 Oxnard St., No. 350, Woodland Hills, on Sept. 18. In addition, the Los Angeles Arts Congress (an advocacy group organized to ensure that local artists have a voice in city arts funding) will hold an informational meeting on the grants at 7 p.m. on Sept. 19 in the Gallery Theatre at Barnsdall Arts Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd.

Up to $800,000 is available in January grants to individual artists, fledgling arts groups and more established organizations. The application deadline is Oct. 2. Call (213) 485-2433 for more information.