A Rich Diet Planned for Benefit in Santa Monica’s ‘Eat for Art’

The carousel on the Santa Monica Pier will once again be the site of some conspicuous consumption when the Santa Monica Arts Foundation holds its fourth annual “Eat for Art” benefit dinner Oct. 2.

As in the past, prominent Westside restaurants will be providing a buffet supper, and money raised will be earmarked for SMARTS’ public art fund.

The 1986 “Eat for Art” raised $16,000, which was used for the Santa Monica Art Tool, the giant concrete roller that imprints a miniature landscape on the sand at Santa Monica Beach. The next year’s event, which raised $25,000, was spent on the recently completed Wilshire Boulevard gateway to Santa Monica, “The Big Wave.” And last year, the $20,000 raised went to the 1989 Summer Arts Festival.

Proceeds from this year’s event, which the foundation estimates will earn between $25,000 and $30,000, will be used for “environmental sculptures” at the Natural Elements Sculpture Park, the sculpture garden at Santa Monica Beach.

Participating restaurants this year include Angeli, Camelions, DC3, Gilliland’s, Heritage Restaurant, Knoll’s Black Forest Inn, Michael’s, Ocean Avenue Seafood, Opera, Rebecca’s, 72 Market St. and West Beach Cafe.

Restaurateur Michael McCarty of Michael’s, who is head of SMARTS, will be producing this year’s event, which will be chaired by Elaine Hoffman and Sheila Goldberg, who also chaired this year’s Venice Art Walk.

Tickets are $100 per person, and early parking is available on the pier. For tickets or information, call Henry Korn at (213) 458-8350.

WEST AFRICAN DEBUT: The inaugural Los Angeles exhibit of west African painter Ouattara opened Sept. 9 at the Marilyn Butler Gallery in Santa Monica and will continue through Sept. 30.

Ouattara, 30, grew up among the Senoufo tribe along the Ivory Coast and moved to Paris at the age of 19. His works, dealing with magic and symbolism learned from his tribal elders, were reviewed favorably in France, where Ouattara was considered a “shaman-artist.”

The late New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was the first to bring Ouattara’s work to American attention. They traded paintings on one of Basquiat’s trips to Paris and upon his return, Basquiat arranged for Ouattara’s first American show at the Vrej Baghoomian Gallery in Manhattan in March. (Basquiat died of a heart attack five days before he and Ouattara were to visit the Ivory Coast.)

The show features paintings on wood and unstretched canvas, layered with homemade pigments. Marilyn Butler Gallery, 910 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica. (213) 394-5155. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays.

PASSING: Southwestern artist Dan Buckingham, who divided his time between Venice, Santa Fe, N. M., and Moab, Utah, died from the complications of AIDS on Sept. 1 in Salt Lake City.

Buckingham’s work, large canvases covered in metal, plaster and hand-dyed paper, were exhibited at the Ace Gallery in Venice, the Torrion Gallery in Beverly Hills and in a one-man exhibit at the MOR Gallery in Venice a year ago. Some of his work is also in the estate of the late Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as in the hands of many local collectors.

Services were held earlier this month in Utah, and a local memorial service and art show of Buckingham’s work in mixed-media will be held Sept. 24 at a private home in Venice.

MALL CRAWLERS: Santa Monica’s newest public art installation, six life-size topiary dinosaurs, is making its debut on the new Third Street Promenade in downtown Santa Monica.

Designed by Parisians Claude and Francois LaLanne, the sculptures are nothing more than stainless steel frames or trellises erected on the center islands of the new traffic lanes down the mall. After this weekend’s festivities (including a Saturday morning parade, a Big Band concert and an outdoor dance party with Jack Mack and the Heart Attack), portions of the trellises will be enclosed in temporary plastic greenhouses to allow the dinosaurs’ ivy “scales” to grow quickly. According to representatives of the Santa Monica Arts Council, the growing process should be completed by next summer.

Funds for upkeep on the living sculptures will not be provided by SMARTS, but by an outside contractor hired by Santa Monica’s Cultural and Recreation Services Department. According to Stan Shul, spokesman for the city, Santa Monica is accepting bids from outside contractors to determine the yearly cost of the upkeep.

The dinosaurs are similar to a topiary elephant gate that the LaLannes designed for the Lycee Francais in Los Angeles. Several of the sculptures, which are constructed of stainless steel with eyes, teeth and horns of worked copper with a green patina, are actually fountains. Water will pour from the dinosaurs’ mouths during the hours that the mall is open.