Creator of Rejected Sculpture Wants Irvine to Pay Her Back

Angie Bray’s sculpture “Wavering Poles,” removed from an exhibit at the Irvine Civic Center on Saturday after city officials decided that it posed a safety hazard, is back at the artist’s Laguna Beach studio, not at FHP Health Care’s headquarters in Fountain Valley, as had been agreed.

FHP, co-sponsor of the exhibit, had offered Friday to show the piece for several months at its headquarters and to provide information about the piece at the Irvine site, along with an explanation of why it had been deemed inappropriate there. The sculpture, a cluster of slender, upright aluminum poles mounted so that they could sway in the breeze, had been rejected by city risk management and liability staff members who felt that the bevelled tops of the poles might injure anyone who happened to yank on them.

Bray at first accepted the FHP proposal then decided that she wants reimbursement from Irvine for her expenses. “At first, I didn’t want it to be an adversarial situation” with the city, Bray said. “But it is an adversarial situation. . . . By my accepting (inclusion in) a flyer and brochure that describes the piece, I would be absolving (the city) of responsibility from kicking me out of the show.”

Bray said she saw children climbing and jumping on other pieces Saturday at Irvine’s Civic Center Plaza, sliding down the flat surfaces of Daniel Miller’s stainless-steel “Wandering Mobius,” using the cross-shaped part of Leslie Robbins’ “Modern Times” as a teeter-totter and clambering on Bret Price’s nine-foot-tall “Passage.”

Irvine “is trying to establish a gallery situation in an arena seen as public,” Bray said. “Either you (station) a guard and say, ‘This is a sculpture garden,’ or you say, ‘We have public art here,’ and you show the kind of art people are allowed to play with.

“I feel Irvine should not be let off the hook. We’re all accountable for our actions. . . . I don’t consider the issue over. If my piece isn’t in the show, it’s silly to have a flyer that tries to explain it away.”

Work by the other nine artists remains at the Irvine Civic Center through July 13.