State Arts Panel Funds Partnership in County : Patron: The California council grants $12,500 toward the new agency and also urges supervisors to allot support.

The California Arts Council on Friday approved a $12,500 grant for an ad hoc committee of Orange County arts officials working to form a “state-local partnership.” The council simultaneously urged that the Orange County Board of Supervisors fund local arts activities.

There was no discussion about the grant at the council’s regular meeting here, but in written comments to the 11-member CAC, the Committee for an Orange County Arts Council was lauded by a CAC advisory panel for “reaching a consensus . . . as to the needs of the arts community and how an effective (state-local) arts agency could be developed that would serve these needs.” State-local partner coordinator Gloria Woodlock said the council will recommend that the committee add more minorities to its membership.

The panel’s report urged also that the Orange County Board of Supervisors “find ways to contribute financial support to the new agency, since this is key to attracting adequate private support that is much needed by county arts organizations and artists.”

In early May, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to develop a countywide arts council to serve as its state-local partner with the CAC. It also named the ad hoc committee as its interim state-local partner, or official arts representative to the state, until a permanent countywide council can be formed.

The board left open the question of how the council would be paid for, however, rejecting a county administrative office recommendation that the board consider allocating up to $50,000 from funds earmarked for county parks. That amount was less than half the $125,000 the committee initially hoped to receive from the county in cash or services. Historically, county funding of the arts has been minimal.

None of the supervisors were available for comment Friday.

Committee chairman Charles Desmarais, director of the Laguna Art Museum, said before the vote that a countywide arts council “can’t work without some county support. But we’ve always said it didn’t necessarily have to be cash. It may be that we end up with (county) staff (support) and other forms of in-kind support.”

The establishment of a state-local partnership could mean up to $80,000 a year in state and federal funds for redistribution to county arts groups, according to one local arts official. Orange County is one of only six counties in the state without a local partner. It has been without one since the 1988 dissolution of the Orange County Arts Alliance.

The ad hoc committee, a group of 27 local arts community members, has already begun preliminary work with the county Environmental Management Agency and other county officials to develop a structure for a permanent state-local partner.

The structural plan is to be presented to the supervisors during their 1990-91 budget hearings, beginning in July.

If awarded, the $12,500 technical-assistance grant, which must be matched dollar for dollar, would be deposited until a permanent arts council is in place, Desmarais said.

In other business, the arts council awarded Fullerton metalsmith Christina Smith a $5,000 fellowship which provides money directly to individual artists rather than to arts organizations. Smith, who has shown her work locally at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, is the first Orange County artist to receive such a subsidy.

The council also awarded $7,700 each to two artists, one from Orange County, to work in county schools under the council’s artists-in-residence program. Musician Michael Bachich from Long Beach will work in the Capistrano Unified School District, and visual artist Craig Kiplin of Irvine will work at the Orange County High School of the Arts.