SANTA PAULA : Council to Consider Sculpture Proposal

The Santa Paula City Council will consider a proposal tonight by artist Helle Scharling to create a six-foot-tall sculpture with fruit as its theme for the city’s Memorial Park.

Scharling chose fruit as the theme for the piece because the fruit industry is so prominent in the area, she said. Santa Paula once called itself the Citrus Capital of the World and the logo still appears on some business cards carried by council members.

Scharling said she hopes to finance the project with a California Arts Council grant, matched by funds from private industry. She said local businesses and the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce have reacted positively to presentations of the idea.

A 10-year resident of Ventura, Scharling left her native Denmark to learn mosaic work in Italy. Later, she studied art history in Germany and murals in Mexico City. Scharling has created “public art” in several countries. “It’s a way for an artist to be less isolated,” she said recently.

One of Scharling’s mosaics covers a wall and part of the floor in the lobby of the Ray D. Prueter Library in Port Hueneme. She is designing another for the Wright Library on Day Road in Ventura with a grant from the Ventura Arts Council.

The council will also consider tonight a request by the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce to hold its third annual Fourth of July Festival.

Food and game booths are part of the event set to begin at noon in Harding Park near the Santa Paula Boys and Girls Club. One block of Harvard Boulevard would be closed to traffic during the festival, which will feature a fireworks display beginning at 8 p.m.