ART : An Orange County ‘Museum’ Exhibits Questionable Motive : Misrepresentation: Postcards invite artists to show their work at a nonexistent facility for a $12 fee. Is it fraud, or maybe a bizarre bit of performance art?

Seduction comes easy these days. Elaborate mailings assure us that we are among the select few invited to subscribe to an upscale magazine, or to use a charge card named after a precious metal. For a fleeting moment we may even believe that we are being singled out as special. It’s only human to preen.

Artists are hardly immune. The tiniest sign that someone really is interested in their work is enough to send many a fledgling artist into orbit. After all, toting slides to indifferent art gallery owners can induce depression in the hardiest soul.

So imagine how you’d feel if you were an artist who got a tantalizing postcard inviting you to show your work at a museum--with just a few strings attached. On March 31, someone mailed a batch of such postcards from a Los Angeles ZIP code to an untold number of artists in Southern California.

“The Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art INVITES You to submit a Bio and Slides (All Media) of your Art Work,” read the post card, printed in a mixture of script and sans-serif type. “The OCMCA is a (sic) Exciting and New Contemporary Art Museum accompanied by a Sales and Rental Gallery. Please submit your Materials and Twelve Dollars to: OCMCA, Registry Dept. P.O. Box 691951, Los Angeles, CA 90069.”

The postcard is confusing. Are artists to be considered for curated museum exhibitions or for the distinctly less thrilling prospect of showing in a sales and rental gallery? Syntax aside, however, a bigger problem looms:

There apparently is no such entity as the Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art. The California secretary of state’s office reports that OCMCA has never registered as either a nonprofit or for-profit organization, as required by law.

Was someone out to defraud local artists? Was the solicitation someone’s idea of a joke--or even a peculiar “performance” piece?

Deciding to play amateur sleuth after a Los Angeles artist mailed me the postcard she received, I located several other L.A. and Orange County artists who received the solicitations. One lives as far away as the San Joaquin Valley.

“I don’t know of too many museums that function like this,” said Michael Hughes of Los Angeles, who received a postcard. “It didn’t sound right. . . . And why was the post office box in Los Angeles if the museum was in Orange County?”

The “cheap” look of the postcard also aroused Hughes’ suspicions, but “it was the $12 more than anything else,” he said, that made him question the offer. Normally, no money changes hands when a museum asks an artist to exhibit work.

Diana Feld, an artist who lives in Santa Monica, admitted that the words invite you initially hooked her. “Oh, I don’t have to go out and solicit,” she thought. The $12 charge didn’t strike her as peculiar, she said, because rental gallery slide registries commonly require artists to pay a small fee per slide.

Feld’s husband was skeptical, however, and suggested she call the museum to check it out. When she discovered that Orange County directory information has no listing for OCMCA, her bright hopes were dashed.

The Better Business Bureau that serves the Los Angeles-Orange County area has recorded no complaints against any Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art. U.S. Postal Inspector Donald Obritsch said his office hadn’t received any complaints about the museum solicitation either, but after receiving a copy of the postcard, he agreed that it might fall under the category of bunco crimes, or swindles.

Eventually, I learned that the post office box to which artists were supposed to send the slides and money was opened on March 26 by one Scott C. Griesbach in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Voter registration records show that Griesbach was born in 1967 in Wisconsin and is a Republican. Directory information had no phone number for him. A letter I mailed to his home address, asking that he call me to discuss the matter, has gone unanswered. So far, I’ve been unable to get ahold of him.

When Griesbach filled out the post box rental form, he didn’t say he’d be operating a business out of the box.

It was heartening to hear from Obritsch that the post office has processed only “a negligible amount” of mail for the box number.

Several artists I spoke to said they sent letters asking for more information, which they never received. One artist said he mailed a $12 check on April 20 and got nothing in return except his cancelled check, which was endorsed “OCMCA” and apparently had been deposited.

The stamp on the back of the check indicates that it cleared through the downtown Los Angeles branch of Security Pacific Bank on June 12, but a bank representative said the numbers underneath the endorsement don’t indicate that OCMCA has an account there. Bank personnel are looking into the matter.

To open the account, the mastermind behind OCMCA would have to have produced documents showing that he owned or was associated with a genuine organization. The plot thickens. . . .

Obritsch said his office would need “quite a few” complaints in order to open a formal investigation. And, in his experience, when the amount of money involved in each solicitation is less than $50, people generally figure it isn’t worth their time to pursue the matter.

In this case, perhaps most of the artists who received the postcards were too savvy to send any money. But anyone who did risk the $12 and wishes to squawk to the proper authorities should write to the Postal Service’s Regional Chief Inspector, Western Region, 850 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, Calif. 94098-0100.