L.A. Festival Project Displays Artwork and Spreads Social Commentary on RTD Buses

Things were busy, as usual, in the downtown offices of the L.A. Festival last weekend. Slick posters were still being rolled for an upcoming event for festival donors, MacIntosh computers hummed through schedule updates, and miscellaneous office workers, surrounded by huge stacks of festival programs, chased telephones and shuffled papers.

Entering unannounced into all this was artist Cheri Gaulke, carrying a small cargo of papers and poster board. The package was part of a festival project of her own invention called “Busz Words,” a collection of 13 posters designed by local artists for display inside RTD buses.

Often carrying blunt, colorful, messages of social commentary on issues from verbal child abuse to China’s uncertain future, the signs are scheduled to be posted on more than 1,500 buses throughout the festival’s run, ending Sept. 16.

The program may prove to be among the festival’s most-seen events.

“I see the buses as a way to communicate with a wider audience, a way of speaking to an audience you might not have access to in the museums,” explained Gaulke, 36, the project’s main coordinator and curator. “All the artists do gallery work. This was an opportunity to speak to people in a real kind of down-home, straightforward way. To me that was the challenge.”

In search of a room to discuss “Busz Words,” Gaulke settled into an empty office and sat in a director’s chair bearing the name Peter Sellars, the ubiquitous president and director of the festival. She said that before this new project, she had participated in doing a similar group of bus cards depicting women in history for the Women’s Building, where Gaulke was an artist-in-residence for three years. Despite her feminist art background, Gaulke insisted that it was not intentional that all the posters have some socially conscious message.

Her own poster depicts a Mother Earth-like face screaming angrily against a backdrop of newspaper articles describing atrocities against nature. Artist Mark Greenfield’s “Key to Success” contrasts the two worlds faced by black and white children, linked together with a golden key. And Sheila Pinkel’s “Consumer Research” reveals the crass mind-set of the last decade by contrasting Webster’s 1962 definition of consumer with that of Webster’s in 1979. In the latter version, the earlier definition of the word as “a person or thing that destroys, uses up or wastes something” is eliminated.

“I was pleased that the artists seemed to have the same interests as I did in speaking to people, and not being obscure or arty in their language,” Gaulke said. “All the work had some level of controversy or dealt with issues that are hot or maybe make people uneasy.”

The posters are to be displayed on buses in sets of six and seven on routes throughout the city. Complete sets of the works are being shown at three local galleries: the William Grant Still Arts Center, the Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.

The TDI Winston Network, the company contracted to rent advertising space from RTD, is underwriting the cost of placing the signs on the buses, said Claire Peeps, the festival’s program director. She added that the “Busz Words” project also coincided nicely with the festival’s campaign encouraging people to travel by bus to the various events.

“Since the festival this time is very much about making things accessible and in nontraditional forums, it was a really attractive idea for us,” said Peeps, pausing during her weekend work at the computer.

Gaulke said she hasn’t ridden a bus herself since her earliest years in Los Angeles, after arriving from St. Louis in 1975. And coming from a performance-art background, including work with the Sisters of Survival performance group, she said that habit may make it difficult.

“I feel excited. But it’s kind of abstract in a way, because I realize the bus posters are out there being seen by people, but in a way you don’t get the feedback.”

“Busz Words,” an exhibition of bus posters by 13 local artists; through Sept. 16 at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, (213) 453-1755; through Sept. 16 at the William Grant Still Arts Center, 2520 Westview St., (213) 734-1164; Sept. 8 to 29 at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, (818) 792-5101; and on buses throughout Los Angeles.

HAVE A SEAT: An eclectic mix of local artists has taken chair design into new and startling directions for “Sweet Chair-ity,” a benefit art show and auction at Art Options in Santa Monica. Proceeds will go to the Venice Family Clinic.

But the group of 21 artists, including Steve Lapin, Abby Lazerow, Steven Granach, Frank Romero and Ken Steinkamp, hasn’t exactly gone into full-time furniture design. Many of the show’s chairs were not even designed to be used as seats.

Lazerow & Granach’s “Gallina de Colores” is a lushly decorated baby highchair shaped like a four-legged chicken and smothered under an explosion of reds, blues, yellow, green and gold. And Steinkamp’s “Wraptchaired” is a white metal folding chair--adorned with the photograph of a woman sitting--bound tightly in rope and netting.

“The artists can stretch,” said Marlene Riceberg, co-owner of Art Options in Santa Monica. “When you give them a project, they get very excited. It’s a challenge, and it takes them out of what they do normally.”

This is the second year of “Sweet Chair-ity,” which Riceberg and partner Fran Cey created to help the Venice Family Clinic where Riceberg’s physician husband is a volunteer.

At last year’s event, artists were asked to redesign, reconstruct or simply repaint existing chairs donated by a local manufacturer. This time, artists requested that they be allowed to create from scratch.

“Many of the artists are the same again this year,” Riceberg said. “They wanted to do it again. And then it started getting out in the art community, where we now have artists calling us to do it.”

The chairs are displayed throughout Art Options, in a room designed by architect Brian Murphy. And until they are auctioned off Sept. 9 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, they rest among the gallery store’s other decorative and functional art. Nearby, palm trees sprout from square holes cut into the concrete floor.

With Cey, wife of former Dodger Ron Cey, Riceberg launched Art Options to infect others with her appreciation of art.

“It occurred to us that there was a need to introduce people to art in a way that would be friendly and not be intimidating,” said Riceberg, who with her husband is listed as a charter donor at the Museum of Contemporary Art. “And maybe from that they would go on to become collectors.”

“Sweet Chair-ity,” an exhibition and auction of unique chairs benefiting the Venice Family Clinic, through Sept. 9, Art Options, 2507 Main St., Santa Monica, (213) 392-9009.