Thinking Big : Christo’s Umbrella Art Project a Hit Before It’s Up

The people who live amid the hills of the Tejon Pass are getting art lessons in unexpected places lately.

Two locals had just left a coffee shop in Gorman one morning last month when they bumped into Christo, the famous Bulgarian-born artist who scorns the use of his last name.

Eager to share news on the progress of his latest mega-art project--1,760 umbrellas that will dot the hillsides of the pass next fall--Christo pointed to a bright orange circle spray-painted the day before on a parking lot.

“See where we will place an umbrella,” Christo said.

The pair looked in silence and appeared to struggle to respond. One finally blurted out: “It looks like you have everything under control.”

For the past several years, folks in these parts--whether they want to or not--have learned quite a bit about their frequent guest. They have watched movies of Christo’s previous artistic exploits (such as wrapping a Parisian bridge with fabric and surrounding Florida islands with pink plastic). They have chatted about art at community get-togethers, received the artist’s slick catalogues by mail and posed for pictures snapped by his West German photographer.

By now, there is probably nobody for miles around who does not know about the umbrellas.

Next October, the golden yellow umbrellas will decorate cow pastures and small towns along 18 miles of Interstate 5 in Kern and Los Angeles counties. At the same time, 1,340 royal blue umbrellas will snake through rice fields, a riverbed, a bamboo forest and villages along a 12-mile stretch in rural Japan.

Each umbrella will stand almost 20 feet tall and weigh 450 pounds.

It most likely will be the world’s largest art project. About 1,500 people on each side of the Pacific Ocean will erect the umbrellas in early October. Three weeks later, the work crews, made up primarily of art lovers, college students and the curious, will dismantle them and the material will be recycled.

All that will remain will be memories and Christo’s pricey umbrella collages, sketches and other preparatory work that museums, investors and art collectors already have been gobbling up. A modest collage costs $35,000. An eight-foot drawing fetches $360,000.

Christo, who spends as much time as possible creating umbrella art in his Soho loft, is paying for “The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and USA” himself by selling his umbrella sketches and other preparatory works. The current price, $26 million, is double last year’s estimate.

Even schmoozing is expensive. The diminutive artist with impeccable manners has flown to the West Coast and Japan dozens of times to persuade skeptical bureaucrats, farmers and landowners that his dream to “stretch peoples’ notion of art” is not a joke.

He has largely succeeded. He has secured all of the necessary approvals, including a critical Japanese permit so detailed it is the size of a city phone book. The California Legislature has feted the artist for choosing the state once more as a backdrop for his creativity. (In 1976 he ran a 24-mile shimmering fence across Sonoma and Marin counties and into the ocean.)

The Kern County Board of Supervisors in Bakersfield is thrilled that for once its county will not be lost in Los Angeles’ shadow.

Abe Gueler, owner of a heavy equipment company, is so excited about the project that he plans to widen a steep dirt road with hair-raising curves on his land in the Tejon Pass so it will be easier for Christo’s workers to reach his mountaintop.

A few years ago, Gueler said, “a high percentage didn’t know who Christo was, didn’t have the slightest idea.” Then some locals decided that he “had to be nuts” when they learned of his projects in Paris, Florida and elsewhere.

Gueler added, “Now he’s getting a better response.”

Part of Christo’s purpose in visiting the West Coast for 3 1/2 days last month was to drum up paid recruits who will install, protect and answer questions about the umbrellas while they are displayed next fall. Christo’s never had trouble in the past finding help, and when he showed his umbrella slides and answered questions in Los Angeles and Valencia, the crowds were so large that many had to sit on the floor.

“Why do you create such big monumental art?” someone in the crowd shouted as Christo stood behind a lectern on the USC campus.

“My, human beings build much bigger things,” he replied in his thick Bulgarian accent. “They build airports, skyscrapers, highways, bridges, much more monumental.” He said his art “is monumental because it is only irrational and completely irresponsible.”

The audience cheered.

Christo lectured at night and hiked during the day. Two years ago, he walked for miles--he said it was the equivalent of 2 1/2 trips up and down Mt. Everest--to mark where he wanted to place each umbrella. This time, he wanted to make revisions.

Christo knows the dips and bends and contours of this brutish landscape like a tour bus driver knows Hollywood. He picked a favorite vista to unfurl his maps and talk about his plans. It was a steep hillside covered with tall dry grass that sounded like muffled firecrackers when crushed underfoot. Nearby was a wooden surveyor’s stick tied with a pink plastic ribbon flapping in the wind. It marks the spot where one of the umbrellas will stand.

From Christo’s hillside vantage point, I-5 looked like a thin gray snake. A dying oak tree clung to the crumbling earth and a cascade of boulders appeared frozen in a free fall. To the north, the burnished hills formed a distant giant V and beyond lay the pancake-flat expanse of the San Joaquin Valley, tinted blue by clouds.

“Here the freedom of the umbrellas is so visible,” Christo said in awe.

“They are so free. They have no other reason than to be works of art.”

The umbrella project is an international effort. The nylon fabric was woven in Germany. Various parts were manufactured in Japan, Iowa, Kansas and Texas. The umbrella tops are being sewn at North Sails Inc. in San Diego, one of the world’s largest sail makers.

Later this month, workers from Rain for Rent, an irrigation company, will begin assembling and painting the aluminum and steel umbrellas in a dilapidated warehouse in Bakersfield. Its location is a secret.

There were only three people working in the warehouse one recent afternoon, but they were making a terrible racket. The sound of drills cutting through aluminum bounced off the concrete floor and bowed ceiling. The poles, which looked like giant metal straws, were stacked in tall piles.

Mike Grundvig, chief engineer at Rain for Rent, will oversee this portion of the aesthetic process. He says he is amazed at the resiliency of Christo’s art.

To test its durability, an umbrella was left for three months on a mountaintop in Tejon Pass. After a windstorm earlier this year, Grundvig was dispatched to pick up the pieces.

“I didn’t expect to see it there,” he acknowledged. “Not in one piece.”

But it was.