ART : Koll Anaheim Center Project Gets Away to a Promising Start : The prospectus combines vision, practicality and an understanding of the function of public art.

Can it be? An Orange County city that knows how to plan wisely for a public art program? Well, although there are no guarantees that everything will turn out as neatly as planned, the Art Plan for Koll Anaheim Center has three important things going for it.

One is a prospectus that reads very seductively, combining vision, practicality and a genuine understanding of the function of public art. Another is a fine group of artists to work on the first phase, selected by a trio of art-savvy folks.

The third, and by no means the least significant thing, is the involvement of representatives of the public and private sectors and the art world on the nine-member, roll-up-your-sleeves Arts Advisory Committee appointed by the Anaheim Redevelopment Agency.

We’ve seen how other Orange County cities bungled their first attempts at adorning the great outdoors with works of art, by failing to devise a creative plan for the community as a whole or to appoint a panel of recognized art professionals charged with keeping quality standards high.

Developers in Brea, which has a percentage-for-art ordinance, buy whatever pieces of “plop art” catch their fancy, however bland, hokey or unsuited to the site they may be. Various individuals in Irvine have loaned a miscellaneous array of sculptures to a city that is so humbly grateful, it can’t say no. And the folks in Laguna Beach seem pretty leery of spending big money on anything that might be construed as big-time art. Bring on those dolphin sculptures!

While the Anaheim project has the advantage of starting from scratch, it also represents an attempt to integrate art and life in a creative, contemporary way--without denying that its whole reason for existence is to serve the needs of the commercial and civic entities sponsoring the project.

The presence of the art is basically supposed to help solve a problem: how to get people interested in coming to a soon-to-be-refurbished downtown area to spend their money. But that doesn’t mean that the art can’t be good--and genuinely exciting. In this project, the traditional notion of a bunch of free-standing sculptures makes way for a broader conception of what artists can do for a community.

The first phase of the art project--sited in the area bounded by Lincoln Avenue, Broadway, and Anaheim and Harbor boulevards, and due to be completed next summer--will have a budget between $350,000 and $500,0000, based on building costs for the new Pacific Bell and City Utilities buildings.

That figure is based on 1% of the “bricks and mortar” construction costs--a percentage-for-art that will be applied to the entire $200-million mixed-use commercial enterprise.

Artists for the first phase of the project--Daniel Martinez and Nobuho Nagasawa of Los Angeles and Buster Simpson of Seattle--were chosen by a jury of professionals conversant with the contemporary art world as well as the problems and pitfalls of public art. (A fourth recommended artist, well-known New York sculptor Mary Miss, won’t know until later this week whether she’ll have time to work on the project.)

Members of the jury--appointed by the the Arts Advisory Board--are Jessica Cusick, arts administrator of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission; Linda Forsha, curator at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and Maudette Ball, former administrative director of the Urban Arts Program at Foothill Ranch in Saddleback Valley.

The artists will be working on several projects intended to encourage pedestrian use, enliven the area by day and by night and also serve in some fashion as reminders of Anaheim’s past.

In addition to free-standing sculpture, the artist-designed elements will include such objects as drinking or decorative fountains, benches, trash receptacles, pavement ornamentation and lighting.

One of the major art components is a “festivities center” at the western end of the center, envisioned as a gathering place for daily use as well as special events. The Art Plan suggests three possibilities for the site: a distinctive landscape element, a stage for performances, or a combination of both, plus a marker commemorating “the ongoing history of Anaheim.”

Last week, the artists spent a couple of intensive days checking out the area, learning about each other, presenting their previous work to the committee and listening to various points of view. I sat in on a couple of the sessions and became a believer, both in the artists’ work--previously all but unknown to me--and the public art process, at least as it’s being applied this time around.

Simpson showed slides of work in a practical but adventurous vein that he has done in such far-flung cities as Seattle, Raleigh, N.C., and Cleveland. One piece was a “streetscape” that paid homage to the former site of a “historic” cherry tree. Another consisted of a set of granite benches for a subway, configured to mimic the way the rails sit on the railroad bed, and arranged to provide for “social, antisocial and schizophrenic” seating.

A “pre-gentrification” piece by Simpson involved laying a brick trail from a neighborhood to a nearby mall so that the worn pieces of brick could be permanently installed when the area was redeveloped. “I’m interested in wear,” Simpson said. “It talks about time.”

A temporary “Banner of Human Occupation” consisted of ropes crossing a public space between two buildings in a low income housing area. In their bare state, the ropes created an aeolian harp effect in the wind; strung like a clothesline with sheets and clothing, they represented the kind of close-knit community experience “people go to Europe to see,” the artist said--his tongue only partly in cheek.

Martinez said he “constantly investigates things I don’t understand.” His frankly provocative art is involved with the ways people define themselves and the attitudes that lie behind these definitions. One of his favored media is the billboard because, he said, “the traditional advertising space moves an idea from an elitist place into the public sphere, with a potential for creating dialogue.”

Martinez is working on a piece for the Metro Green Line which, he pointed out, runs through the so-called “light” industrial sector of El Segundo--actually the headquarters of such high-level purveyors to the military as Hughes Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas. One prominent portion of the piece is a 40-foot-tall metal image of a giant chain-mailed hand holding a stainless steel “paper” airplane like a slingshot.

Japanese-born Nagasawa--who lived in Europe before coming to the United States four years ago--has a deep awareness of the way such factors as wind, rain, drainage, plantings and human activities can influence the look and sound of an outdoor work of art.

In Northern Italy, she made a huge, 10-foot-diameter drum (rain does the drumming) from bricks donated by a factory and a latex-covered sheet of canvas. In Japan, she worked with a landscape architect to create a sensitively sited amphitheater with a ring of granite seats, an altar enclosing a symbolic olive tree seedling and an entrance framing a view of an island.

“Behind the Great Wall”--an installation she made for the now-defunct Merging One Gallery in Los Angeles earlier this year to commemorate the Tien An Men Square massacre--was a brick wall that extended past the gallery window into the street and incorporated the taped sounds of heartbeats, steps, marching and a Tibetan chant.

Then the tables were turned, and the advisory committee and the three jurors convened again to give their impressions while the artists took notes.

Eleanor Bay, the Anaheim Arts Council representative, noted that city residents are “not a very eclectic group, particularly in the old areas. They tend to criticize.” She said she hopes the projects could incorporate “as much a degree of traditionalism” as possible.

Doug Renner, a member of the board of the Anaheim Museum, echoed Bay’s concerns: “We do need a traditional kind of approach, rather than avant-garde.” He said he hoped the project “would not try to alienate the human element with something harsh and abstract.”

At this point, I began to make faces. How could people involved with the arts sound so negative about the adventurous component of the program? Did Renner actually think the previous work of the artists in question was “harsh and abstract”?

Dextra Frankel, director of the Cal State Fullerton Art Gallery, remarked temperately that, “with anything that is new, conservative or vanguard, you will get a reaction” but through repeated viewings, people generally begin to understand the work.

Eventually, it was Cusick’s turn. She has worked with public art projects for 15 years and obviously has been through this sort of thing before.

After congratulating the group for the time it has invested in the project, she said pleasantly, “You never know what people are going to react to. It is very difficult to define what is traditional. It’s different for each one of us. It’s a real gray area.

“What makes a successful art project is this process. Each of us is an ambassador to the community. The major stumbling block in public art is that Joe Public doesn’t have a starting point (to understand) the artist’s thinking, the artist’s background. I encourage you to provide that access.”

On the positive side, this is the committee that created the Art Plan. It seems to have thought of everything.

Significantly, for example, “commercial dealers and private for-profit art consultants are not eligible to serve as (jurors).” That was a wise move, eliminating accusations of marketplace-based favoritism. Another good sign: The artists get to designate the exact locations for the street elements.

The plan also has a way of asking good questions. For example, regarding the potential of installing a fountain at the intersection of Lemon Street and Harbor Place, the plan wonders aloud just what is most important at that site. Is it the sound of the water? The visual dynamic? Participation by passersby who could drink from it or wade in it?

In phase two of the project, which would be financed by construction of a multiplex cinema, the plan suggests that the art let people actually enjoy waiting in line and possibly incorporate lighting, since people mostly go to the movies at night.

Phase three of the project would involve the programming of special events--both already established festivals and new ones--for the site. The publicity effort for these events sounds snappy and creative.

And perhaps best of all, the plan includes a public education program dealing with public art in general and this project in particular, because “the most important measure of the success of any public art program lies in its acceptance and appreciation by the community it serves.”