Is His Art in the Right Place? : Statues Owned by America-3 Skipper Rest on Port Property

They’re large, they’re bizarre, they’re expensive, and people can’t stop talking about them.

One is an obese, cigar-smoking nude lying on her stomach. Residents in Point Loma, where this objet d’art is currently on view, refer to her as Roseanne, as in San Diego’s favorite soprano, Roseanne Barr.

The other is a plump, derby-adorned jockey astride a pony roughly half his size. So far, no nickname for him.

Both are bronze, both are statues, and both are the property of Bill Koch, president and skipper of America-3, Dennis Conner’s fiercest challenger in the defense of the America’s Cup. He also is one of the richest men in the country.

Koch (pronounced “coke”) is leasing a bayfront home on Scott Street from millionaire developer Morgan Dene Oliver, whose narrow back yard extends onto the property of the San Diego Unified Port District.

The neighbors, some of whom celebrate the art and some of whom deplore it, are in agreement on one thing: The statues, about 25 yards from the waters of San Diego Bay, are on port property.

The Port District hasn’t had the rosiest luck with art, particularly public art on its property. In recent years, renowned sculptors Vito Acconci and Ellsworth Kelly left in temperamental huffs after the Board of Port Commissioners sweet-talked them, then insulted them.

Kelly wanted to construct a 65-foot stainless steel monolith flanked by a concrete, prow-like design, for which he would be paid $450,000. The commissioners said yes to the monolith and no to the latter object, fearing that transients would snuggle up in its hollow interior and make a mess of Embarcadero Park.

Kelly said you can’t have one without the other and flew back home to New York.

Acconci was asked to submit a sculpture for Spanish Landing. He came up with 40 dug-out, boat-shaped seats and large airplanes rising from the earth. The commissioners complained that the planes looked like crashed aircraft, and that since the sculpture was going in near the airport, well, thanks, but no thanks.

Now the port has two pieces of art, each of which is generating attention, and in some quarters controversy, and neither of which the commissioners approved. One day the art wasn’t there, and the next--about three weeks ago--it was.

“I got a call from Dene Oliver three weeks ago,” said Don Nay, director of the Port District. “He told me he was leasing his house to Koch, and Koch wanted the art in the back yard, next to the public pathway, on port property. He said he wanted it there for a year.

“I said, ‘Well, how much ground does it take?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘We’ll send you a map of the area, an engineer’s drawing, and you can scratch around on it and tell us how much you need. Then we’ll review it and maybe give you a permit.’

“I never received anything back. I guess we’ll have to send somebody over there. . . . It sounds like something we have to check out. We have gotten calls about it. Our concern is liability. We don’t want anything happening to these things and us being responsible.”

Koch, 50, is recognized as one of the wealthiest competitors currently chasing the America’s Cup. Whereas Conner needs the backing of major corporate sponsors to assemble the best boat and crew, Koch, it is said, simply writes a check.

Koch, who’s described by neighbors as a charming, self-effacing gentleman, said the sculptures were done by a friend of his, a Colombian artist named Botero. The statues visible to the public are but two of six, Koch said.

A bronze cat is in the courtyard. The others are in the house. Neighbors say all six were hoisted in by giant cranes. That alone was worth a serious round of Scott Street conversation.

Each of the works, but particularly the pair visible from the walkway behind Scott, and from the intersection of Talbot Street and Anchorage Lane near the San Diego Yacht Club, means more to Koch than the bronze it’s made of.

The statues are being watched, 24 hours a day, by Strategic Security Services Inc. Donald Purkey, who was guarding them Tuesday afternoon, answers a lot of questions about them from more-than-curious passers-by.

“They’re attracting more attention than I ever thought possible,” Purkey said with a smile.

Koch won’t say what they’re worth, but describes the outside pair as “humorous--big and fat and funny. I like them. I find them amusing. All my neighbors call the woman with the cigar Roseanne. People stop by all the time just to look at them.”

As for Morgan Dene Oliver’s reaction, he was unavailable for comment.

Koch is founder and president of the Oxbow Corp. in West Palm Beach, Fla., a firm that specializes in alternative-energy projects. He is also a connoisseur of all kinds of art, having loaned one collection to a museum. He stores the rest of it on his various estates.

“One of my bronze sculptures is a Roman soldier, about 8 to 10 feet tall,” he said. “He’s in the house” in Point Loma.

Koch’s neighbors don’t quite know what to make of it all--the art itself or each other’s reactions.

“I don’t know that it’s actually art,” said one, who asked not to be quoted by name. “I’ve heard a lot of people walk by and say, ‘Well, there goes the neighborhood.’ The clear implication is they don’t like it.

“I mean, let’s face it, it’s not beautiful. It’s fat people. The nude woman is lying on a towel, smoking a cigar. She’s as fat as Roseanne Barr or more so. She has tremendous breasts that hoist her up off the ground so that they protrude out.

“I personally have never seen anything like that. So, yes, it’s hard to think of it as art.”

But a woman who lives on Scott Street, near the home that Koch is leasing--she, too, asked not to be identified--called the back-yard, port-property addition “a beautiful gift to the city. They’re obvious works of art. They’re fabulous . . . lovely, lovely things.

“What a lovely, generous thing for Mr. Koch to do, to allow people to see that caliber of art for free, and publicly. It’s a very personal statement, and it’s also kind of fun.”

If art is capable of making a statement about the human condition, well, this certainly qualifies, the woman said. It’s revealed long-simmering truths about her otherwise tranquil Point Loma neighborhood.

“We have always been, like San Diego itself, a sleepy little place,” she said. “But then along comes these sculptures. . . . Why, the chitchat that has gone on around here! This art has revealed something a lot of people suspected all along-- this is a very provincial place. Incredibly so. The art just proves it.”