O.C. ART : ‘Shadows’ Shaking Up the Present : Art lovers are urging the preservation of murals at Laguna Beach High School done by a now-deceased student.

As somebody said the other day, there’s so much apple pie involved in the whole thing that it’s hard to believe that any controversy could exist.

But the uncertain fate of murals at Laguna Beach High School, painted by a student who has since died, has pitted the student’s mother and a small but determined group of art lovers against the Laguna Beach Unified School District board.

The story starts in 1984 when Megan Jones, then a member of the high school senior class, painted the work, entitled “Shadows of the Past,” on three walls of the school’s cafeteria. She asked 15 classmates to pose with objects associated with their favorite activities--cheerleading, tennis, music-making and so forth. Because she conceived the life-size figures literally as “shadows” that would not overwhelm future generations of flesh-and-blood students, she painted them all in shades of gray.

Three years later, at age 20, this popular and promising young artist was dead, the victim of a rare form of cancer.

Meanwhile, plans were afoot for a $10-million renovation of the school building. Part of the project involved expanding a media center into space occupied by the cafeteria. By the time San Diego architect Milford Wayne Donaldson was hired in early 1989, the school board had come to the conclusion that the entire area would have to be rebuilt and that the walls on which the murals were painted would have to come down.

Megan’s mother, Chadlyn Jones, heard about all this and fired off a letter to school Supt. Dennis M. Smith, seeking reassurance that the murals would be preserved. She says he wrote a letter back to that effect.

But Smith says his letter told Jones only that the school board would do “everything possible” to retain the murals.

Jones says she was unaware of any change in the plan until last March, when she heard that the walls would be knocked down after all. Distraught, she called Donaldson to ask what was happening to the murals.

On March 11, eight days after Jones spoke to Donaldson, he sent a letter to Smith, recommending that an art conservator and a contractor be hired to investigate how the murals might be salvaged. The conservator’s report and estimate of what it will cost to preserve the murals are due this week.

Until that estimate is received and considered by the school board’s reconstruction committee, the board will not consider making the formal resolution that Jones wants--to “commit in principle” to preserve the murals.

“We’ve got to look at the facts involved,” says Smith. “It could (cost) a few thousand or a few million, if we need to redesign the whole building” in the event that the murals could not be removed from the walls.

In any case, the committee (which acts only in an advisory capacity) has concluded that the cost of retaining the murals “should be funded by private donations.” (If the murals can be removed, Donaldson has recommended making photo silk-screen reproductions to hang in the new cafeteria and--because cafeterias are such messy places--placing the original murals somewhere else on campus).

Jones has been soliciting community support. In a few weeks’ time, 35 letters have been sent to the school board and school Principal Barbara Callard, pleading for retention of the murals.

The letters came from Megan’s art teachers, from classmates and parents of classmates, collectors of Megan’s work, longtime community residents, the vicar of St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church and several artists and arts professionals including Betty Turnbull, Phyllis Lutjeans and Victoria Kogan, who owned the now-defunct TLK Gallery in Costa Mesa, which showed Megan’s work.

The writers attested to Megan’s skill as a painter, to her inspiration for students, and to the importance of arts projects such as hers for a community. Nancy Mooslin, who curated a posthumous exhibit of Megan’s work at the Art Institute of Southern California in 1989, wrote: “A community must understand that its art and culture are just as valuable and important to its progress as its buildings, businesses, recreational spaces and services.”

Jones also enlisted the support of Dikran Tashjian, a professor of comparative culture at UC Irvine. He says he has “always admired” the murals--which he saw when he came to pick up his own daughter from her swim meets--but never knew who painted them. “I’d hate to see them go simply because we didn’t have enough foresight to deal with the situation.”

Jones is thinking about trying to mobilize today’s high school students, who are largely ignorant of the history of the murals, and about seeking a donation from the Festival of Arts board, which awarded Megan a college scholarship.

She continues to worry. She says she has been shut out of the planning process (for instance, she says, she was not told of the decision that any retention of the murals should be privately funded), and that whenever she has appeared before school officials, they have looked at her “as the pathetic, bereaved mother.”

She is further concerned that Smith’s tenure as superintendent ends in late June and that unless she gets a firm commitment from the school committee by then, she’s going to have to start all over again.

Smith denies that Jones has been shut out. “There hasn’t been in my mind any attempt not to discuss this openly,” he said last week. “We want to involve a lot of people in the process. The reconstruction committee, the board, the architect are all dealing with it. We’re trying to (make a decision) in the context of having information. It’s not as if the bulldozers are coming in tomorrow. We’re a year away.

“I think we all share the same interests. There have never been ‘sides’ on this. As a school system, we have to be sensitive to art. We want to be. There’s a legacy we’re sensitive to. There’s the preservation (issue). There’s the emotionalism of one of our alumni who has given us something. All of these feelings are legitimate.”