Glass Act : Simi Valley: A committee will hold a fund-raiser to try to save Bottle Village, a folk-art landmark, from neglect and ruin.

There was a time when Bottle Village was Simi Valley’s claim to fame, “the only reason we were in the Auto Club book,” Mayor Greg Stratton once joked.

But that was a few years ago, before it was announced that the city would become home to another landmark: the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

And while the Reagan library is scheduled to open in November amid much fanfare, no one knows when--or if--Bottle Village will be reopened. The village, a unique collection of 13 buildings and sculptures constructed from thousands of used bottles and other discarded materials, was closed to the public in 1982 because of unsafe conditions.

There have long been plans to restore the deteriorating structures, but aside from a fence being erected around the one-acre complex at 4595 Cochran St., not much has been done to preserve the county and state historical landmark.

Members of the Preserve Bottle Village Committee, a nonprofit group that inherited the site in 1986, said they have had difficulty raising enough funds just to pay property taxes, much less for restoration work.

But that hasn’t kept the four-member group from trying. The committee plans to hold its first fund-raiser in two years at Moorpark College on Aug. 31. Proceeds will be used to put a new roof on the village’s main building, known as the Round House.

“The site is in major jeopardy,” said Helen Dennert, president of the preservation committee. “Sometimes I have a hard time going there because I’m scared of what I’m going to see. But things are beginning to look up.”

Dennert said the Eco-Beats, a Simi Valley-based repertory group, and the Grandma Prisbrey Players, named after the village’s late creator, Tressa (Grandma) Prisbrey, will present an evening of dance, comedy and poetry at the college’s Forum Theatre. Admission is $10.

Janice Wilson, another member of the preservation group, said she hopes that the event will rekindle public interest in Bottle Village and demonstrate that her group is serious about its restoration efforts.

“This is the first time we’re actually going to do something to one of the buildings to stop deterioration,” said Wilson, who serves as resident caretaker of the village. “And we’re going to continue doing things until all the pieces come together.”

Prisbrey began building her village around her trailer home in 1955 and continued to work on it for more than two decades. She got most of her materials from the city dump, piling used beer bottles, pieces of tile and other assorted materials into the back of her Studebaker pickup and hauling them back to Bottle Village.

Most of the village’s major structures were completed by 1963, each building as different in size and shape as the bottles that each is made of. Over the years, Prisbrey made new additions to the buildings, which she christened with such offbeat names as the Rumpus Room, Home of the Little Mothers and Cleopatra’s Bedroom.

Eventually, word spread about Prisbrey and Bottle Village throughout the art world, and both became the subjects of newspaper and magazine articles as well as television and film documentaries on folk art.

But Prisbrey, who died in 1988 at the age of 92, never considered herself an artist.

“They call me an artist even though I can’t draw a cow that looks like one,” she is quoted as saying in one article. “But I guess there are different kinds of art.”

Whether Bottle Village is art or eyesore is still a subject of debate.

“I don’t consider it a work of art,” said Anna Heglin, a member of the Simi Valley Art Assn. “I think art should require some sort of talent. Any person who’s got a bucket of plaster and some bottles could do it.”

Heglin said her husband, who once owned an auto repair shop on Los Angeles Avenue, used to give Prisbrey a lot of headlights and car parts for her village.

“She was a little strange,” Heglin said.

Heglin said she feels that the village, which is sandwiched between a seniors’ apartment complex and a row of houses, should be picked up and moved to a less visible location.

“I think they can do it,” she said. “They moved the London Bridge.”

Simi Valley City Councilwoman Judy Mikels, who owns an art gallery, said she thinks that the village should be preserved but not at a cost to taxpayers. She said there simply isn’t enough interest among the public to warrant using city money to pay for the village’s restoration or its property taxes.

“I think the general public does not perceive Bottle Village as art. Therefore there isn’t a lot of support for it,” she said. “I think the perception is that it’s--at least from the outside--something of an eyesore.”

Patricia Havens, the city’s historian, said she feels that if the art community wants to preserve the village, it should pay for its restoration.

“If this were really important, somebody would be backing this,” she said. “I wish them the best. But I’m not too worried about it.”

With the few donations that it receives, the preservation committee barely manages to pay its annual property taxes, which this year amounted to more than $800.

Dennert said the committee paid this year’s taxes with donations that it received from a women’s architectural firm and a rock group called the Meat Puppets, which filmed a music video at Bottle Village in June.

Despite its troubles, the village continues to draw attention from the art world. A lengthy article on Prisbrey and her creation recently appeared in an international art magazine.

“It’s funny,” caretaker Wilson said. “Bottle Village still gets more attention from the rest of the world than the community it resides in.”