A Santa Monica Gallery Is the Site for Chinatown Project

“Passage: A Public Art Proposal for Chinatown,” designed by four Chinese-American artists hoping to bring more contemporary art to Chinatown, is on exhibit at Santa Monica’s Merging One Gallery through July 30.

The project’s highlight is Carol Nye’s plan for black-and-white bilingual photo billboards featuring pioneering Chinese immigrant women. On view in the gallery are two striking photo-posters, one of aviator Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, the only woman pilot in the Chinese Flying Academy and a member of Amelia Earhart’s “99 Club,” and of restaurateur Yui Hai Seto, one of the first Chinese women to arrive in L.A.’s Chinatown in 1922.

Diana Wong’s plan for “The Way of Fortune” is a 50-foot-high Buddha head with its mouth sculpted to resemble a giant fortune cookie, proposed for the wall of Hill Street’s Alpine Building. The piece addresses Chinatown’s combination of old and new ways, as well as what the artist calls America’s “fortune cookie” culture of instant gratification.

Also on view are Betty Phoenix Wan’s bold red, white and black prototypes for bilingual, environmentally themed bus stop benches, which she hopes to paint at six locations on Hill Street. Also proposing to paint bus stop benches (on Broadway) is Hing Alan Cheung, who uses architectural and nature-based images to illustrate the fusion of Western and Eastern values.

GALLERIES: The local scene has a new addition this month with the opening of the Julie Rico Gallery, at 2623 Main St., Santa Monica.

Rico, who formerly owned downtown’s Rico Gallery before joining Robert Berman as the director of Santa Monica’s B-1, opened her new gallery last week with a show of original works, prints and etchings by the late Carlos Almaraz (through next Sunday).

The gallery’s first opening reception will be on Aug. 6 for a Chicano group show featuring Almaraz, Diane Gamboa, Gilbert (Magu) Lujan, Eloy Torrez and David Serrano.

SHE’S BACK: Susan Landau, former co-owner of Santa Monica’s defunct Krygier/Landau Gallery, is back on the scene with a new appointment-only gallery program run out of her home. The inaugural exhibition, “Wallworks” (through Aug. 15), features 10 artists including Jill Giegerich, Keith Sonnier, Ross Rudel and Mike Gonzalez. Information: (310) 447-3014.

WINDOW SHOPPING: The first installment of “Homesite,” a series of multimedia public art installations involving works by more than 30 artists including John Baldessari, Habib Kheradyar and Daniel Veneciano, is on view in Space 272 on the second floor of the Westside Pavilion through Aug. 6. The series was designed by Joyce Dallal and Lauren M. Kasmer as an investigation of the concepts of “home” and “city” in Los Angeles. Future installations will be at the Promenade at Woodland Hills (Aug. 8-31), 398 West 6th St. in downtown San Pedro (Sept. 5-30) and downtown L.A.’s Cooper Building (Oct. 10-31). Information: (213) 221-8384.

STUDENT EXHIBITION: “Death by Chocolate” highlights work from the experimental Santa Monica College of Design, Art and Architecture. The show of painting, mixed-media, sculpture and assemblage by 20 student and faculty artists is at Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences’ Sam Francis Gallery through July 31. Information: (310) 829-7391.

SELECTED: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois has been chosen to represent the United States at the 1993 Venice Biennale, where she will exhibit works in stone, metal and wood made since 1984, plus two new works created for the Biennale. In addition, installation artist Fred Wilson will represent the United States in the 1992 Cairo Biennial, which will be held in December. His installation will investigate and compare Victorian and contemporary African-American fascination with Egyptian culture and history. The exhibitions are mounted by the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Information Agency, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust.

GOODBY: Phyllis Plous, curator of UC Santa Barbara’s University Art Museum for 20 years, has left the museum to become an independent curator. The last exhibition curated by Plous, “Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art,” was seen in Los Angeles last month at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. A committee has been formed to select Plous’ successor.

GRANTS: Los Angeles painters Linda Stark and Thaddeus Strode and Claremont-based artist Phyllis McGibbon are among 20 recipients from five states of 1992 WESTAF/NEA Regional Fellowships in painting and works on paper. Each winner will receive an unrestricted $5,000 cash award, inclusion in a four-color catalogue, and up to $1,000 to be used by nonprofit institutions to exhibit their works. Other California-based recipients are Greg Reser of San Diego, Tony Cockrell of Boulder Creek, Joy Broom of Martinez, Enrique Chagoya of Oakland and Robert Schwartz of San Francisco.

Three Southern California museums are among six institutions nationwide sharing $1.95 million in traveling exhibition support from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The L.A. County Museum of Art will receive $300,000 for the 1995 show “The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity,” a survey of “modernist” sculpture from 1890-1945; San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Arts will get $400,000 for “Points of Entry,” three photography exhibitions (in 1994, ’95 and ‘96) exploring immigrant cultures and their incorporation into mainstream American society; and the San Diego Museum of Art will receive $200,000 for “Visions of a New World: Artists and the Explorers of the West,” a 1995 show of artists who accompanied expeditions from 1800-1879. Other recipients are Art Services International in Alexandria, Va. ($350,000), Indianapolis’ National Art Museum of Sport ($500,000) and Yale University Art Gallery ($200,000).

The Natural History Museum of L.A. County is the lone California recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ 1992 Preservation and Access Grants, receiving $1 million to help rehouse its collections of American material culture. The grant will also pay for mobile storage units, improved security, climate control and a fire suppression system.

Six artists have won four $2,500 artist-in-residence grants for on-site projects at Santa Monica Place shopping mall. Nicola Rosalie Atkinson-Griffith will mount “Pair of Shoes,” a temporary installation focusing on the interdependence of the worker, merchant and consumer; Elena Mary Siff will produce “Speaking Thunder,” an interactive installation about people with developmental disabilities; Zoot will work with local teens to present a performance and fashion show of wearable art reflecting cultural pride, and the team of Karen Lee C. Akamine, Mary-Linn Hughes and Reginald Zachary will mount “4 lbs. a day: The House of Garbage Stories,” an interactive installation about human consumption and waste. The projects begin in August.

Artist Cathy Salser is the first recipient of the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art’s new annual mentor program, HEAL, which awards $500 to women artists working in community centers. Salser, a painter who works at the Sojourn Shelter for battered women in Santa Monica, recently completed a four-month, 13-state tour of 32 such shelters for a project on “Choices: Women’s Empowerment Through Art.”

DEADLINES: SPARC will commission 10 murals for its 1992-93 “Great Walls Unlimited” program, including five $10,000 commissions for experienced muralists and five $5,000 commissions for first-time or less-experienced artists. The application deadline is Aug. 14; workshops for applicants will be held on Saturday and July 29. Information: (310) 822-9560.

Aug. 1 is the slide deadline for the Los Angeles Printmaking Society’s “12th National Exhibition,” to be held Jan. 20-Feb. 20 at Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery and the Palos Verdes Art Center. All print media except traditional photography will be accepted; $3,000 in awards will be made. UCLA’s Henry Hopkins will jury the event. Information: (818) 786-4350.

EVENTS: Los Angeles artists, arts organizations and designers are invited to a brainstorming session for the Community Redevelopment Agency’s Downtown Strategic Plan, which will include proposals for the cultural life of downtown for the next 20 years. The Wednesday session runs from 9 a.m.-1 p.m., in the Central Library auditorium at 433 S. Spring St. Information: (213) 977-1771.

The Santa Monica Heritage Museum is holding a “Treasure Hunt” with more than 100 prints by contemporary artists including Carlos Almaraz, Tony Berlant and Frank Stella, plus antiques and other goods on sale Thursday through Aug. 2. Information: (310) 392-8537.

Seven downtown Ventura galleries will participate in the second annual Ventura Gallery Walk, on Friday from 5-8 p.m. Information: (805) 652-2820.