COMMENTARY : Escondido Public Art Panel Has Courage to Say No

Those who fail to remember history may be condemned to repeat it, as the famous maxim goes, but others who do remember history may choose to repeat it. Such was the case in Escondido this week, when the city’s Public Art Commission voted to reject all three finalists for a $200,000 public art commission ($170,000 for the winner, $30,000 for administrative costs), and to start the process of selecting an artist for the site all over again.

Much the same thing happened three years ago, when dozens of entries in a competition for a public art work at Escondido’s Kit Carson Park were all dismissed as inappropriate for the site, aesthetically inept, or unsafe.

Last Monday, when commissioners rejected the proposals for a sprawling, triangular traffic island at the intersection of El Norte and Centre City parkways, they followed a healthy precedent. Better to say no and be personally liable for it than to approve something only halfheartedly and inflict the consequences on the entire city, as the former chair of the public art committee put it after the 1989 decision.

Besides, the Kit Carson Park commission didn’t die--it was revived and actualized with tremendous success. Christine Oatman’s eloquent, interactive “Eucalyptus Leaf Court” (1991) now stands in the park, which was at first deemed too eclectic a site to accommodate another structure or sculpture. The 30,000-square-foot site for the current commission has a plethora of problems as well, but an equally satisfying conclusion could be had there as well.

That’s what Escondido’s Public Art Commission is hoping for as it begins to sift through more artists’ slides, looking for a new candidate for the challenge. Commissioners are clearer now about what they want, according to Susan Pollack, Escondido’s public art consultant. They may opt to work with a landscape architect, or a team made up of artists and environmental designers.

All three of the recently rejected finalists--Italo Scanga of San Diego, Mauro Staccioli of Milan, Italy, and Christopher Sproat of New York--proposed large, sculptural objects for the site. The commissioners respected the proposals, according to Pollack, but found them to be too similar to the artists’ own past works and not geared enough to the particular site in question. Scanga’s proposal consisted of a 32-foot-high multicolored human figure holding aloft an arched form adorned with sculpted fruit. Staccioli proposed an abstract steel dash that would rise from the sloping site to a height of nearly 50 feet. Sproat’s plan included a house-like structure, a fence, and a large steel animal resting against the site’s existing traffic signal.

Though Scanga’s figure related to the city’s agricultural character, and all three artists incorporated landscaping into their designs, none of the proposals would have truly integrated with the site. The goal was to turn an unusually awkward, barren scrap of land into a northern gateway into Escondido, and each of the artists responded somewhat predictably, scaling their own signature works to fit the site. All three interpreted the gateway theme rather traditionally, by proposing to plant a monumental object on a plot of land and surround it with grass and trees.

None of the artists transformed the space; all simply added to it.

The site begs for an all-encompassing, environmental solution, and there are public artists nationwide who have become adept at such challenges. They are often called upon to clean up the messes made by others, like the planners of these two poorly conjoined parkways in Escondido.

The best solution for this unsightly strip of land would have been not to have created it at all.

Second-best, perhaps, would have been to involve artists in the urban planning from its earliest stages, as is happening more and more frequently with building projects and urban redevelopment throughout the country.

But the third-best scenario is what Escondido’s Public Art Commission faces now--identifying the most creative clean-up crew to embellish, exploit or otherwise improve upon an ugly mistake. The best work for the site may not be one that announces itself as a gateway to the city in blaring letters or massive forms, but one that simply exposes the city’s best intentions--to admit to its aesthetic errors and make amends--a work with a little less ego and a bit more social sympathy.