Mural Selection Process SPARCs Fire

A controversy about the award for the most prominent site in SPARC’s 1993 “Great Walls Unlimited: Neighborhood Pride” mural competition has prompted a review by the organization’s president and a call for an examination of the program’s selection procedure by one finalist and one of the jurors.

Artist Johanna Poethig of San Francisco has been selected to create a mural for a 64-by-42-foot wall on the downtown BBF Broadway Building at 351 S. Broadway, near the popular Grand Central Market, but there is some question about the procedure under which her work was selected over that of the other finalist, Paul Botello of Los Angeles.

The winning artist and design was to have been selected by a panel that met last month to vote on 10 murals. Decisions were reached on eight, and the two finalists for a ninth mural chose to collaborate on a single design.

The decision on the Broadway mural remains in question, however. (The Dec. 20 Art Notes column incorrectly reported that Botello and Poethig also were collaborating on one mural, but in fact a decision had not yet been reached at that time.)

Two panelists who favored Botello’s design say that despite some confusion over the fact that the artists’ renderings did not match the wall’s dimensions, a vote of 3 to 2 in Botello’s favor was taken. Others say, however, that the vote was just a straw poll.

The artists were told to rework their designs to scale and bring them back for an additional panel review, and according to some panelists, the panel was cautioned by SPARC that factors beyond the designs’ artistic merit, such as the artists’ gender and the fact that Botello had completed a previous SPARC mural in 1989, needed to be considered after revised-to-scale designs were returned. Yet SPARC’s guidelines say that past muralists are eligible, as long as they do not apply for murals two years in a row.

According to Gustavo Leclerc, director of SPARC’s Public Art Program, a second vote was necessary because the original five-member panel was unable to reach a “clear decision” on the designs.

For the second vote, two additional jurors were added to the panel, which did not meet or hold discussions, but instead voted by ballots in late December at their work places after being shown the revised designs. The mural commission was subsequently awarded to Poethig by a vote of 4 to 3.

At question is the vote of UC Irvine lecturer Paul Von Blum, who says now that his vote for Botello in the first round was “tentative.” Von Blum said he switched to Poethig in the second round after the artist presented a substantially different design.

Panelist Wayne Healy, who has collaborated on two SPARC murals, questioned the process used in the Botello-Poethig decision.

“It was not a clean panel,” Healy said. “I went in to just choose the best artwork, but it turned out we had to take 10 points off because Paul had already done a mural, and another 10 points off because there was . . . a preponderance of men (among those selected for the other nine murals). The process ought to be reviewed for next year.”

Botello has appealed the decision to SPARC President Armando Duron, who plans to investigate the panel process and bring it up at SPARC’s Jan. 25 board meeting.

“I want to see whether or not there was anything wrong in the process, but I won’t interfere if it was an artistic decision,” said Duron, who had not yet spoken with panelists when interviewed. “What we need to do is unravel what the actual discussion was. I think the most crucial point is . . . whether or not a vote was taken (on the first panel).”

Meanwhile, Duron also has questions about whether any mural can be completed on the Broadway wall, since it now appears that the cost of cleaning and preparing the large area may be well outside of SPARC’s funding capabilities. In addition, he said, there may be additional prohibitive “liability issues” because SPARC would not be able to insure its usual student assistants to work on the wall, which is obstructed by a metal awning and would therefore require a more dangerous than usual means of suspending the artist and assistants.

GRANTS: L.A. artist Kim Abeles is the big winner in the 1993 J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts grants, securing both an individual artist’s fellowship of $15,000 and organizational funding of $5,000 for a video on her work being produced by the Fellows of Contemporary Art.

In all, five Los Angeles artists and eight local arts groups will share $180,000 in grants and fellowships. In addition to Abeles, $15,000 each will go to conceptual artist Erika Rothenberg, performance artists Elia Arce and William Leavitt and painter David Bungay.

Organizations receiving project support grants are Plaza de la Raza ($17,000 for the upcoming exhibition “Chicano Codices, Encountering Art of the Americas”), the Santa Monica Museum of Art ($16,000 for its 1993 “Artist Project Series” of site-specific installations and performances), Cal State Long Beach’s University Art Museum ($15,000 for its “Centric” series and the artist-in-residence program “InSite”), Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery ($7,000 for the upcoming exhibition “The Death and Resurrection of Nature”) and the Fellows of Contemporary Art (for the Abeles video).

Institutional development grants go to San Pedro’s Angels Gate Cultural Center ($18,000), Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts ($17,000) and Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Complex ($10,000).

Jan. 31 is the deadline for applications for the 1993 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize given by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. The annual $10,000 prize encourages collaborative documentary projects between a photographer and writer such as Lange and Taylor’s noteworthy book “American Exodus,” which recorded living conditions of families as they migrated to California during the 1930s. Information: (919) 687-0486.

EXHIBITIONS: L.A.’s Jamey Bair, Michael Coughlan, Odette De Crecy, Rory Devine, Doug Hammett, Rachel Lachowicz, Robert Levine, Manuel Ocampo, Danny Shain and Laura Stein are among the 60 young painters featured in “Art Under 30: FIAR International Prize,” opening Tuesday at UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery.

The exhibition, organized in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Italian technology manufacturer Fabbrica Italiana Apparecchiature Radioelettriche S.p.A., features 10 artists each from Milan, Rome, Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles (with L.A.’s representatives chosen by curator Mark Selwyn). The exhibition, on view through Valentine’s Day, included a grand prize of 8 million lire (about $2,800), which went to London’s Callum Innes. Los Angeles’ Devine was one of five runners-up receiving 4 million lire each.

A special one-week exhibition of fine art photography from the personal collection of author Paul Monette (“Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir”) goes on view at the Jan Kesner Gallery beginning Saturday. Offered to benefit the Monette/Horowitz Trust, the collection includes works by Ansel Adams, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Margaret Bourke White, Robbert Flick, Dorothea Lange and Man Ray. The nonprofit foundation will support scholarships for research in gay and lesbian studies. Information: (213) 938-6834.

EVENTS: Representatives from 33 of the country’s leading art colleges will be at Otis School of Art and Design today from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. to discuss portfolio development, financial aid and study programs during “Southern California Portfolio Day.” All high school, graduate and transfer art and design students can bring portfolios for critique, and no reservations are necessary. Information: (213) 251-0505.