Visual Arts Panel Has Designs on Civic Plaza : Thousand Oaks: Group wants paintings, sculpture and other works filling complex’s hallways and terraces.

Hoping to attract major traveling museum shows from around the country to Thousand Oaks, a new group has plans to turn some of the vast hallways and terraces in the Civic Arts Plaza into public exhibit space for the visual arts.

What the Civic Arts Plaza Visual Arts Committee wants is for people to come from around the region not just to see comedians such as Bill Cosby and crooners such as Tony Bennett, but to enjoy paintings, sculpture and other artworks.

Members want to dispel the idea that the vast structure next to the Ventura Freeway is an unwelcoming monolith by humanizing its bare walls and long, empty corridors.

“I want people to start thinking of this building as theirs,” committee Chairwoman Marta Timm said. “When they refer to it as ‘yours’ to me, I always correct them and say, ‘No, it’s ours.’ ”

A welcome side effect of the committee’s work may be to lay to rest charges that the visual arts are too often neglected in the Conejo Valley.

“Some of the people in the visual arts feel like they are playing second fiddle to the performing arts now,” said Rudyard Beldner, president of the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley, which operates a city-owned art gallery for local artists in Newbury Park, next to the library.

Although the idea of a rotating exhibit space at the Civic Arts Plaza is welcomed, many argue that museum space should have been set aside in the original plans.

“This is a great idea,” Arts Council member Nancy Peloso said. “But it would have been great if we had had an art museum attached to the plaza, a place that people could have viewed during intermissions. It’ll never give us what a room of our own would have done.”

Even without a core gallery space to work with, Timm sees a wealth of potential when she looks around the Civic Arts Plaza. Peeking down into the outdoor garden area next to City Hall offices--now the home of two small ficus trees and a few pieces of black patio furniture--she pictures a sculpture garden inside the pale walls.

Her vision is for something grand, for the Civic Arts Plaza to draw traveling exhibits of high enough caliber to match the scale of the building.

“Georgia O’Keeffe, now she would look smashing in here,” Timm said, measuring the pale purple walls in the Performing Arts Center with her eyes. “But who is going to fund that?”

Who indeed? Since the city has already invested $64 million into the building’s construction and $22 million into acquiring the land, it is unlikely it would provide any funding to the fledging group.

“I think they should plan on private funding,” Mayor Jaime Zukowski said ruefully. “The ‘80s are over.”

Timm hopes to build an endowment through grants and art sales.

“We basically have been given no funds to work with,” she said. “Which means we have to start from scratch. People have really responded to the theater’s fund raising, but I have no seats they could put their names on, or anything like that.”

The challenges are many, security risks being the biggest. There is only one area--the Founders Lounge--inside the performing arts center that is now secure. With any major exhibit, the committee would have to hire a security firm to protect the art.

Hanging the art is also a problem. Drilling holes in the pristine lilac walls of the center is not allowed, so Timm has to work around that.

Logically, to Timm and others, the Conejo Valley seems like an ideal site for a thriving arts community. There are plenty of wealthy people in the area, private collectors who live nearby and many artists working from home studios. But these elements have never quite coalesced. That is a shame, city Arts Commissioner Patricia Grant said.

“There is a real need for a permanent museum in Thousand Oaks,” Grant said. “There is no doubt about that.”

Technically, Thousand Oaks does have one art museum. The Conejo Valley Art Museum was founded in 1978 as a nonprofit private corporation. It has never been able to find a permanent home, however, despite the promise by a Santa Barbara man that as soon as they do he will give them $5 million in art from his private collection.

Without an endowment and beset with funding problems, the museum has wandered nomad-like around the city, ending up in February, 1991, in an incongruous setting between Sears and Toys R Us in the Janss Mall.

The small storefront there has been given to the museum by mall developer Bill Janss rent free since then, but major mall renovations will force the museum to shut down Saturday.

In its storefront setting, it looks more like a gallery than a true museum, and director Maria Dessornes said she is anxious to eventually find a more stately, permanent home for the museum.

She said she asked the city to reserve space in the Civic Arts Plaza for the museum. But with no permanent collection or endowment, she said the city did not believe the museum had any financial assets to offer the project.

The city’s cultural liaison, Carol Williams, said city officials do have serious questions on the museum’s financial stability, largely because of an agreement between the two that went sour several years ago. At one time, the museum was given rent-free space in a city-owned building on Wilbur Road. The museum, however, was to be responsible for its own utility bills.

By the time the museum left Wilbur Road, it had accumulated a utility bill of about $14,000. After wrangling over the debt for a while, Dessornes said the museum agreed to pay it off a little at a time. But the museum’s only sources of income are from private donations and revenue from the annual Artwalk, which usually raises about $15,000, she said.

Although the city has not charged interest on the amount, the museum still owes $10,016, according to Williams. The last payment made was $25 in September. As a result, relations between the two parties have been distinctly cool.

“It’s difficult when they owe us money and then they come and ask us for more,” Williams said. “It amazes me that they do that. They should pay off their debt to us.”

Dessornes has not given up on the museum. She hopes to operate from a small office--it may end up being in her home--until a suitable space can be found.

But meanwhile, other members of the arts community have clearly moved on, some focusing their attentions on the new project. Some say they felt Dessornes did not welcome help, instead taking on more and more responsibility at the museum as the years went on.

“My feeling is that the museum would do better if it took to the pattern of other local arts groups and operated on a democratic basis,” said one arts representative who declined to be identified. “Maria runs it as a one-man show.”

Dessornes said dwindling numbers of volunteers have forced her to wear many hats at the museum, which may lend to the impression that she is unwilling to delegate responsibility.

“The only thing that I probably have done too much of is the fact that some of them have resigned and I have taken on those responsibilities,” she said. “But the show must go on, you can’t wait until you find somebody else.”

Dessornes does not get a salary, despite the fact that running the museum has become a full-time job. That is typical of working in the arts, she said.

“There’s a lot of people that would not take my job,” she said.

Timm has a similar philosophical attitude on the lack of monetary compensation for her work at the Civic Arts Plaza. Williams met Timm while she was volunteering on this year’s Artwalk and asked her to head up the committee.

At 29, Timm is just finishing up a degree in art history at Cal State Northridge’s Ventura campus. Taking on a challenge of these proportions is a little daunting, but will be worth it if she can pull it off, she said.

“It was too good to pass up,” she said. “If I had said no, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

FYI

The Civic Arts Plaza Visual Arts Committee is looking for new volunteers. Contact Marta Timm at (818) 879-5217.