O.C. Art Review : A Neighborly Display : ‘Community Properties’ a Shrewd Inaugural for Huntington Beach Center

What better way to open a community arts center than with an exhibition about communities? The Huntington Beach Art Center puts out the welcome mat with work by 22 artists working in a range of styles and media. They demonstrate diverse attitudes toward the people, places and political and commercial interests that make up a community.

Guest-curated by Dan R. Talley, a gallery director in Jamestown, N.Y., “Community Properties” joins two other inaugural shows--”How to Start Your Own Country” and “Inney” (all through June 11)--at the 11,000-square-foot center. A former Southern California Edison Co. building, it was rehabilitated at a cost of $1.3 million, the majority of it paid for with private donations.

Much of the art in “Community Properties” appears to have been conceived solely to give visual form to a specific point of view, rather than to explore an idea--intellectual or aesthetic--in an open-ended way. But community art centers exist in a less highbrow relationship to their local audiences than most other visual art institutions, and they are expected to show a broad range of work beyond what is sanctioned by the art world’s pundits.

In that sense, this show represents a shrewd approach on the part of center director Naida Osline. It has something to suit nearly everyone’s taste, and the urgency of the theme gives the show its contemporary, vital pulse.

Angry, eager, proud, frank, sarcastic, sorrowing--these attitudes will be all too familiar to anyone who ever stopped to think about the ways communities too often diverge from the ideal of neighborliness.

The genially subversive centerpiece is “We Are Neighbors,” a viewer-participation installation by Mary-Linn Hughes, a 17-year resident of Huntington Beach.

A real picket fence, the ultimate home-sweet-home symbol, encloses snapshots of local people Hughes met at block parties. Hughes’ text invites viewers to stage their own street celebrations and to send in photos and short texts about their “neighbor relationships,” which will be incorporated into the piece. (A note wryly points out that the city of Huntington Beach requires block party-givers to pay a fee, offer proof of a $1-million liability policy and obtain permission from the appropriate city commission.)

The most amusing work is Richard A. Lou and Robert A. Sanchez’s installation “Los Anthropolocos,” a parody of racist Anglo attitudes among the anthropological establishment, vastly improved over an earlier version seen a few months ago at Saddleback College Art Gallery. The piece includes a video of two Latino scientists tracking down and capturing two cringing, naked members of the “colorless” and a musical cowboy boot that (according to a label) receives radio waves transmitted “over 500 years ago, 36 years before the fall of the colorless empire.”

Also seen recently (at Cal State Fullerton) in a somewhat different version, Sheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry’s installation, “Families Next Door,” stands out for the beautiful simplicity of its concept: Old-fashioned department store photo-portraits of lesbian families, juxtaposed with small black-and-white reproductions of such other traditional and non-traditional units as the Andersons of “Father Knows Best,” the Simpsons and the Holy Family.

Other works that succeed in a gently effective way, without resorting either to shrillness or obscurity, are Pat Berger’s soft-edged realist paintings--which convey the everyday life of homeless men in a sympathetic but unsentimental way--and J. Michael Walker’s colored-pencil drawing “The Holy Family Watches Over My Neighborhood,” a sweet fantasy of a Los Angeles neighborhood protected by the giant, talismanic images of Mary, Joseph and Jesus portrayed as a somber peasant family.

In Karen Atkinson’s AIDS project, “For the Time Being,” parking meters play tapes of texts by various authors when viewers insert coins. Playing on the idea of time running out, it’s another effective piece, although it suffers from some mumbling, nearly inaudible readings.

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“How to Start Your Own Country,” a group of works about social problems and utopian dreams, is made of much rawer stuff. Filled with youthful passions and belief in absolutes, the work represents a collaboration between nationally prominent social activist artist Daniel J. Martinez and students at Huntington Beach High School.

The better pieces combine a brash look with a clear idea (as in Chris Cervantes’ graffiti-styled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” or Jeremy Thomas’ cunningly petite and pretty “Designer Weapons,” displayed just a few inches off the ground).

Le Mai and Cody Thueringer’s “Men,” which incorporates a men’s room sign and bucket of fake urine and feces, may seen gratuitously unpleasant--in fact, a few visitors reportedly have complained about it. But despite a youthful lack of subtlety, the students’ intent was serious. Their statement says the piece is meant to remind viewers of the huge disparity between Western and Third World standards of hygiene.

Martinez’s own installation, “Chariot,” is a visceral commentary on consumption and waste. A grass-lined cart holds human doll bodies with animal heads, a cauliflower and a partially eaten lemon pie. On a TV monitor, a video of a candle flame burns, then is extinguished; it repeats in a continuous loop, to the sound of dripping water.

Jennifer Steinkamp’s installation, “Inney,” projected after dark on the art center’s glass facade, falls prey to technical constraints that dilute the crispness of the image. But the piece does announce the center’s intention to pay attention to strong, innovative new work by recognized artists.

Although it is important for a community center to show art made locally, it is equally crucial for local patrons to see what the larger world of contemporary art is all about.

From anecdotal evidence, some viewers have been surprised to see that not all the art at the center is in traditional media. More exposure to significant art of our time may help familiarize center visitors with the dazzling range of materials used by artists today.

Steinkamp, a 1991 M.F.A. graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena who has shown at UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery and the Long Beach Museum of Art, works with computer-directed video imagery on an environmental scale. Her work involves viewers in whole-body sensory experiences that may involve feelings of vertigo or dislocation as well as purely visual input.

As curator Marilu Knode explains in a brochure--one of several publications issued by the center, in a welcome sign of documentary zeal--Steinkamp based the central image in the piece on the square shape of the top of the tower outside the center.

The pulsing image offers passersby a kaleidoscopic “virtual” trip through a tumbling yellow and pink central area surrounded by a hazy blue field. This continuous centripetal journey also hints at another potential inward movement: that of the viewer whose curiosity is piqued to explore the new center.

* Three shows (all through June 11) at the new Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St., Huntington Beach: “Community Properties,” “How to Start Your Own Country” and “Inney.” Hours: Noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Free. (714) 374-1650.