LAGUNA BEACH : She Fuels Drive to Replace Banners

More than two years after a firestorm incinerated most of the outdoor banners that for 10 years had flown during the summer arts festival, the city hopes to hear soon whether it might get federal funds to replace them.

The October 1993 fire, which destroyed or damaged scores of homes, also burned the outdoor banners, which were stored in an artist’s studio.

Six indoor banners that drape the walls of City Council chambers were spared. “Everything the city had--with the exception of those--was destroyed,” said Julita Jones, a city art commissioner who tended the banners.

The commission is awaiting word from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on whether it will reimburse the city for the two dozen banners, valued at $10,000.

Meanwhile, the commission has collected six new ones.

When the banners were first hung in 1982, Jones said, they were intended to celebrate the winter and summer solstices, but that didn’t sit well with some residents.

“There was a group in town who thought they were pagan,” she said. “Two were stolen, and one was burned. At that point, they dropped the theme of the solstices” and flew the banners along Forest Avenue during the festival.

After the fire, Jones said, she contacted the local artists who had created the original banners and offered them the first opportunity to replace their work. Many were happy to comply, she said.

For example, a Top of the World Elementary School teacher who made a banner years ago with a class of kindergarten students asked the same students, who now attend Thurston Middle School, to help her redesign it, Jones said.

Because the banners are so big--14 feet by 40 inches--they offer artists an unusual opportunity to be creative, Jones said.

“A lot of cities have banners, but they’re all little banners, and ours are quite large,” she said. “It really gives the artist a chance to show something. It’s quite distinctive. Nobody else has anything like that.”

In the past, the arts commission sponsored an annual contest, inviting artists to submit designs. The city then paid about $650 to the winning artists to complete their works.

The commission budget currently has enough money for one more banner, Jones said. “If we get the FEMA money, then we can do all kinds of exciting things.”