Long Beach Students Design Showcase for Christo Works

The assignment before a group of Cal State Long Beach design students was to create an exhibit showcasing past and future projects of world-famous landscape artist Christo--not emulate his near-mistakes.

But less than a week before the opening of the exhibit Tuesday, the students found themselves stuck in much the same position the artist faced while surrounding Miami’s Biscayne Bay islands in 1983: the absence of the material needed to complete the project. Not to worry, the beige canvas that now lines parts of the exhibit finally arrived, in time for a brief visit by Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude.

The irony of the last-minute arrival was not lost on Jan Montoya, who studied the artist’s works along with fellow project designers.

“This parallels a Christo work in many ways,” he said Tuesday while he and other students vacuumed and spruced up the exhibit just minutes before Christo’s arrival.

The use of recycled cardboard to line the walls of the show also was inspired by the ecologically sensitive artist, Montoya said. So was the exhibit’s curving, asymmetric design. “We wanted to literally create an environment that you could walk around,” he said.

The result clearly pleased the 61-year-old Bulgarian-born artist, who was in town for a university-sponsored speech on “Wrapped Reichstag,” one of his more famous works, in which he covered the Berlin landmark with fabric.

Upon entering the exhibit Tuesday afternoon, his first words were: “Exciting--all these walls.” It was all the compliment design student Femiriani “Fifi” Elkos needed.

She also got to meet the artist, as did the other students whose exhibit design was selected from among four blueprints. What struck her most about the artist, she said, was his graciousness.

“He’s a very humble guy for such big projects,” she said.