Poll Could Decide Copper Curtain’s Fate

Hoping to give residents more options for the sculpture this city loves to hate, Councilwoman Elois Zeanah is advocating another public art poll.

The subject again would be the copper curtain, the dull-brown sculpture stuck to the side of the Civic Arts Plaza. Residents would again get a chance to call in and state their artistic preferences to city leaders. But this time, residents would be able to choose different options.

If Zeanah gets her way at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, residents could use the city’s call-in public opinion system to vote for a branching framework proposed by a local architect and widely endorsed by the arts community, a newly proposed mural concept or a full, round oak tree, such as the one used in the city symbol.

“We have to do something to make that monolith fade away,” Zeanah said of the copper curtain, a rectangular sculpture that has been a sore subject for years. “A mural would do that best. But let the public decide.”

Zeanah proposed the suggestion because she was bowled over by an unsolicited mural proposal created by local computer consultant Glen Sievertson. His proposals show a lifelike rendering of a blond hillside capped by a leafy oak tree for the freeway side of the Civic Arts Plaza.

If it is wrong to paint over the copper curtain to create a mural, Zeanah advocates ripping the copper strips down altogether.

Her idea could encounter some opposition at the City Council meeting, however, because residents have already spoken once on the subject, picking their favorite branching framework to be superimposed over the much-maligned curtain.

But Zeanah believes her proposal will encounter wide public support.

“Before there was even a copper curtain, people said ‘Why not a mural depicting the Conejo Valley?”’ she said. “But we never knew the reality of what it would look like. Now we do.”