New York Artist Tries the Public Transit Route in Ventura

To see its parking lot now, with buckled asphalt next to outdated and mismatched architecture, the Buenaventura Mall does not look ripe for art.

But through his sunglasses with the grape-lollipop tint, Dennis Oppenheim sees something. He won’t say what it is, or maybe he doesn’t yet know. But bringing art to a bus stop can be done.

If anything could possible disrupt the city’s latest public art project, a collaboration that several involved have called an experiment, it’s probably right there behind Oppenheim’s sunglasses, his artiste looks and his avant-garde reputation.

A man with whom Oppenheim will have to work closely, project manager Tom Mericle, wears oval-shaped spectacles with tortoise shell trim. His gray suit is double breasted, and he wears a simple tie. Mericle’s short hair stays in place even on a windy day.

In contrast, the New York City artist invited to Ventura this week sports all black--from his blazer to his fraying jeans, except for a worn pair of caramel-colored boots. His thinning gray and blond curls swirl in the breeze.

Getting the practical transit function of Mericle’s project to jibe with Oppenheim’s artistic vision--whatever that may become--is the challenge before a team of architects, engineers and one artist. Those involved in constructing the new bus stop at the Ventura mall say it is an exciting collaboration, but completion of the $818,000 project is nearly a year away, so much is still on the drawing board.

For Oppenheim’s part, working with architects and engineers such as Mericle is something new. Nearly all of his previous sculptures stand alone, perhaps associated with a building or a space, but still clearly independent of it.

Now the well-known sculptor faces a challenge that artists who create for public display continually encounter: to create a work with wide appeal that doesn’t compromise his artistic standards.

Oppenheim’s commission is $100,000 in all--$12,000 for his design, $88,000 to construct and install it. The bus stop’s design, including Oppenheim’s artistic contribution, is due by March, for completion by October.

Until this week, Oppenheim’s only contact with Ventura had been through videoconferences and phone calls. On Thursday, he toured the city and saw the parking lot where his art will go.

“I did come here purposefully with no preconceived notions,” he said, a Minolta camera around his neck to photograph the site.

Trying to get a sense of how the bus stop will look and how its use might affect his artwork, Oppenheim was full of questions for Mericle.

“Where do these buses go? Anyplace?”

“So the people that take these don’t have cars, primarily?”

“The more information, the better,” Oppenheim said, adding a joke that he also will be asking bus riders about the “intimate” details of their lives.

Whatever Oppenheim creates will become part of the mall’s new “transit center,” a fancy term for the bus stop that will carry shoppers to and from the renovated mall and the rest of Ventura, Oxnard, Ojai, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks.

The parking lot that currently sits in front of a Rite Aid drugstore and the mall management’s office will become a buses-only lot, with a central island where riders can wait. The next few months will determine how Oppenheim’s art will fit in.

Accepting public art commissions is the latest stage in Oppenheim’s eclectic career. Now 60, he began in the late 1960s as an earthworks artist, sculpting land to his own design. Then he was into body art, at one point intentionally sunburning himself but leaving the pale outline of a book on his chest.

Oppenheim eventually settled into sculpture, but along the way dabbled in performance art, photography and video. He is considered a father of conceptualism, an art form whose adherents aim to convey ideas rather than create objets d’art.

Oppenheim’s sculptures, which are often kinetic, have run the gamut from the wacky and whimsical to the downright disturbing. He has built an enormous armchair with a swimming pool for a seat, and in another piece, executed Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Lawrence Rinder, who organized an exhibit of some of Oppenheim’s early works, described much of his art as surreal and imaginative--a sort of “Fantasyland for grown-ups.”

“Some of the time it’s edgy, but it’s not always. It’s enchanting,” said Rinder, who now directs the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco.

Oppenheim says his work has shifted recently. He was once among that group of artists who shunned public art in the belief that it restricts creativity and is a form that is often unpopular with critics.

“For about 10 years, I was not interested in public art commissions anywhere,” he said. “At that time, my work seemed to be very inflexible.”

The majority of Oppenheim’s pieces have been shown in Europe and Asia, but lately he has been seeking out more opportunities for public art in the United States.

“I would much prefer doing more here in America,” he said. “I’m more comfortable here.”

Having lived in New York City for 30 years, but a Californian by birth, Oppenheim said his trip to Ventura revived memories of growing up in the Bay Area during the suburban boom of the 1950s.

“I find it very comfortable and very different from what I live in now. . . . Almost like another planet,” he said.

But after little more than a day in Ventura, Oppenheim understandably had little idea about what he would be creating. His sculpture might stand alone, or it might be integrated into the transit center’s overall design.

He has previously promised something unconventional, but Oppenheim said Thursday it won’t be “abusive,” satirical or theoretical. And, he said, it won’t necessarily reinforce any stereotypes of artists as “fugitive, unusual and shocking.”

But for a city that lacks easy access to major museums, Oppenheim hopes whatever he creates will broaden Venturans’ sense of what art is. To do anything less, he said, would be a cop-out.

“To placate the public is really stealing from them the opportunity to see something new and relevant,” he said.

Jessica Cusick, Ventura’s public art director, said the collaborative planning for the transit center will force Oppenheim’s work to evolve and coexist with the overall design.

“It would be extremely unproductive to the process if he did have a preconceived notion of what he was going to do here,” she said.

From his brief visit to Ventura, this other planet, Oppenheim said he does not sense that he needs to shock the city with an artistic jolt, that a “flying saucer” does not need to land here.

“But,” he added with a mischievous look and a drag on his Marlboro, “I wouldn’t dismiss it as a possibility.”