When Not All Art Gets Equal Treatment

For a city that claims to value the arts, what Santa Ana did is an artistic atrocity.

I’m talking about the defacement of a spectacular cement sculpture that once girded City Hall. The work of art--a permanent mural mounted as part of the building’s original construction in the early 1970s--has been partly obliterated by the expansion of a wing on one side, facing the Civic Center Plaza.

Only about half of the bold relief sculpture is still visible, the strip on the opposite side facing Santa Ana Boulevard. The rest is forever buried under the functional slabs of the Ross Street annex, appended artlessly to the existing structure.

Go see it and weep.

This aesthetic outrage was committed behind the back of the artist, Sergio O’Cadiz, 65, now retired and living in neighboring Orange. The Mexico City-born sculptor and architect was never consulted about the destruction of his work. He found out last year when friends alerted him to what construction crews were doing, but it was too late.

For an artist, this must be like a parent rushing to the scene of an accident to find a child with legs or arms missing.

City officials said they regret the mural mauling, but it couldn’t be helped. City Manger Dave Ream told me they looked for ways to salvage the lost sections, but it wasn’t practical because they were not removable.

“We apologize for that,” Ream said Friday. “We took it very seriously because, quite frankly, I and a number of other people really liked it.”

The soft-spoken O’Cadiz said he has yet to receive a personal apology from the city, which sells itself as “A Place for Art.” The artist hired a lawyer and said he was offered a future commission if he’d just drop the matter.

“I don’t like the position of victim,” O’Cadiz told me in Spanish this week. “I wish the city had responded in a more positive fashion, instead of through lawyers and bureaucrats.”

The case of the entombed mural provides an apt metaphor for a cultural war that’s been percolating for years in Santa Ana, a war over the city’s identity and future development. The city’s predominantly non-Latino establishment has invested millions in the much-touted Artists Village, a plan to develop downtown by attracting an arts school, private studios, galleries and related businesses to a once-neglected section of the city.

But to community activist Enriqueta Ramos, the city’s carelessness with the Mexican sculptor’s work sends a disturbing message: “Not all art is equal.”

From the beginning, cultural tension has hung over the Artists Village, located just a short walk from City Hall. Officials hoped the project would spruce up “the image” of Santa Ana, a working-class town with a Mexican-immigrant majority. The village was to embody a new vision for the city--trendy, tasteful and urbane. A place where South County residents would feel at home, not afraid.

Translation: a place less foreign, less Latino.

Santa Ana officials deny any cultural discrimination. Ream said the city is trying to create attractions that will lure white-collar workers out of their offices to stroll the otherwise blue-collar streets. By pulling people together, said Ream, the village serves as a bridge between cultures, not a barrier.

Critics don’t accuse the city of artistic apartheid. They say the discrimination is more subtle, more a matter of neglect and disinterest than outright hostility. Matthew Cruz is a Mexican-American who opened one of the original galleries in the Santora building, the center of the embryonic Artists village. Three years ago he proposed a plan to create a Plaza de las Artes, a place for the finest in Latin arts and crafts. He sent his proposal to elected officials and other cultural leaders, but got a chilly reception.

“My God! The city hated the idea,” said Cruz, as we sat for lunch this week at the Gypsy Den in the heart of the growing arts colony.

He said some officials worried about the name being in Spanish; they didn’t want to promote the public perception that the village was just another Latino venue.

“You guys keep objecting to this,” Cruz said he responded, “but where do you go in Santa Ana to find the best of Latino arts? What other venue is there?”

Cruz eventually moved his gallery out of the village, where only a handful of Latino artists remain. “It’s not Latino-friendly,” he said. “I don’t think the community feels welcome here.”

Cruz is now director of arts and culture for State Sen. Joe Dunn, a Santa Ana Democrat. In that capacity, he wrote a memo regarding the O’Cadiz mural, urging Santa Ana officials to take an inventory of the city’s public art to avoid a recurrence.

He still has his project on the back burner, renamed “Plaza of the Arts.” He sees it as a place where average residents of Santa Ana can bring their families to enjoy a cultural experience.

“The arts don’t inherently exclude the poor,” said Cruz.

Art should not exclude anyone, said artist Randy Au, another of the original Santora tenants who also closed his gallery there. Au said he’s still committed to the arts-colony concept, but he wants it to be more inclusive, to reflect its surroundings.

And what’s around the Artist Village? Latinos.

Au is planning an event to celebrate the Mexican Day of the Dead at a Santora open house on Nov. 4. The all-day event will feature the building of a community altar and a procession.

For the project, Au has teamed with Teresa Dutrem, a Mexican physician who opened a classy shop of Latino arts and crafts called Carisma, also in Santora on Broadway.

When I dropped in this week, the two were huddling at the shop, hoping to spark more interest in their plans for Dia de los Muertos.

Some factions in the city don’t approve of events that are too “culturally based,” said Au, co-president of the nonprofit Santa Ana Council of Arts and Culture. But he counters that culture can’t be coerced to fit certain tastes or a specific vision.

“What are you going to do?” the Chinese Hawaiian asked his critics rhetorically. “Buy all the buildings, build a fence around this place, and give a secret password only to those people you want to let in? Sure, then you’ll have your control.”

But real art doesn’t work that way. Said Au: “You can’t keep it out. You can’t force it to come in. You just have to let it happen naturally.”

Au sees hope for the village. Artists and locals are starting to mingle more, to feel more comfortable with each other, he said.

Ironically, the partially hidden City Hall sculpture carried a message of cultural harmony. O’Cadiz said his abstract designs evoked subtle Mexican motifs, but blended them smoothly, almost inconspicuously into the whole. It represented a seamless mix of the city’s cultural forces.

That’s a vision worth preserving.

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com