Art project is being harpooned unfairly

For hundreds of years whales have suffered from the fact that they make big, fat, easy targets.

They seem to be encountering the same fate here in Ventura. And if all I knew about the Wyland Whaling Wall project was what I had gleaned from the headlines, I’d probably be sharpening my harpoon too.

Here is the real story:

The city of Ventura has accumulated more than $800,000 for public art projects. By city ordinance, the money cannot be used for repairing potholes, fixing up libraries or anything other than art in public places.

Most of that money will be going to local area artists, for projects such as art pieces along the Ventura River Bike Trail ($170,000), art to complement the new downtown parking structure ($92,000), art that is currently decorating the California Street Plaza and numerous smaller projects throughout the city.

The total price of the Wyland Whaling Wall would be $250,000, of which $25,000 would be donated by Wyland to the American Oceans Campaign. Of that $250,000 price tag, we would raise at least half from private donations before we ever asked the public art committee for the other $125,000. That is less money than is currently being used for art on the bike trail and completely consistent with what the public art committee spends on its bigger projects. And if we don’t raise our share, the project dies.

Wyland has a lot of fans here in Ventura and around the world. He is internationally recognized and has painted his murals at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at the Biosphere Project in Arizona and around the world from Tokyo to Australia.

Ventura’s mural would be on the California Street freeway offramp wall--a huge, unattractive slab of concrete 500 feet long and 20 feet high, in an area where Ventura presents a very industrial image to those traveling on the Ventura Freeway. Picture the area yourself, with its two overpasses and a railroad trestle, and you will know what I mean.

Architects and environmentalists say that the freeway “completely disconnects Ventura from the ocean environment.” We’re trying to reconnect it.

Wyland would do a mural unique to Ventura, featuring the marine mammals of Channel Islands National Park. That means spectacular images of life-size 100-foot blue whales, gray whales and dolphins.

He has dedicated his life to preserving those mammals through his art. It would be a magnificent work, done quickly and with minimal interference to freeway traffic (an important factor to consider).

The public art committee asks, why not go through our process and hear from other artists? The answer is simply that if the process was willing to give our project fair consideration, we would. But the current public art process has no method for approving projects with a famous artist. All projects are “put out for bid,” if you will, with local artists favored. However well intended, public art processes have frequently led to art projects that are either bureaucratically compromised (the copper curtain), nonfunctional (the Wave Spout) or invisible (California Street Plaza).

We should not take chances with an art project that would be seen by 106,000 people each day. We have an opportunity to bring an internationally renowned muralist to Ventura who will take an eyesore and turn it into an icon.

The Wyland whale mural will be a piece of art in which we can all take pride.