November 10, 2003

Fires Touched Artworks for Port District Project
        
By Ronald W. Powell
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Betsy Schulz's 1,200-pound cement and ceramic sculpture burned in the Cedar fire, but like the mythological phoenix it is being resurrected from the ashes.

It was scheduled to be installed last week on San Diego's North Embarcadero as part of the Port District's "Urban Trees" public art project.

Schulz created the artwork called San Diego Surfboard (Seaweed Cypress) with fellow artist Hans Tegebo, who was keeping the piece at his Harbison Canyon home.

Tegebo's home was among the hundreds of structures destroyed when the Cedar fire swept through Harbison Canyon on Oct. 26. The surfboard sculpture sustained major damage.

While Tegebo seeks an apartment and deals with his insurers, Schulz and several friends are racing to complete repairs to the sculpture. They want to restore it in time to have it included with 29 other works that will be officially unveiled on Saturday.

In a warehouse at the North Embarcadero's cruise ship terminal, ceramic pieces of red, orange, yellow, green and blue are being cleaned, glued and sealed on to the sculpture's cement background. The wildfire's intense heat popped the pieces off their cement foundation.

In a small way, art is imitating life, a very tough life in recent days for thousands of San Diego County residents whose lives were turned topsy-turvy by the fire.

" We're rebuilding (the sculpture) as everyone else will have to rebuild," said Schulz, 35, of Del Mar. "Now that we're putting it back together, all I can think about is how so many people lost everything. I'll probably place a plaque on this to honor those people."

The San Diego Unified Port District commissioned the 30 pieces of art in June for the San Diego waterfront. Once there, port officials hope the line of sculptures will draw visitors along the North Harbor Drive bay front from Broadway Pier to Hawthorn Street.

Getting the public to stroll and linger at the water's edge may also help businesses along the North Embarcadero that are Port District tenants, said Catherine Sass, the port's director of public art.

" We want to make the public and pedestrian areas of the port very friendly and inviting," Sass said. "We want to place visual clues and surprises along the way that tell pedestrians that this is where they're supposed to be."

The $130,000 budget for the Urban Trees project comes from the Port District's public arts fund. Each piece of art is leased to the port by the artist for $2,000. The art will be on display for a year, then will be returned to the artist, who can sell the work.

Included in the budget was the purchase of 30 large concrete planters in which the sculptures will be placed. There are also installation costs, because each work must be lifted into its planter with the assistance of a small crane.

The Port District's Public Art Committee selected the sculptures from 107 proposals. Each artist sent the committee a one-foot scale model of the proposed artwork.

Not every sculpture was created by a full-time artist. Architect John Oleinik, 46, decided to enter on a whim after seeing a flier for the project on an office bulletin board. Was he a frustrated artist at heart?

" Isn't everybody?" Oleinik said with a grin.

He took a literal approach to the Urban Trees project. While others made sculptures of a steel chameleon, a carrot on fabric and puzzle pieces skewered by sharp spikes, Oleinik fashioned a tree with a steel trunk and branches that are tipped by broad leaves made of Plexiglas.

Each leaf is stained with a pigment, solvent and six coats of a sealer. When finished, the leaves have a dark blue cast. But the color becomes lighter when directly hit by the heat of the sun's rays.

The concept was to have the artwork "respond to nature," Oleinik said. After the wildfires, Oleinik decided to make his sculpture an homage to the devastation. He is making one leaf red in memory of those who lost lives and property.

He also will make his sculpture an artistic tribute by affixing to it this haiku:

"One flaming red leaf

Added in remembrance of

Those who suffered loss."

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Photo by Betsy Schulz*
Betsy Schulz's burnt tree sculpture with Hans Tegebo (concrete sculpter on the project) standing in front of his burned down house.

(Photo did not originally accompany article)