Art Orange County

Dr. Rosayln M. Laudati and her husband, Dr. James B. Pick, live in Corona del Mar with an eclectic, serious-minded art collection including work by Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Eduardo Paolozzi and Edouard Vuillard. When they want to add to their holdings, they don't browse in Laguna Beach--or anywhere else in Orange County--even though there are hundreds of art galleries here. They usually head for Los Angeles. "I don't know of any serious gallery in Orange County," Laudati said.

Molly Lyon, a patron of the arts and an outspoken liberal in conservative Orange County, has died. She was 74. Lyon, one of the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and a board member of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, died Sunday of complications from lung cancer in her Newport Beach home. Born in British Columbia, Lyon plunged into politics in 1964, six years after she moved to Orange County.

W as 1988 the year of the dead in the Orange County arts scene? Well, it was the year Pacific Symphony conductor Keith Clark was termed "a dead fish," the year William Shakespeare was nearly a dead duck in Garden Grove and the year the rock zanies in Oingo Boingo held yet another "Dead Man's Party" at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. Jokes notwithstanding, there were encouraging signs of life locally.

Elmer Bischoff wasn't the most famous of 20th century San Francisco Bay Area painters, but in his own idealistic and individualistic way, he loomed bright. At least that is the message of Susan Landauer, chief curator at the San Jose Museum of Art and guest curator of "Grand Lyricist: The Art of Elmer Bischoff," an exhibition on view at the Orange County Museum of Art through May 19.

A recent study by Total Research Corp. in Princeton, N.J., concludes that American consumers tend to determine quality on the basis of whether products are sophisticated, practical, sentimental, project an image of energy, provide relief or escape, help make them more popular or reflect a "new traditionalism." Hmm. Looks like Newport Harbor and the Laguna Art museums took a leaf from that book when they dreamed up solicitation letters for their membership drives.

The good fairy came to Orange County the other day to try to get a decent tan and do some shopping. We asked her what she would be giving the visual art scene in the '90s. "Sorry, I'm off duty," she murmured, setting the alarm on her Porsche. We begged her for just a moment of her time. "Well, off the top of my head. . . ." She adjusted her faux tortoise sunglasses with a flourish. "Perhaps an open mind." Come again? "You know how it is," she said, picking her way across the mall's parking lot and waving her wand imperiously at cars that speeded up at the crosswalks.

At the outset of the '80s, if someone asked me where Orange County was, I'd have said "in New York state." (Yes, they have one too.) It wasn't until 1985 that I left Berkeley for the land of nodding oil pumps, aerobics acolytes, not-in-my-back-yard conservatives and passionate love affairs with money and earthly goods. So my view of the decade has a certain Johnny-come-lately flavor, I'll admit.

Behind every successful promotion lies a great strategy. --Corporate letterhead, Worldwide Promotional Productions Inc. Sergio Franchi first entered Tony Paleno's life a generation ago, when Paleno saw him during one of Franchi's many appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show." "I loved his voice the moment I heard it," recalled Paleno, now 59. "I started following his career, and he's just tremendous."

A display of condoms floating in 19 jars of honey, shown at a summer art exhibit here, stirred up a brief tempest that has left the community with unexpected and lingering questions about artistic freedom and censorship. The protest over the display, titled "Our Dilemma," is giving the city's fledgling arts colony--the first such publicly funded enterprise in Orange County--its first real recognition and, some say, validity.

No streets, no towns, no homes, no people. Just majestic, sun-drenched landscape. Nature, unspoiled, in all her transcendent glory. With a few notable exceptions, that's what distinguished the art that poured forth from Laguna Beach in the early 20th century from the work that came out of three prominent East Coast art colonies, the subject of an ambitious new exhibit at Laguna Art Museum.

Used to be, the play was the only thing. Now upscale jewelers are sharing the spotlight at Orange County arts events. From souvenir giveaways to breathtaking jewel exhibits, international corporations such as Tiffany & Co., Mikimoto and Cartier in Costa Mesa are using arts events as marketing vehicles--opportunities to showcase merchandise. Upscale jewelers draw from annual special-events budgets in the six-figure range to make cash and in-kind donations to arts organizations.

No streets, no towns, no homes, no people. Just majestic, sun-drenched landscape. Nature, unspoiled, in all her transcendent glory. With a few notable exceptions, that's what distinguished the art that poured forth from Laguna Beach in the early 20th century from the work that came out of three prominent East Coast art colonies, the subject of an ambitious new exhibit at Laguna Art Museum.

In the late 1960s, my friend Susan Leeper and I had our first jobs working for competing newspapers, and we shared several rentals here. In our determination to be hip, we would have sneered at the artists who painted here at the turn of the century--if we'd heard of them. In subsequent years, however, we came to appreciate their work, which captured the essence of the early 20th century California landscape as faithfully as the French masters had captured theirs in the 19th century.

It's only $2,500, but Huntington Beach artist Anna Friesen, 52, was deeply moved over winning her first grant. "People think an artist brings a political agenda or a personal aesthetic to a community, but we really bring the energy of hope," Friesen said. "This validates hope." Friesen will use the grant to create large-scale photographs for a 1999 solo exhibition at the Huntington Beach Art Center.

What to watch for in 1997? * The appointment of a new president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. "We hope to fill the position around February," center Chairman Mark Chapin Johnson said. "There will be no single more important thing [I do] in my tenure." * January's christening of the Orange County Museum of Art on the site of the expanded Newport Harbor Art Museum.

To emphasize the importance of arts and cultural activities to Laguna Beach, the city arts commission will present its Community Cultural Arts Plan to the City Council tonight. The presentation will include a list of recommendations to "sustain the integrity of cultural arts within the community into the 21st century" by encouraging cooperation among the city, schools and the business and art communities, commissioners said.

To emphasize the importance of arts and cultural activities to Laguna Beach, the city arts commission will present its Community Cultural Arts Plan to the City Council tonight. The presentation will include a list of recommendations to "sustain the integrity of cultural arts within the community into the 21st century" by encouraging cooperation among the city, schools and the business and art communities, commissioners said.

The City Council this week delayed approval of a new title for an unfinished seven-foot sculpture and a $550 expenditure for an accompanying inscription of verses until it gets more information about the project. In February, 1991, the city approved an agreement with artist Guy Angelo Wilson of Diamond Bar to sculpt two seven-foot figures--one male, one female.

It was the best of sites, it was the worst of sites--depending on what kind of art you were purveying and what kind of expectations you had. The following is a brief tale of three alternative arts emporiums on Santa Ana's sleepy North Main Street, an area city planners and dreamers envision as part of an enhanced arts district.

If you write a check to support an art show developed by a museum, you'll probably get the red-carpet treatment. But what if you're an aspiring patron who dreams of hands-on involvement in exhibitions, from the selection of a proposal to the choice of a venue? This Walter Mitty-style dream comes true every year for active members of the Fellows of Contemporary Art, sponsors of "Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place" at the Laguna Art Museum through Jan. 21.