Final Dress Rehearsal for the "Solar Web" Show(down): A Theatrical Program for the Byzantine Bureaucratic Drama

By Jorge Casuso

It was the final dress rehearsal for next month's City Council show(down), the "Solar Web," and by the time the cast approached the podium at the Recreation and Parks Commission special meeting Wednesday night, the plot line had been finalized and the principal players all had their parts down pat.

The final decision to recommend that the council not approve the contract to build the beach sculpture - it is unsafe and poorly placed, five of the six commissioners present agreed - was almost anti-climactic.

For the benefit of the council audience and viewers at home, The Lookout has prepared a program containing a brief synopsis of the story line and a cast of characters in the Byzantine bureaucratic drama, "Solar Web: The Final Installment." (NOTE: A date for the performance has yet to be set.)

Plot
The story begins a decade and a half ago, when arts champion Bruria Finkel wakes up at 3 a.m. from a dream. She dreamed that Santa Monica beach would be a perfect canvass for a string of public art works that would interact with the natural elements - the sand and sea, the wind and the sun. The "Solar Web" would be the crown jewel of this sculptural necklace, an astronomical sculpture/jungle gym that marks the summer and winter solstices.

For the next dozen years, "Solar Web" winds its way through a bureaucratic maze of boards and commissions - the Architectural Review Board, the Planning Commission, the Recreation and Parks Commission, the Arts Commission, the City Council, the California Coastal Commission and back through the cycle again as part of a Local Coastal Arts Plan.

When it finally emerges, the proposed sculpture is ready to be transformed from an artist's dream into a three dimensional reality - a 72-foot-long by 16-foot-high aluminum structure on the southern fringes of Santa Monica beach. An engineering study is conducted, and $270,000 lined up to construct the sculpture by Nancy Holt, whose star had risen in those 15 years to the top of the environmental art world.

But just when the dream is about to take shape, an unlikely alliance of opponents steps forward to try to disentangle the carefully woven web.

Cast
•Bruria Finkel, the artist and former arts commissioner who first dreamed up the "Solar Web" and the driving force in Santa Monica's art world. Finkel often hand-picks the commissioners who have the power to approve or kill public art works. A rent board commissioner, she also is politically well connected. Her cast of supporting characters includes arts commissioners Jorge Pardo and Alice Fellows, who are particularly vocal champions of the work.

• Environmental artist Nancy Holt, who has compared her creation to those of nature. She has placed large tubes in open fields and circular pools beside pristine river beds. Champions of her art say her works force the viewer to experience nature with fresh eyes. Opponents say they are eyesores that mar the perfect creation.

• Jean Ann Holbrook, wife of Councilman Robert Holbrook, has spent months poring over official documents. Her conclusion: the solar web is a danger to children, who will view it as a jungle gym. In many ways, Holbrook represents Finkel's opposing political force.

• Insurance broker Bob Gabriel, a former city councilman who for years has warned that the sculpture is an "attractive nuisance" and legal liability inviting an accident that will cost the city millions of dollars. Gabriel has fought the sculpture since its inception.

• Composer,Peter Davison, who loves art but can't see why sculpture should clutter the pristine stretch of beach he visits every morning. Davison predicts the web will be a makeshift home for shiftless drifters and a danger to climbing tots. Writes long diatribes that are widely disseminated.

• Bob Friday, a resident of the nearby Sea Colony, an upscale residential complex, who argues that the sculpture obscures an unobstructed sweep of sand and sea. Waxes poetic in extemporaneous speeches about the beauty of the setting sun.

• Political satirist Harry Shearer, a lover of nature who likes to spin jokes and complain about how the city never properly notices the public meetings. At Wednesday's dress rehearsal, Shearer compared the beach sculpture to a wedding gift with strings attached - the newlyweds must move to Tahoe.

•Rosario Perry, an attorney who brings to the debate a disarming and often humorous style he normally reserves for the rent board, where he is an omnipresent opponent. Likes to wear dog-themed Hawaiian-style shirts and white socks.

• Deus ex machina (in Classical drama a god brought in by stage machinery to solve difficulties). Former Santa Monica mayor Dennis Zane could be the behind the scenes force that unexpectedly appears and sways a majority of the council to support the "Solar Web." Zane, one of the co-chairs of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, which controls five of the seven council seats, made his only appearance in the debate during the final dress rehearsal, where he said the work offers "the entire community an opportunity for celebration and reverence." By taking part in the show(down) Zane could be putting his political neck on the line.

Memorable Passages
Count on some of these lines to be uttered before the council:

"Someone tried to put a sculpture of David in the city and that became the most controversial project - a big naked white guy in a public setting." - Jorge Pardo.

"It is a beautiful work of art." - Bruria Finkel.

"We're insured after the first million. We're not insured for the punitive damages." - Bob Gabriel.

"Nothing is more inspiring by a pristine beach than to see the sun go up and down and the moon smile down at the great ocean that it does control." - Emmalie Hodgin.