Long-Anticipated Art Center to Open : Culture: Facility aims to help artists and make art more a part of life in Huntington Beach and beyond.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  The signs are everywhere: A boldly colored mural bespeaks Orange County’s ethnic mix. A gallery is filled with quirky assemblages by Huntington Beach High School teens. Other rooms display art that’s fundamentally about people, how we live and who we love and how we do--or don’t--all just get along.

Showcasing work by living artists is a top priority to organizers of the much-anticipated Huntington Beach Art Center, which opens Saturday. But making art more a part of daily life in Surf City--and beyond--is crucial too.

“We want to introduce and maintain a dialogue in this community and bring the work of today’s artists to that dialogue,” said center director Naida Osline, noting that the facility’s reach will extend outside Huntington Beach and Southern California.

The new, 11,500-square-foot contemporary art center, a few blocks from the city’s redeveloped downtown, occupies a 1950s-era Southern California Edison Co. building, an unassuming brick structure that has undergone a $1.3-million reconstruction.

It will greet its first official visitors at a 7:30 p.m. reception Saturday for “Community Properties,” an exhibit with work by 22 artists exploring the concept of community. “How to Start Your Own Country,” the other inaugural show, resulted from an artist-in-residence program in which Daniel J. Martinez worked with the local high schoolers.

The “dialogue” that Osline hopes for after ribbon cutting is long in coming.

Eighteen years ago, the Huntington Beach City Council formed an Allied Arts Board to create a comprehensive municipal arts program. Eight years later, board members pegged the Edison building as a potential site for an arts facility.

Momentum picked up when the city purchased the building for $758,000 in 1988, and the next year, a nonprofit foundation was formed to raise private money to help pay for the project. (Initially, the city was going to foot the entire bill, but it backed off in the process of paying about $12 million to repair the Huntington Beach Pier, badly damaged in a 1988 storm.)

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A series of construction delays followed, however, forcing planners to repeatedly postpone inauguration of the center, originally scheduled for early 1991.

“There have been so many twists and turns and things,” said Osline, hired by the city six years ago to help plan the center. “But what makes this so remarkable is that the building is exactly how we envisioned it so many years ago and the mission is really pure--it’s stayed the same.”

Thirtieth Street Architects of Huntington Beach drafted their renovation design according to organizers’ specifications. The result: two main galleries and a smaller one totaling 4,500 square feet, a studio for classes, a darkroom, a performance-lecture space with a 12-by-24-foot elevated stage, a gift store and a kitchen.

Plans call for thematic group or solo exhibitions occupying the two main galleries to change every eight to 10 weeks. Shows in the third, educational gallery will change every six weeks. No permanent collection will be amassed.

Artists showcased will include emerging local denizens, such as “Community Properties’ ” Mary-Linn Hughes of Huntington Beach, and those with national or international renown, such as L.A.’s Martinez, who has shown across the country and in the prestigious Venice (Italy) Biennale.

Said center curator Marilu Knode: “What’s really important to me is to do work programming that’s intelligent and explains the world we live in. Since we’re a community art center, I also want this to be a springboard. We can become a resource to help artists reach their goals.”

Along those lines, artists may bring in their portfolios for evaluation, and current contemporary art magazines, other materials and networking opportunities will be made available.

As for exhibition opportunities, Knode stressed that “there’s no way we can accommodate everyone,” and that the center will maintain a certain “standard” of excellence.

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Education coordinator Tyler Stallings said that Gallery 3 will cater to artists “working in the community or in an interactive or collaborative way” to show that “art is part of our larger culture.” “How to Create Your Own Country” allowed local teens to fashion out of non-traditional materials any kind of country they chose, such as a land where people live stress-free.

The center will also offer hands-on classes and workshops, lectures, film and video series, live performances and festivals.

One thing it won’t be is a place of play-it-safe art that “wouldn’t upset anyone, but that wouldn’t move anyone either,” Osline said.

“Community Properties,” for instance, includes an installation by L.A. artists Cheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry of photographs of families with lesbian and gay parents. Other works in the multimedia show address race, homelessness, AIDS and the environment.

“There’s no reason to be afraid of dialogue,” Osline said. “In fact, I think institutions that are associated with the government are obligated to support the diversity of their community.”

Added Robert B. Goodrich, chairman of the Huntington Beach Art Center Foundation: “I don’t think anyone in the city expects a contemporary art center to be mundane. I think they want it to present contemporary views and sometimes controversial views.”

The foundation raised about $1 million from businesses and individuals for the center’s remodeling and expects to raise up to $200,000 annually for programming. A $2-million to $3-million endowment, to be built over the next five years, may be used to fund a possible center expansion.

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Other center revenue will come from such sources as admission and membership fees, and the city will cover salaries and utilities, contributing $81,000 to the venue’s $406,000 budget for this year.

Despite recent calls from the new Republican congressional majority to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other federally funded cultural agencies, there is no reason to fear that the Huntington Beach City Council will retract its support, said Ron Hagan, director of the city’s Community Services department.

“The center has lots of support inside City Hall,” Hagan said, “from the staff and the council and certainly from the community. So I don’t think it will become one of those political hot potatoes where you’d have to protect the funding from some attack.”

In fact, Mayor Victor Leipzig, a center supporter, said the center can greatly benefit the community economically.

“We hope to see our downtown become an active tourist destination,” Leipzig said, “and the arts are an important part of that.”

City cultural services manager Michael Mudd, hired nearly a decade ago to make the center a reality, cites a loftier payoff.

“It’s going to give our community a chance to address through the visual arts the social and political issues that all communities are faced with today.”

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Surf City Gets an Art Center The Huntington Beach Art Center opens Saturday after nearly two decades in the planning. The 11,500- square- foot center occupies the old Southern California Edison building, which underwent a $1.3- million renovation.

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Art Center Action

The new Huntington Beach Art Center will open Saturday with three exhibits.

* Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday, noon to 8 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

* Admission: $3

* Information: (714) 374-1650

INAUGURAL EXHIBITIONS

* Galleries 1 and 2: “Community Properties,” works by 22 contemporary artists from Southern California and around the country. Curated by Dan R. Talley, special project director, the Forum Gallery, Jamestown, N.Y.

* Gallery 3: “How to Start Your Own Country,” works by Huntington Beach High School students created during a weeklong workshop with artist-in-residence and UCI assistant professor Daniel J. Martinez

* Center entryway: “Inney,” a video installation by Jennifer SteinkampUPCOMING ACTIVITIES

Future exhibits in Galleries 1 and 2; dates tentative:

* June 24-Sept. 4: “Weird Science,” a group show exploring the impact of science and technology on daily life. Curated by Marilu Knode

* Sept. 16-Nov. 26: “Komar & Melamid: People’s Choice,” an installation by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid featuring two paintings determined through a national poll to be “America’s Most Wanted” and “America’s Most Unwanted.” Organized by New York’s Alternative Museum, the Nation Institution, and Komar and Melamid

* Dec. 9-Jan. 29, 1996: “Documenta at the Huntington Beach Art Center,” a group show of local and regional artists’ work. Organized by Los Angeles artist Bill Radowec

* Feb. 17-April 21, 1996: Solo exhibits of work by Uta Barth (L.A.) and Tony Oursler (New York)

* April 20, 1996: Begins intermittent series of lectures (Thursday nights), new and independent films and videos (Friday nights) and live arts events (Saturday nights). Call for programs. Prices to be determined