Death claims 2 key O.C. visionary and activist arts leaders in span of 11 days
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Sept. 25. I’m Carol Cormaci bringing you this week’s TimesOC newsletter with a look at some of the latest local news and events.
Word came to us last week that two Orange County men, both known widely for activism in championing the arts, recently passed away. They were Don Cribb, whose vision became the Santa Ana Artists Village and G. Ray Kerciu, a Laguna Beach artist who in the 1990s helped save the Laguna Art Museum from a takeover.
Kerciu, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award just four months before his Aug. 25 death at the age of 90, was remembered in this news obituary by people interviewed by Daily Pilot reporter Sara Cardine as a person who was skilled at rallying others for a cause he was passionate about.
“He was willing to go to battle when something didn’t seem right,” Julie Perlin Lee, executive director of the Laguna Art Museum told Cardine. “And when he had the right people in place, he passed the mantle and moved on — he was very much a fixture in our community.”
His penchant for activism showed early. Cardine learned a great deal about the man from a profile on the late artist by a neighbor of Kerciu, Barbara McMurray. In that profile she detailed how in 1962, while the prolific artist was serving as a visiting professor at the University of Mississippi at the time a Supreme Court ruling allowed Black student James Meredith to attend classes on the segregated campus, Kerciu created works for an exhibition centered around themes of bigotry and racial justice.
One artwork he created during that turbulent time featured his depiction of a pin worn by segregationists at the time, with Confederacy-inspired stars and bars in the background. Only in his work, the flag was covered with racial slurs. This landed him in jail and attracted “a media frenzy and letters of support from John Steinbeck and Malcolm X, who reportedly told the artist, ‘Get those Dixie rats!’” according to the story.
Santa Ana owes much to the other arts champion the county lost in recent days, Don Cribb, who passed away Sept. 4 at the age of 77.
Having founded the Santa Ana Council of Arts and Culture in 1987, he began that same year proposing to his friend Miguel Pulido an artists colony because he “believed such a colony could go a long way toward overhauling the city’s reputation for gangs, poverty and crime,” according to the news obituary on Cribb written by my TimesOC colleague Gabriel San Román.
“We would start talking about what was possible,” said Pulido, who later served for years as Santa Ana’s mayor, from 1994 to 2020. “I credit Don with developing much of the concept of an artists village in downtown Santa Ana. Many others worked on it, but Don was an early visionary.”
As a young man Cribb established connections with artists like Andy Warhol and David Hockney. Even then he wanted Santa Ana to become a reputation as a haven for the arts. To that end, he founded the Arts and Culture Council.
“Cribb conceptualized a vibrant arts colony as a rebellion against the beige ‘blandscape’ of Orange County suburbia,” San Román reported.
“It’s a vision that was initially ignored until Hockney, a personal friend who painted a portrait of Cribb, did a solo exhibit in Santa Ana instead of Newport Beach.”
Next month, the Santa Ana Artists Village, which grew over the years to include dozens of studios, galleries, restaurants and cafes over 10 blocks, will mark its 30th anniversary.
MORE NEWS
• The O.C. Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to formally censure their scandal-plagued board colleague Andrew Do, who was asked earlier to resign but did not. The agenda item was put forth by Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento. In its resolution document, the board “strongly and publicly” condemned Do “for his failure to abide by the code of ethics and commitment to public service, and for the reckless judgment and favoritism he has demonstrated.” Do, who has not attended any recent meetings, terms out in December.
• Cal Fire was reporting on its site yesterday that the Airport fire that started in Santiago Canyon had covered 23,526 acres and was 89% contained. Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi told City News Service that some of the elite corps of firefighters known as hotshots had been flown in to camp out in inaccessible terrain so they could stay on top of the blaze. Last Thursday night, eight firefighters with the Fire Authority’s Santiago hand crew were injured, six of them seriously, after their vehicle crashed and flipped on State Route 241, the L.A. Times reported.
• New signs are being installed along the 5 and 91 freeways in recognition of the Little Arabia section of Anaheim. “This is not just an installation of a sign,” said Rashad Al-Dabbagh, executive director of the Arab American Civic Council during a ceremony last Thursday when the signs were unveiled. “It’s a powerful symbol of recognition, pride and the representation that we have fought so hard to achieve.”
• The San Clemente City Council agreed at its last meeting to cover an estimated $2.6 million in new expenses as a federally supported sand replenishment project around the city’s pier resumes next month. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the project, which originally carried a $14-million price tag, but needed more in order to cover the cost of driving farther to get better quality sand, TimesOC reported.
• Over the protests of some environmentalists, Shopoff Realty Investments’ plan known as the Magnolia Tank Farm project to build 250 residential units alongside a hotel and retail space on the site of a former oil pumping facility on Pacific Coast Highway gained rare unanimous approval from a frequently divided Huntington Beach City Council last week.
• Ah, but in the same week the H.B. City Council agreed on something, it was the conservative majority that held sway here: The city filed a lawsuit against the state that seeks to block a new state law that prohibits school officials from requiring teachers to notify families about students’ gender identity. According to a report by the L.A. Times’ Hannah Fry, the suit asks that a judge declare Assembly Bill 1955 unconstitutional and prohibit the state from enforcing it.
• A $25-million donation to Hoag Hospital Newport Beach from the Martin and Pickup families was announced last week. The gifted funds will cover about half the cost to build the hospital’s planned Caremar Recovery Center to expand Hoag’s ability to treat addictions, officials said.
• UC Irvine biology professor Bruce Blumberg, accused by a student of sexual harassment that led to a recent university investigation, was back in the lab on campus this week as the new term got underway. The Times reviewed the probe’s resulting 129-page document that notes “multiple interventions,” including a 2010 meeting Blumberg had with his department chair on an undisclosed topic, a 2013 “policy compliance meeting” after he was alleged to be in a consensual relationship with a student, a formal investigation in 2019 after a student accused him of sexual harassment and another “policy compliance meeting” in 2022 around “language use.” Blumberg did not accept requests for an interview. He denied through a spokesperson that he had ever acted inappropriately.
PUBLIC SAFETY & COURTS
• In a botched robbery attempt Sunday night in a South Coast Plaza parking lot, a man was shot near his Lamborghini. It was reported the suspect, which fled the scene, wanted the exotic car and the Rolex the victim was wearing.
• Another lawsuit was filed against a Newport Beach fertility clinic over embryos that were destroyed in a toxic incubator, the Daily Pilot reported. The couple filing the latest suit are at least the 12th to make such claims against Ovation Fertility since April.
• Orange County prosecutors last week filed misdemeanor charges against 10 demonstrators who were among dozens arrested in May during a pro-Palestinian protest on the UC Irvine campus. The charges were the first to stem from arrests at UCI in the spring.
• O.C. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, accused in the Aug. 3, 2023, shooting death of his wife, Sheryl at their Anaheim home, was ordered to be taken into custody and had his $1-million bail revoked. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter not only ordered his arrest this week but doubled his bail to $2 million for violating the terms of his release by consuming alcohol, City News Service reported.
SPORTS
• For the first time this fall, the CIF Southern Section will host championships for girls’ flag football. Raring to go is Newport Harbor’s team, which last week beat crosstown rival Corona del Mar 20-0 at home in a battle between the last of the unbeatens in the Sunset League. “Last year was the first year that [flag football] was CIF [sanctioned],” said Jason Guyser, Newport Harbor’s coach. “Last year, our goal was to win every single game because we wanted to finish first in the state, which we did, but that was because there were no CIF playoffs.”
• Daily Pilot reporter Matt Szabo took time off last week to attend a wedding in Miami. A die-hard sports guy, Matt also squeezed in a trip to that city’s loanDepot Park on the same day our former Angels hero Shohei Ohtani had three home runs in the Dodgers’ 20-4 victory to become the first MLB player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in one season in history. Matt and everyone else who was in the stadium with him will have a story to tell years from now. One wonders if Arte Moreno is rethinking his decision last December not to match the Dodgers’ $700-million offer so the Angels could retain the superstar.
LIFE & LEISURE
• Following the death of her uncle who’d battled an aggressive brain cancer, Candice Bond of Mission Viejo started a nonprofit to further a “healing is contagious” movement and named it the God Spot. With a Laguna Beach spa, the Pearl, Bond’s nonprofit offered eight women in need of rest and healing an all-expenses paid, weeklong stay at the facility. Nearly 100 women applied for the retreat, according to this TimesOC feature story, which gets underway early next month.
CALENDAR THIS
• Unveil Gallery in Irvine recently opened its new two-person exhibition called “Photosynthesis,” featuring works of Alisa Ochoa, a Thai Mexican artist and educator currently based in Costa Mesa, and Zhen Huang, a Chinese artist based in Shanghai. TimesOC reporter Sarah Mosqueda wrote a feature story on the exhibit that was published last weekend. The gallery is located at 200 Technology Drive, Suite F, Irvine. The show runs until Oct. 26. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m to 4 p.m. and Sunday by appointment only.
• There’s a S’mores and Stargazing series being held this fall at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Dana Point led by Anthony Perkic, founder of outreach astronomy organization Orion Bear Astronomy. Using a high-power telescope on the hotel’s Grand Terrace, attendees can view the moon and planets, according to this story by Mosqueda, who reported on the first installment. Perkic also utilizes special lasers to help teach guests how to orient themselves with the cardinal directions using the sky. The upcoming dates are Oct. 5 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. and Nov. 9 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. For more information visit waldorfastoriamonarchbeach.com.
Until next Wednesday!
Best,
Carol
KEEP IN TOUCH
I appreciate your help in making this the best newsletter it can be. Please send news tips, your memory of life in O.C. (photos welcome!) or comments to carol.cormaci@latimes.com.
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
