BREA : 7 Sculptures Selected to Adorn the City

With the city in the middle of a major redevelopment, construction projects have become a familiar sight. So a few more sheets of metal and a couple of long metal shafts being installed at State College Boulevard and Lambert Road may attract little attention.

But unlike some of the other hardware cluttering downtown, this material is not destined to become part of another office building or hotel. Instead, the giant metal tubes and thin sheets of aluminum are “Untitled Wicket,” “Blue Runner” and two other large sculptures that will decorate the four corners of that intersection.

The artworks are part of Brea’s Consignment Art Program, and a total of seven pieces will be displayed at several city locations for periods ranging from three months to one year.

The first outdoor installation took place Saturday when Donna Salem’s “Running as Fast as I Can” and “Object in Need of Support” were placed on the greenbelt paralleling State College. The sculptures will remain there for one year. Another work by Salem will hang in the Brea Theater lobby for six months.

“I think it’s great what Brea’s doing,” Salem said. “I’m familiar with the city’s other arts programs, but this is the first time I’ve had one of my works displayed there.”

The Los Angeles artist has works displayed in San Diego and Carlsbad, but this is her first Orange County exhibit.

Salem’s two stylized aluminum pieces will be joined in the next month by two works from Brett Price, an artist who lives in Orange. Emily Sabin, Brea’s community services manager, described Price’s works as large, abstract, bent-metal tubes resembling scribbling in the air.

“Price’s pieces are very large and will probably be the ones the public comes across first,” Sabin said.

Two more pieces will be erected at the Civic Center on Birch Street. Both are by Robert Holmes, an artist from Northern California. Unlike the other artists’ works, Holmes’ pieces come to Brea from a private collector. Sabin described the figures, entitled “Reflections” and “Strolling Man,” as stylized works done in nickel-plated brass.

Brea initiated the Consignment Art Program in 1981, when the city was loaned six pieces for the Civic Center. After the last piece was removed in 1982, the program went into hibernation.

And if not for a group of senior marketing students at Cal State Fullerton, the program might have remained there. As a class assignment, though, the students approached the city about conducting a high-visibility project. Staff members suggested re-establishing the Consignment Art Program, and the students accepted.