Segerstrom’s art continues to enchant
On a bright recent weekday, Sean Saint-Louis surveyed the “California Scenario” sculpture garden in Costa Mesa and smiled, recalling a story about the time its patron had to run to its defense.
The garden, designed by Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi, was commissioned by the late developer Henry Segerstrom in the early 1980s and occupies a quiet 1.6-acre space inside a cluster of buildings. In addition to stone-and-metal formations, the installation features living indigenous plants — and one of those, apparently, led to a misunderstanding shortly after Noguchi finished the work.
“There’s, like, a wispy little plant, and one of the maintenance workers was pulling it,” Saint-Louis said, pointing to the planter at one end of the garden. “And Henry was visiting — you know, observing his achievement or whatnot, and he was sitting here, just as a regular worker, I guess, would be from one of the office towers.
“And he sees this man pulling what [the worker] thinks is weeds. And Henry rushes over and says, ‘That’s part of the installation!’”
If one of Segerstrom’s commissioned pieces had to be rescued from a gardener’s efficiency, that tells a great deal about his attitude toward art.
Over the years, the business magnate and his family donated huge swaths of land that gave rise to opulent venues: South Coast Plaza, South Coast Repertory, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. In addition, Segerstrom acquired or commissioned a series of public artworks that highlight the spaces between those landmarks.
According to Debra Gunn Downing, the executive director of marketing for South Coast Plaza, Segerstrom had a private art collection as well. When he declared a piece public, though, it was public and proud. Nearly all of the works displayed in the arts district allow — or even encourage — the public to get up close and interact with them.
“Connector,” a 65-foot-high steel sculpture by Richard Serra outside the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, offers openings that lead to a hollow interior where voices echo off the metal walls. Joan Miro’s bronze “Oiseau” greets visitors to the Park Center Tower the moment they walk in. George Rickey’s stainless steel “Four Lines Oblique Gyratory — Square IV,” a 24-foot-high kinetic sculpture that moves with the breeze, looms over outdoor tables on the patio of the Center Club.
In short, the Noguchi garden is not the only spot in north Costa Mesa where art meshes with the landscape. According to Saint-Louis, the creative director of Orange County Films and a longtime documentarian for the Segerstrom family, that sensibility was key for Henry Segerstrom, who died last month at age 91.
“He could have very easily taken all these pieces and squirreled them away in his house, and you’d never see them, which, I think, a lot of wealthy people do,” Saint-Louis said. “This is for the public, and it was meant to enrich the community.”
The works that Segerstrom assembled did more than enrich Orange County — they also broadened its cultural palette and international reach. French artist Jean Dubuffet created the polystyrene, polyester and epoxy sculpture “Tour Aux Jambes” in the lobby of the Park Tower; Aiko Miyawaki, who hailed from Japan, tapped the Chinese zodiac as source material for her installation “Utsurohi 91 — Costa Mesa.”
American sculptor Jim Huntington, whose granite and steel “Night Shift” occupies a spot near the Westin South Coast Plaza, got a call from Segerstrom in 1981 as the Noguchi garden neared completion. For the approximately 30-ton piece, Huntington used granite from a quarry near Fresno.
The artist, reached at his studio in Texas, said he realized the extent of Segerstrom’s dedication to the arts when he heard about the developer shelling out extra money to make changes to “California Scenario” at Noguchi’s request.
“I found him to be a very decent, easily accessible man — easy to relate to, easy to work with,” Huntington said. “I had a great time.”
In 2011, when the Getty coordinated “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980,” a showcase of Southern California art that involved more than 60 institutions, South Coast Plaza responded with a simultaneous exhibit of its own titled “On Display in Orange County.” The shopping center set up video screens and showed time-lapse images of the commissioned artworks, while officials provided a booklet with a walking map of the area.
With Segerstrom having died, are there plans to solicit more works? The family was not available for comment, but Downing said she wouldn’t rule it out.
“I suppose, if the need arose, they would consider it,” she said. “But the locations where they have the pieces now are not changing. Those pieces are pretty much permanent installations.”