by Mark McDermott
Forgive Charles Bragg if it feels like he’s been here before.
In 2019, the Manhattan Beach City Council, with ample dollars in its Public Art Trust Fund, and lots of prominent blank walls on City properties, approved five murals.
“We have wasted wall space,” said Mayor Richard Montgomery, then a council member, at a council meeting that June. “And nothing is being done with it.”
Bragg was one of the artists commissioned to change that. His proposal for the Joslyn Center, a beach and seascape intended to wrap entirely around the building, was approved by the council. Soon, he signed a contract, bought his mural insurance, and prepared to complete the work.
And then nothing happened. Or as Bragg put it, “Delay, delay, delay.” The City’s former cultural arts director, Martin Betts, retired. A question arose about the future of the Joslyn Center, including a possible renovation. And then the global pandemic arrived. Bragg’s mural got lost in the flood. His was the only of the five commissions that was never completed.
Bragg, undaunted, returned to the City Council on Tuesday night. The City was ready to commission up to seven more murals for locations that included walls at Manhattan Heights Park, the MB Arts Center, Rocketship Hall, the restrooms at the foot of the pier, the police and fire station, stairs to the Strand, and a parking structure. The City’s Cultural Arts Commission (CAC) had sorted through 116 proposals and narrowed them down to 27 for the council’s consideration. Among those were four murals proposed by Bragg.
He told the council he was ready to go to work.
“I just want to say I’ve been ready since 2019 to paint some murals in Manhattan Beach,” Bragg said.
The selection of public art at the City Council often takes on the feel of a game show gone awry. “It’s very subjective,” said Councilperson Amy Howorth at one point. What’s at stake isn’t life-changing money. Commissions vary from $5,000 to $85,000. But perhaps more significantly, for the artists, is a chance to have their work seen by hundreds or thousands of people daily, and so become part of the fabric of local life.
This selection process took on a slightly more game show vibe because Councilperson Steve Napolitano, on a dare from a constituent who vowed to make donations to a charitable cause if Napolitano spoke in a pirate brogue at the meeting, made frequent, fairly awkward attempts to do so. “Aaargh,” was his most oft-uttered attempt.
“I’m ready to walk the plank,” Bragg said.
The artist chosen for the first location discussed, at Manhattan Heights, was Armelle Vervialle Ngo, whose three-paneled mural colorfully depicting a volleyball player, a skateboarder, and a woman in a baseball hat seated in a lotus position, was originally submitted for another location, but was suggested by the CAC for the park. The commission was for $40,000.
“My ultimate goal is to convey a blissful and vibrant feel, the kind of which I experienced when I discovered Manhattan Beach after moving from Europe,” Ngo wrote in her artist’s statement.
“I like the vibrancy,” Napolitano said.
“I would add that it is very representative of what’s going on in the building,” said Councilperson David Lesser. “It’s a recreational center.”
Bragg, who has completed commissions from the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, and four USPS stamps was among the four artists the council then considered for the commission on the wall outside the Manhattan Beach Arts Center. His mural depicts a group of large, roosting parrots. It didn’t gain traction.
“I love those parrots,” said Mayor Pro tem Joe Franklin. “I mean that’s one of the first things I saw when I came to Manhattan Beach. It’s wild and crazy, but it’s just too busy for that location.”
None of the proposals for that location gained consensus. Part of the problem is a John Van Hamersveld relief surrounds the top of the building, creating a potential clash with anything added below.
“Any work we pick beneath it needs to pair with it, which poses a bit of a challenge for some of these works,” Lesser said.
The council instructed the commission to reconsider some of the other 90 pieces not selected for its consideration and look for one that might better fit the building.
“I don’t want to pick a piece just for the sake of picking a piece,” Napolitano said.
The council also didn’t gravitate towards any of the suggested art for Rocketship Hall, the rec center at Marine Park, but instead selected a mural originally proposed by artist Pamela Wall for Manhattan Heights. The mural is a modern design featuring a skateboarder soaring above a leaping volleyball player. All three suggested murals featured the ocean.
“This is Rocketship Park,” Franklin said. “You are talking about generations going through a park. We were there with the toddlers and taking them on all the play structure, the original rocketship right? You could go down that metal slide and burn your tush. It evokes a lot of memories….I mean, we’re gonna have enough images of the ocean on our public art.”
Wall’s mural was approved, but its original budget, for another location, was $40,000. The Rocketship location carried a $20,000 commission, so it will be up to the artist whether or not to accept it.
Finally, when the council considered the restrooms at the foot of the pier, Bragg seemed to be on the cusp of winning a commission. A mural had been proposed for the building nearly 20 years ago by Leadership Manhattan, but was ultimately rejected because the then-council determined it was a distraction from the iconic beauty of the pier itself. Bragg’s mural was designed with this in mind. It was relatively spartan, simply showing pelicans in flight over the ocean.
“I went there, checked out the wall, and I thought the building was a distraction to the natural place,” Bragg said. “So keeping that in mind — not to be distracting….I just love watching the pelicans come in and do their thing with their squadron a few inches off the water. So that was my thought, keep it simple, almost look right through the building to the sky and water and the sand, and then the birds would be coming. I could imagine people riding their bikes by skating by, and just spreading their wings to be a pelican as they go by that area.”
The mural quickly emerged as the frontrunner, but then two votes emerged for another alternative — Lesser and Franklin both thought a blank wall would be better.
“I would rather err in favor of not having something there than having a distraction for our iconic pier and letting the ocean, letting the beach, letting the movement of the people and the cycles sort of speak for themselves,” said Lesser, who noted that he’d been on the Leadership Manhattan class that proposed a mural two decades ago.
Napolitano had been on that council, and told Lesser that the real reason the project was rejected was nobody liked the proposed art.
“At the time we were just trying to find a nice way to say we didn’t like the proposal,” he said.
Napolitano also noted that a new Catalina Classic paddleboard sculpture was just unveiled near the pier and murals exist up the beach at Dockweiler.
“So there’s been murals down there for many years,” he said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not without precedent that we have had artwork down at the pier.”
Bragg’s pelican mural, commissioned for $100,000, prevailed in a 4-1 vote, with Lesser opposing.
“We know who hates pelicans,” Napolitano joked. “Scaliwag.”
Bragg won the next commission, as well, which was for the stairs leading down from the Strand to the bike path on 34th Street. He submitted two proposals for the location that had been selected by the CAC, another pelican and a sea lion. The other two proposals featured a brightly modern treatment of the city’s 90266 zip code and another mural by Ngo, this one showing a skateboard in flight — something the council wasn’t keen on for the stairs.
“I think we’ve covered pelicans,” Napolitano said, noting the zip code was lively but “it’s kind of seizure-inducing for me. Again, I think the most appropriate and frankly, the one that works the best and I think that will be appreciated by the public is the sea lion.”
That commission, for $30,000, was quickly and unanimously approved.
The next location, a wall on the police and fire station, was once again left blank, at least for now. Artist Alex Weinstein proposed an abstract sea horizon meant to balance the soberness of the nearby 9/11 memorial with a sense of hopefulness, but that gained little traction. Artist Eric Snyder proposed a large white shark emerging from the wall, which gained Napolitano’s somewhat reluctant support, but it failed to gain consensus. Emilly Tanaka’s brightly colored falcon flying over a rose bed likewise didn’t attract support, and Dana Torrey’s more whimsical mural of a fire truck rescuing a large dog likewise didn’t gain consensus. The wall was sent back to the commission.
The final approval of the night was for the outside wall of the downtown parking structure #7. Artist Dave Titus was awarded a $20,000 commission for a mural featuring local marine life.
“Kids who see this could be going to the aquarium, or could be coming back from the aquarium,” Franklin said. “It reinforces the wildlife in the ocean that we need to protect and see. I see kids and families bopping on down the hill, going to the beach and talking about it.”
“Notice it’s got a pelican,” Franklin said as the council unanimously voted to approve the mural, eliciting a final aargh from Napolitano. ER
