Carlsbad’s Culture Chase : Exhibits: The city’s arts office is giving residents a healthy measure of visual sophistication. New installations include a sculptural viewing spot by the ocean and art for the new library.

CARLSBAD —  In shaping the city of Carlsbad’s visual arts program over the past five years, Connie Beardsley has sought balance but not compromise. She has favored temporary as well as permanent public art works, and has sought out art by local artists, in addition to those from outside Southern California. A handful of works now installed around Carlsbad have a decorative bent; others are more conceptually based.

Beardsley, manager of the five-person Carlsbad Arts Office since its establishment in 1986, has given the city a healthy measure of visual sophistication. Though the arts office also oversees performing arts programming and cultural exchanges for Carlsbad, one of its highest priorities is commissioning art for public places. Six works of public art are already permanently installed in the city, which measures 40-square miles and has a population of 63,000. Several more at least as ambitious are under way.

Beardsley attributes her program’s success to several different factors.

“The City Council has been very supportive, and so has the Arts Commission (a group appointed by the council to advise it on arts issues),” she said in a recent interview. “Our process is very fair. The public has a lot of input. We try hard to provide information about the works before they go in.”

Also, she noted, “The more pieces you have in, the easier it becomes.” That notion served as the inspiration behind Carlsbad’s annual temporary outdoor sculpture exhibit. Each year since 1988, a guest curator has selected or commissioned work by Southern California artists--a majority of them from San Diego--for roughly two-month-long installations at various Carlsbad parks and other sites. The projects have ranged from purely playful sculptures to more serious installations that address issues in the city’s past and future. The important thing about the show, according to Beardsley, is that “people see what can be done.”

This year, Mesa College art gallery director Kathleen Stoughton has lined up five site-specific projects by local architects, artists and landscape architects. The show, which opens Oct. 3, will be situated entirely in Stagecoach Park this year.

The city purchased two works for its permanent collection from last year’s exhibit, a tile mosaic bench overlooking the sea, by Raul Guerrero, and a series of contemporary petroglyphs lining a stream bed, by Machi Uchida and Jim Wilstermann.

These purchases enhance a public art collection that also includes gateways and a mosaic sidewalk medallion by James Hubbell, a vibrant and informational arts kiosk designed by Nan Robertson and, most impressive, “Crown Lair,” an environmental installation by Los Angeles artist Lloyd Hamrol. Situated in Stagecoach Park, below the ruins of an actual, 19th-Century stagecoach stop, Hamrol’s curving sandstone walls echo the adjacent adobe structure’s aged appearance and complement its faded function.

The city’s biggest and most visible public commission to date will be completed this fall. The Ocean Street Sculpture (a working title) falls under the auspices of Carlsbad’s $10 million “Streetscapes” urban beautification plan. It will occupy a 7,500-square-foot wedge of land overlooking the ocean, a lot formerly used for parking and access to the beach below.

Transformed by artist Andrea Blum, the lot will soon bear drought-resistant landscaping and a viewing platform with a trellis and rectangular reflecting pools.

“I thought of the two different ways you navigate the space, passing through it or sitting and looking out,” Blum said by telephone from her New York studio.

“As an artist, my interest is not so much enhancement as to offer an alternative view. We see things every day, no matter where we live, and we don’t pay attention. I wanted to make something slightly shifting about how a space is thought about, how one functions in a space and how that is thought about. I’m interested in the sociology of the space, and how it is like a window out onto the coastline.”

Blum describes the trellis as “cage-like,” made of galvanized steel. “It may be the most interesting part of the project. It’s a container, but also a scrim. When you’re driving by, your perception of that view will be changed by that fence. I have a feeling something wild might happen with that.”

Another ambitious project on the horizon for Carlsbad is a new, 62,000-square-foot library, scheduled to open in the summer of 1993. In addition to a new, 2,000-square-foot gallery that will feature traveling exhibitions--and, possibly, shows coordinated with San Diego museums--the library will also boast several works of art.

More than 250 artists responded to a call for slides last year, and ultimately, three were commissioned to create permanent works for the library. Ojai artist Jan Sanchez will construct a copper trellis with life-size cutouts of leaves from trees common to the area. Shadows cast by the 18-foot-long trellis will give the appearance of dappled light passing through actual foliage above.

Seattle artist Ellen Ziegler has designed a cistern for the library’s courtyard. A message written across the curving interior wall will be legible in the water’s reflection. And local artist DeLoss McGraw will be represented by six of his wise and whimsical paintings and three bronze sculptures.

As with all of Carlsbad’s public artworks, these were commissioned after a thorough review of candidates by a panel of community representatives, with the help of an arts professional. For the library commissions, Gail Goldman, coordinator of art in public places for the city of San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture, served as consultant. For the Ocean Street commission, Louise Kirtland-Boehm, director of Palomar College’s Boehm Gallery (no relation), acted as curator, presenting the selection panel with 10 or 12 artists from whom to choose.

This process has served the city well, according to Beardsley, who stresses the value of public input. That participation doesn’t end upon an artist’s or artwork’s selection, either. “All of the pieces we’ve put in so far are interactive with the public,” Beardsley said. “We continue to have that focus.

“Most communities are comfortable with what they’re familiar with, and that’s usually traditional art work. Carlsbad is no exception. But when you integrate pieces into overall projects, especially where function is involved, the function may be traditional but the artists may be approaching it from an innovative way.”

Balance, too, remains a focus of Carlsbad’s collection. “Our goals state a public art program with a national reputation, to serve local, regional and national artists. We’d like to end up with a collection that represents all of them.”

With the city’s current commissions, that goal appears to be well under way.