Art Worshipers Have It Made in Shade

Like the utilitarian objects they mimic, Christo’s umbrellas are proving quite useful, although Southern California’s persistent summer temperatures have made them more parasol than rain protector.

They are shady refuges on barren hillsides, inviting picnic spots, challenging jungle gyms and glowing photo backdrops.

They are directional markers and wind socks, straining in the wind that rushes through the Tejon Pass often faster than traffic on the Golden State Freeway.

They are horse and cattle shelters.

They soon will be wedding chapels.

Four men enjoying a lunch of chicken salad sandwiches and a 1985-vintage Vouvray under one umbrella’s octagonal shadow found its substantial plastic base an ideal picnic bench near Tejon Ranch. Their car kept cool under another umbrella across the road.

“We thought we’d go to a lake, but then we decided, why not an umbrella?” said Gilbert Brown of Hollywood.

“It’s lovely with the breeze coming through.”

Across the interstate, a runner used an umbrella’s stem as fitness equipment, holding it and leaning forward to stretch out her calves. South on the Golden State Freeway at Gorman, couples had transformed umbrella bases into front porches, complete with deck chairs, throw pillows and stereos.

The umbrellas “are big and they’re slippery,” said Kelsey Crew, 9, of Newhall, after she shimmied up and slid back down an umbrella stem.

The umbrellas have even acted as roofs for booths set up by souvenir hawkers, but Christo’s staff has chased off the entrepreneurs.

The artist has repeatedly said that he wants to shield his creations from the taint of commercialization.

Two couples have arranged to be married under umbrellas on Saturday.

The invitation for Barbara Manfull and Lloyd Herziger’s wedding is titled “Lovers Sharing an Umbrella” and features a Japanese woodblock print of a couple in kimonos under a parasol.

Christo designed his umbrellas to be useful, and the public’s creative response to them has delighted the artist, said USA Project Director Tom Golden.

“He said that to totally experience the project, one should . . . get out and promenade and picnic under the umbrellas to really experience the inner space, bask in their luminous shadows,” Golden said.

The umbrellas also have less tangible uses.

For Betty Krietemeyer, a day-care provider from San Diego, the umbrella sights were an inspiration.

Krietemeyer majored in art but had not drawn in years.

On Thursday she set up a deck chair under one umbrella and sketched a row of umbrellas trailing up a ridgeline.

But not least of all, the umbrellas are humor.

Even from a distance, it’s possible to see motorists pointing and laughing at the first three golden structures that announce the project’s presence like sentinels just past California 138.

UMBRELLA UPDATE: B2