Living in TV Land

Alex Coolman

The Newport Beach Public Library is promoting its new arts collection

this evening with an event reference librarian Sara Barnicle hopes will

attract a broad crowd, to say the least.

“It’s for anybody who’s anybody,” Barnicle said of the program. ‘Or

anybody who isn’t.”’

The program, “Celebrate the Arts,” runs for three days starting today

with a talk by artist Mark Bennett and offers a series of entertaining

programs designed to encourage the public to come see what the library

has to offer.

Bennett, a Los Angeles artist, is best known for his series of detailed

floor plans of the “homes” of sitcoms like “Leave it to Beaver” and “The

Mary Tyler Moore Show.” In drawings he has developed since he was 11, the

43-year-old Hollywood postal carrier meticulously records the interior

design of homes that created an idealized vision of American domestic

life.

The original impulse for the drawings, Bennett said, was his youthful

desire to become more like the families depicted on the screen.

“I wanted to be in those families,” he said. “If I had the information,

then I could be one of them.”

Bennett believes the identification he experienced with shows like

“Bewitched” and “The Jetsons” was a common phenomenon for television

viewers.

“Most people did believe that you could grow up and be like that,” he

said. “Then you do grow up and you’re not like that. It’s kind of sad.”

Unlike most television viewers, though, Bennett has at certain points in

his life taken his enthusiasm for his favorite shows to a level that

reshaped his lifestyle.

There was the time he bought that yellow 1973 Mustang with the brown

vinyl interior so he could drive the same car Mary Richards had on “The

Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Then there was the effort to rearrange his

furniture to make it more like a sitcom.

At times, television seems to have been more real for Bennett than life

itself. He didn’t attend much of high school, including his senior prom,

because of his enthusiasm for the shows he watched.

“I remember when Wally [Cleaver] went to the senior prom,” he noted.

Bennett’s quirky, televisual sensibility has received a certain degree of

recognition thanks to the efforts of the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa

Monica. He has put out one book of his floor plans and a second, “How to

Live a TV Sitcom Life,” that provides readers with the requisite details

for making their real-life existence more like what they see on the tube.

There was a long time, though, when the artist’s vision met with nothing

but confusion. Bennett remembers taking a floor plan to the company that

professionally prepared his blueprints for him.

“What’s this?” the man behind the counter wanted to know.

“Oh, it’s for “The Partridge Family,” Bennett replied.

But the joke was lost on the man behind the counter.

‘They didn’t get it,” Bennett said. “They didn’t have any idea what it

was about.”

The three-day program aims to inspire the public to check out its new

additions. Bennett’s appearance tonight will be followed by a day of

family activities and a play reading Saturday and a Sunday performance of

Baroque and classical music by The El Real Chamber Players.

Barnicle said the additions mainly served to improve an already solid

collection rather than rectifying any horrendous gaps in the library’s

arts coverage.

“[The collection] was pretty strong, but there were holes in it,”

Barnicle said. “In the fine arts we had holes where he had items, but

they were worn out.”

‘CELEBRATE THE ARTS’

WHERE: Newport Beach Central Library, 1000 Avocado Ave., Newport Beach

WHEN: Mark Bennett appears from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. tonight; family

activities and play reading from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; chamber

music at 3 p.m. Sunday

HOW MUCH: Free

PHONE: (949) 717-3801 or (949) 644-3072