by Richard Senate
For those who do not recall, Ventura spent a peck of money for a San Francisco artist to make a “Wavespout” statue that was to look like something out of Captain Nemo’s Submarine but looked like pluming. It never really spouted water right and when the end of the pier went down–it went into the drink. They recovered it and it sits in a City Yard. A twist bit of metal we could make it into a fountain, where Serra once stood as a monument to the city’s folly. Who could be against waves? Not in surf friendly Ventura. We would need a good interpretive sign to tell the story of wave spout otherwise this “Modern Art” might not be seen by the uneducated as really worth the price we paid.
The Copper Pluming like “sculpture” was installed at the end of the pier in 1993 at a coast of $80,000. It never worked right–and was damaged when 420 feet of the pier fell into the sea in the storms of 1996. So, it only had a 3-year life. It washed ashore and was salvaged to be re-installed after repairs–it wisely, never was and now sits in the City Yard. It would spit water out when the waves went by. $80,000 to a San Francisco “Artist” that could have been used for any number of useful things.
