HORTON PLAZA SIGNS IMPORTED SCULPTORS

SAN DIEGO â€”  The most public of the arts attractions slated for downtown’s Horton Plaza shopping center will be the three artworks to be unveiled along with the center itself in August although public, in this case, doesn’t necessarily mean popular. The three artists commissioned are certainly adventurous, if not avant-garde, and it’s a matter of some suspense as to just what they’ll come up with for the commercial gem of downtown’s renaissance.

The plaza developer, Ernest W. Hahn Inc., has chosen the artists with the help of Los Angeles consultant Tamara Thomas, and it will probably be a couple of weeks before the artists are officially announced and their maquettes presented (a Hahn spokeswoman points out that not all of the artworks have been approved). But The Times has learned their names: Loren Marsden, Judy Pfaff and Peter Alexander, all out-of-town modernists--which no doubt opens the door for local arts activists to protest the selections.

Protested or not, all these artists have national reputations. Marsden is a Los Angeles sculptor who specializes in minimal, formally arranged geometric configurations. His work deals with tensions and with forms suspended in space. Pfaff, a New York sculptor, constructs environmental webs of visual activity. Her work possesses a Dada spirit and theatrical flair, and she often interweaves soft materials. Painter Peter Alexander, also of Los Angeles, is preoccupied with light effects and has achieved downright notoriety with his series of sunsets painted on velvet.

ADIEU A DEUX: 1984 was no vintage year for San Diego dance. There was poor support for many of the major local dance events, including the San Diego Area Dance Alliance annual concert, which left the organization $4,000 in debt and caused its board of directors to “rethink� its long-range plans. Now, Mary Ann Willoughby and Edward Winslow--two of the most dynamic dancers on the local scene--have decided to cut off their local affiliations and make a permanent move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Both had been principals with modern dance troupe Three’s Company.

“There really wasn’t enough work here for us,� Willoughby said. “We both wanted more exposure instead of sitting around waiting for the next concert. We have some good contacts in San Francisco, and we’re going to do a concert with Cliff Keuter (an ex-Paul Taylor dancer) in March. Both of us want to work with several different companies, so we’ll be doing a lot of free-lancing.� Willoughby and Winslow will be back in San Diego in May for a concert of their own.

The loss of two of its principals will shrink Three’s Company (another loser at the box office lately) to a chamber-sized ensemble. “We’ll probably stick to a small nucleus of about eight dancers now,� said Jean Isaacs, co-artistic director of the troupe.

RADIO RADIO: Never underestimate the power of the Padres. Coming off the team’s phenomenal winning season, radio station KFMB-AM, which broadcasts all the Padre games and whipped up an airwave assault of Padremania during the ’84 National League playoffs and World Series, has posted the best fall ratings of its history. That’s according to the Arbitron survey of radio listeners, which notes that KFMB upped its share of total listeners 12 years old and older by 65% from the fall of 1983.

KFMB’s morning team of Hudson and Bauer has scored a 34% increase in the 25- to 54-year-old age group; evening talk-show host Bill Ballance is up 55% from last fall in the same age category. Sister station B100-FM shows strong gains as well. All of this is music to the ears of the stations’ general manager, Paul Palmer, who crooned: “We seem to be attaining our goal of converting Padres baseball listeners to strong KFMB fans throughout the year.�

ARTBEATS: One of the most popular shows on public radio is “A Prairie Home Companion,� in which Minnesota humorist Garrison Keillor broadcasts weekly from his fictional “Lake Woebegon.� Now, San Diego’s KPBS (89 FM) has added the show to its Sunday lineup from noon to 2 p.m. The show will continue to be aired at its regular time, 3 p.m. on Saturdays, but the repeat broadcast is a matter of popular demand . . . Former San Diego Symphony development director Jerry Kleinman, who was fired recently for reportedly failing to maximize the fund-raising potential of his position, has been hired by the New York Philharmonic as development director . . .

The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art has been awarded a $25,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts to assist its experimental “Exhibition Parameters� series of commissioned artworks. The series calls for six artists to creat single installations relating to specific aspects of the museum environment. Already commissioned are architect Rob Wellington Quigley and artists Maria Nordman and Peter Lodato . . .

The San Diego Public Theatre has extended its acclaimed production of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler� through Feb. 3. Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. The theater’s 1985 season has also been announced, with a version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,� Sylvia Plath’s “Letters Home� and an early Brecht play, “Mann Ist Mann� on tap . . . “Nine Chicano Artists,� many of them responsible for the Chicano Park murals, are displaying a range of work through Feb. 2 at the Maple Gallery, 2400 Kettner Blvd.