City Center Fountain Quite a Show in Itself

By day it is a soothing respite, a thought-provoking sculpture of gentle beauty and stature suggesting the energy of life accompanied by the quieting, repetitive music of ocean waves slapping on a peaceful shore.

By night it evolves into a dramatic opera--almost demonic, some say. Light and dark reflections dance across the forms in a water ballet, ever changing, flickering, flaring, like flames in a fireplace.

The fountain sculpture in the plaza of the newly opened City Center office development at Brand Boulevard and Broadway is a show in itself.

“In the very traditional, conservative community of Glendale, we didn’t want to create just another static installation,” said Edward Goldman, art consultant for the Homart Development Co. of Chicago, which is building the $150-million City Center project.

“We wanted a whole theater of performance, an opera set design in the middle of nowhere.” Goldman, who commissioned Ojai artist John Nava to create the sculpture fountain, calls the project “the first authentically public art work in Glendale.”

A combination of ancient Greek and Mayan motifs, three sculptures depict a woman’s face, a column and a ring inscribed on one side with two intertwined feathered serpents and on the other, dueling players--representing change, day and night, life and death, Goldman said.

Jeanne Armstrong, Glendale redevelopment director, said the fountain sculpture is a welcome departure from the city’s traditional landscaping.

“The art may be bold, but it also contains very traditional forms,” she said, noting that drivers at night often stop their cars to get out and walk around the brightly lighted fountain. “That is the kind of reaction one would hope to get from art.”

Mayor Ginger Bremberg, cautioning she is “not a connoisseur of art,” said the City Center fountain “certainly makes a unique contribution to the beauty of Brand Boulevard.”

Goldman believes that the 52-foot-wide fountain will set new standards for public art in the city, most of which could be provided by future developers without spending tax dollars.

Last year, developers of The Exchange--a mixture of refurbished old buildings and new shops, restaurants, offices and a multiscreen movie theater in the 100 block of North Brand Boulevard--donated to the city a whimsical bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin sitting on a park bench and sharing a copy of the U.S. Constitution with a couple of pigeons.

The city in the last year has committed $100,000 a year to acquire public artworks. Part of that went for a bronze statue said to typify Glendale--a featureless father and mother hugging with a child clinging to their knees, titled “Me Too.” That $70,000 statue is on the front lawn at the Glendale main library at 222 E. Harvard St.