Following a stir among county insiders over a provocative piece of artwork that was taken down from the Bettervaria Center in Santa Maria last week by Bob Nelson — chief of staff to Supervisor Peter Adam — the CAPP (County Art in Public Places) committee voted Monday to move the piece from the front foyer to a more discreet location in the county building.
Last Tuesday, under the direction of Adam, Nelson took down the Steve Olson piece — which reads “BUY SEXUAL” on top of red-wallpapered “69.99” price tags — and put it in a closet because he found it “obscene” and inappropriate for a government building. Late Friday afternoon, county staff put the piece back up, where it will stay until the commission makes the final decision at a special meeting on Thursday, before the exhibit’s opening reception on Saturday.
On Monday, John Hood, a fine arts professor at Allan Hancock College who coordinated the exhibit and sits on the Arts Commission, apologized to the committee because the artwork was not one of the pieces they reviewed when they approved a sample of the exhibit. The piece is from LOVE + GUTS, a group of skateboarding-inspired artists whose work has been shown all over the world for the past decade.