ARTS COMMISSION FAVORS REVIVING COPPER CURTAIN; PANEL: PUBLIC SHOULD HAVE FINAL SAY.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

They didn't decide Thursday exactly how to improve the Civic Arts Plaza's controversial Copper Curtain, but arts commissioners made one thing clear - restoring the sculpture to architect Antoine Predock's original design is a good idea.

But commissioners also said the city should let the public decide from among the 30 or so suggestions coming from local artists and others for improving the artwork that many have called an eyesore. Another suggestion would give the Alliance for the Arts one year to find a sponsor for the improvement project.

Those were the recommendations to the City Council the Arts Commission approved at Thursday night's meeting, said Bonnie Roth, a commissioner. And she has a pretty good idea which way the City Council will go.

``They have always gone with their agenda in the past - my gut feeling is they will go with where the money is, which is let the alliance come up with the donor for next year,'' Roth said Friday.

``I would only hope the City Council will remember that there was quite a lot of input from the community and they will listen to what the community - the voters - who elected them say,'' she added.

In addition, the commission voted to ask the city to dig up the original designs and display them in City Hall to dispel the aura of mystery surrounding the circumstances behind the curtain and how it became what it is, Roth said.

The commission's requests over the past year to see the designs have gone unheeded, commission Chairwoman Karen LaFleur said.

``We're in essence making a request that they provide the information that we requested a year ago,'' LaFleur said. ``We want it displayed in City Hall so people can understand what it was supposed to look like.''

City Manager Grant Brimhall said he was unaware the commission's requests to see the original design had gone unanswered. He said, however, that the designs are readily available from the City Manager's Office and should be available from Predock himself.

``Obviously there's been miscommunication,'' Brimhall said. ``Most of the troubles in life involve miscommunication - apparently there was one here.''

Neither Predock nor his West Coast representative returned telephone calls Friday.

The city has been grappling with what to do with the $150,000 curtain almost from the time it was unveiled in 1994, when it became apparent that few people could see the intended representation of a stage curtain symbolizing the theaters in the Civic Arts Plaza.

As it turned it, the curtain had been altered from its original conception by city officials who worried, among other things, that the loose-hanging copper strips would bang against the wall in the wind, disrupting performances within the Charles E. Probst Center for the Performing Arts.

The city has set aside $10,000 for the improvements - an amount that commissioners have said would hardly cover the project's cost.

A special public workshop June 4 drew some 30 suggestions from local artists and others for improving the Copper Curtain. Most of the ideas incorporated the city's trademark oak tree and included etching designs on the curtain's copper strips or casting colored designs on the wall with gel-covered lights.