COUNCIL AT WIT'S END IN T.O. CURTAIN FLAP.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Daily News Staff Writer

Enough already.

That's what City Council members say about the criticism they have heard over the Copper Curtain - enough to consider taking the darned thing down, once and for all.

Area residents will be asked to participate in a second telephone poll next month to gauge public opinion on five proposed designs to ``fix'' the curtain - four of which call for tearing down the $150,000 artwork.

``I think at this point the City Council appears to really want to come up with a consensus on a concept for that wall. They are trying to provide the community with some different options,'' said Tom Mitze, theaters director at the Civic Arts Plaza, upon which the curtain hangs.

``Though we don't have a consensus even in our office,'' he joked.

For years, area residents and commuters have recognized the Copper Curtain less as an icon of public art than for its striking similarity to a radiator grill.

A phone-in poll last month took input on three proposals by area architect Francisco Behr - abstract renditions of a live oak tree branch to be added as an overlay to the original curtain design. But those designs also drew criticism from residents who likened them to bolts of lightning and even varicose veins.

Next month's vote will ask residents to consider four alternatives to Behr's designs - a mural depicting an oak tree in a field done in a realist style; the same design done in pastels; a different mural depicting the oak tree from the city's seal; and a blank wall with the simple words ``City of Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and City Hall'' hanging in the Copper Curtain's place.

``I'm just happy if more options will involve more people in the process,'' said Glen Sievertson, a computer software consultant and 14-year resident whose four computer-generated mural designs reopened the debate last week over designs for the eastern wall of the Civic Arts Plaza.

``If more people can identify with one of the designs, then I think more people will accept the final design - whatever it is, because they at least were a part of the process,'' said Sievertson. Two of Sievertson's mural designs will be among the four options residents will consider in the phone poll next month.

Not that Sievertson's designs were spared criticism either.

Already, the city has received e-mail messages from residents, with one writing it is ``hard to believe that the only options that are seriously considered are various configurations of hills and oak trees. What exactly are we trying to convey here . . . that Thousand Oaks has oaks (no kidding).''

Another resident wrote that three of Sievertson's four original designs ``are blurry and while trying to focus on them could make a driver run off the freeway.''

City Arts Commissioner Jane Brooks said the city may be well-advised that reaching a consensus on the ever-controversial Copper Curtain - and perhaps on public art in general - is an unrealistic goal.

``I think the community is going to get tired of this debate eventually and want to just move on and spend our energies on something else,'' said Brooks, also a member of the council-appointed panel of artists that recommended Behr's three proposals.

She said she will continue to support the Copper Curtain and Behr's overlay design, regardless of the controversy they might continue to cause.

``They didn't like the Eiffel Tower either when it was first proposed. That was really far ahead of its time. But now what would Paris be without the Eiffel Tower?'' she said.