DO ITS PARTS DEFINE THE ART? : BOTTLE VILLAGE BATTLE BREWS CRITICS FUME OVER U.S. FUNDS.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

When Daniel Paul wanders through Bottle Village, among the cactus planters made of headlights and the wishing well made of Milk of Magnesia bottles, he is filled with wonder and a certain kind of reverence.

``I think of it as a sanctuary,'' said Paul, a 24-year-old bartender and member of the Committee to Preserve Bottle Village. ``With light coming through the glass, there's this incredible ambience. It's almost as if I'm in church.''

The sensation is not shared by Jean Dewey, a retired accountant and 25-year Simi Valley resident. She can't stand the place. She's never actually been inside - she gets nervous driving past on Cochran Street, glimpsing rows of misshapen doll heads peeking over the fence.

``I shudder as I go by,'' she said. ``It's gruesome to me.''

Few feel neutral about Bottle Village, the funky folk art landmark that has occupied an uneasy place in the Simi Valley community ever since an elderly Minnesota transplant began piecing it together 41 years ago.

Argument started again last week, with the announcement that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had approved a $466,519 grant to repair and reopen the property. Supporters cheered the grant as an enlightened decision that would protect a state-designated landmark that has dodged the wrecking ball repeatedly since its creator died eight years ago.

Others, however, were not so pleased.

Congressman Elton Gallegly, the Simi Valley Republican who was the city's mayor from 1980-86, said he is ``appalled'' that emergency recovery money is being spent on the project.

``I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I sure don't behold that,'' Gallegly said. ``Personally I think it's a tremendous eyesore in the community and it's absurd that FEMA is spending taxpayer money to preserve it.''

The restoration project has reignited a debate that has continued unabated since Tessa Prisbrey began charging visitors a quarter to tour her three-acre version of paradise.

Those who weigh in with opinions sound as if are looking at entirely different subjects. The same cluster of buildings that one cultural critic called ``Simi Valley's contribution to the art world'' was dismissed by City Councilwoman Sandi Webb last week as ``a big pile of junk that should have been bulldozed years ago.''

The intensity of opinions proves how important Bottle Village is, says photographer Seymore Rosen, director of the group Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments. In addition to the state landmark status, Bottle Village has been featured in at least 80 books about so-called ``outsider art.''

``What a bus driver or councilperson thinks is just fine, but the world view is that there's something incredibly special there,'' Rosen said.

The village began when Prisbrey and her husband, a construction worker who got a job at the Rocketdyne missile laboratory, bought a narrow lot near the fig groves in what was then Santa Susana.

Soon after moving in, Prisbrey built a shack made from beer bottles outside the motor home she shared with her husband. According to one account, she built the structure to shame her husband about how much beer he drank.

Prisbrey, 62, kept building, cobbling together enclosures out of junk she hauled home from the local dump in the back of a Studebaker truck. She built a shrine to the world's religions, a home for more than 1,000 plastic dolls, a playroom lined with rugs stitched together from old sweaters.

Soon more than a dozen small buildings rose from a mosaic courtyard embedded with ceramic shards, license plates, spoons and marbles.

``Anyone can do anything with a million dollars - look at Disney,'' she once told a visitor. ``But it takes more than money to make something out of nothing, and look at the fun I have doing it.''

There is perhaps no city in the world in which Bottle Village would fit, but Simi Valley is perhaps the last place you'd expect to find it. Even as visitors from Germany and Japan began flocking to the landmark, many locals were astonished that such a strange place could prove so popular.

Gallegly remembers touring the village in 1968 with his two young sons. With a wild tangle of white hair and a few off-color jokes, Prisbrey was an amusing but eccentric guide, completing her tour with a barroom song played at a standup piano decorated with seashells, buttons and other bric-a-brac.

``I gave her a quarter to go through the thing,'' Gallegly said. ``She was a nice lady so I didn't ask for my money back.''

Others were less polite. Barbara Sullenbarger, who has lived in Simi Valley 68 years, said a tour with her children evoked strong feelings.

``I absolutely hated it,'' she said. ``The doll heads on the sticks, all that glass and junk - it's the most ridiculous thing I ever saw. I can't understand how people can make a shrine out of it.''

But to admirers like Paul, all the random discarded objects are part of what makes Bottle Village so special.

``People see that it's made from stuff from the dump and they leave it at that,'' Paul said. ``Unless it's sculpture or a painting, people have a hard time appreciating it as art.''

Paul discovered the place three years ago after he followed the directions in a Japanese art book. He remembers stopping in the central courtyard and watching the sunshine play off a planter created from vehicle headlights.

``I couldn't believe how beautiful it was,'' he said. ``Just because it's a car headlight doesn't mean the light coming off it isn't beautiful - that's a bold statement.''

Paul went on to study other examples of what critics call folk art environments - buildings, towers and gardens typically created by older people with no formal training in art but an obsessive drive to create. The most well-known example is Watts Towers. Others include Salvation Mountain, a huge heap of adobe sculpture in the California desert, and a garden of mannequins assembled in a Burbank hotel courtyard.

Many art critics think of these places as not just local curiosities but examples of an emerging movement.

``Every artistic movement has encountered animosity - impressionists, pointilists, cubists,'' said Rosen, the photographer. ``I understand this isn't everyone's taste, but the fact is it's very important.''

If for nothing else, Bottle Village deserves appreciation for the work involved, Paul said.

``This was made by someone who had an idea and stuck to it to the very end. These people literally devote their lives to something. I'm really interested in passion like that,'' Paul said.

``Whether people like the aesthetic or not, you can't help but be impressed by that kind of devotion,'' he said. ``Bottle Village serves as testament to a pure true drive to express something inside.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--color in SIMI and CONEJO editions only) Janice Wilson lives on the Bottle Village property in Simi Valley, helping clean the curious compound constructed from discarded items.

(2--color in SIMI and CONEJO editions only) Diana the cat, left, prowls the mosaic walkways of Simi Valley's Bottle Village, a cluster of structures built from unwanted auto parts, toys, tiles and, naturally, bottles. While fans of the creation from around the world hail it as folk art, some residents consider it an eyesore. Critics cite the disembodied doll heads, above, as a particularly unpleasant feature, and are upset by the idea of federal money being spent to repair the property.

Andy Holzman/Special to the Daily News