Oilwhelmed underwhelms but poses an interesting question

The U.S. consumed 19.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2010, which makes us the most voracious consumers in the world. The discovery of oil in Los Angeles in 1892 by Edward Doheny and Charles Canfield may have put us on a course for dependency that some say we’ll never shake.

Drive up the coast of Southern California and you’ll find remnants of this oil-rich history still pumping away, recalling the once great oil fields of Santa Fe and Signal Hill. Could we then, putting aside environmental impacts and politics, celebrate this history once again and, in particular, how it changed a city’s future? Terri Hughes-Oelrich, artist and associate professor of fine arts at City College, wants to know. It’s the question she tackles in her Oilwhelmed exhibit showing at Art Produce Gallery (3139 University Ave., North Park) through Jan. 6.

Hughes grew up in Huntington Beach with a “nodding donkey” (aka pumpjack) in her backyard tirelessly and methodically extracting crude oil night and day. She recalls the Black Gold Fourth of July parades and floats, Miss Huntington Beach riding atop. Hughes doesn’t want her hometown to forget its past, even though it’s been heralded as Surf City for nearly two decades. She persists in petitioning City Hall, producing commemorative pumpjack tiles and oil-well songs and promoting a self-guided tour. A futile effort perhaps, but one symbolically meant to stave off the transformation of an oil city into one of housing developers, surf culture and SUVs.

And while Oilwhelmed is decidedly underwhelming—complete with an oil gift shop and soft oil-well sculptures—its charm lies in the history lesson and not in Hughes’ admirable attempts to revive it.