Student Who Planned Venue for Performance Art Dies

CORONA DEL MAR — Robert Tyler, a UC Irvine student who had hoped to open a visual and performance-art venue in Santa Ana next month, died Sunday after a long illness, a close friend of Tyler’s said Monday.

All plans for the avant-garde venue have been abandoned, said Russell Jobe of Corona del Mar. Tyler, who was 29, had signed a one-year lease for an industrial park unit to launch Sho, but his family does not wish to carry on with the project, Jobe said.

Work is under way to present at an alternative site the program that was being organized for Sho’s Sept. 13 opening, said Eugene C. White, the Tyler family’s attorney. The performance would either be staged on the same date at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, where White is a trustee, or as part of the museum’s presentation at Arts on the Green, an arts festival scheduled for Sept. 21 and 22 in Costa Mesa, White said.

Several prominent performance artists had agreed to take part in the Sho opening, said UC Irvine performance art instructor John White (no relation to Eugene C. White), who organized the lineup. They included John Fleck, Josie Roth, the Shrimps, Jeff McMahon, Ernie Lasky and Beth Lapides.

John White said Sho could have helped vitalize and centralize the performance-art scene in Orange County, and characterized its loss as unfortunate.