Marina's effort to adopt a pod of sculpted dolphins progresses slowly.

Photo by Randy Tunnell.

Photo: Out of Water- Charles Fischer sands one of the fiberglass dolphins to be painted by artists.

Inside the Monterey Sculpture Center''s cavernous kiln room, miniature bronze bulls and enormous supplicating hands cool inside their baked sand casings, waiting to be freed by a few taps of the chisel. In other rooms, evidence of the foundry''s processes line up on shelves and lie jumbled in corners-precise wax models, big plaster feet, discarded Styrofoam torsos. It''s a study in incompletion.

Most of these pieces are bound for library steps and hospital entrances in other cities, or galleries in Carmel and New York. But off to the side, not far from an imposing Assyrian queen with a lioness at her feet, is a pair of identical fiberglass dolphins who are already almost home. By November, if all goes according to plan, some 30 artist-painted dolphins will grace public spaces and store windows throughout Marina as part of a public art project whose star will be a 22-foot mother humpback whale with calf breaching from the center of a pond just off Reservation Road.

Painting animal figures as public art isn''t a new idea. It started with the CowParade in Zurich in 1998 and has visited the downtowns of Chicago, New York, London and other major cities, but it''s just now catching on in smaller communities. In Toledo, Ohio it''s frogs; in Whitefish, Montana it''s moose; in Santa Cruz it''s ponies. While Charles Fischer, the Monterey Sculpture Center''s owner, was in Salt Lake City for the Olympics, he saw some painted buffalo and decided to bring the idea home.

The whale part is working out. Randy Puckett, whose cetaceans hang suspended from the ceiling of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, designed a model for Pacific Life Insurance Company last year. The company donated the cast to Marina.

But the dolphin project hasn''t gone as well as Fischer had hoped. He''s only received 10 proposals from artists so far.

"We didn''t get the huge outpouring of artists to do the project," he says, "primarily because they wanted money for it. Nine-eleven really had an effect. It takes people with disposable income to buy art. Artists are scrambling."

Typically, these projects serve as fundraisers for arts organizations. This one will raise money for the fledgling Marina Arts Council. As with other animal parades, the artists are asked to donate their talents. The pieces are then auctioned off to local businesses.

In addition to the two unfinished models, two of the dolphins have been painted already, one in antiqued 24-karat gold leaf, by Fischer and his sister Cheryl Miller, and one sky-blue dolphin patched with wispy clouds. The artists who worked together on it, Greg Casler and Tony Declet, both paint custom cars for a living.

Casler''s garage is in the next industrial building over from the Sculpture Center. He''s working on a second dolphin, and as a 1966 Ferrari leaves the parking lot on a trailer, candied under countless coats of red paint, Casler ambles into his garage to show a visitor his solo dolphin project. It''s primer gray, with long, swooping lines of tape outlining his signature flame pattern. Casler specializes in subtle colors and fades in his flames, and he plans on going for the same effect here using blue, green and purple.

Like most of the other artists with plans for dolphins, he takes his inspiration from the dolphin''s marine environment. "I want to give it the look of the kelp," he says.

Francis Fridrich, who took a sculpting class from Fischer on a visit here from France not long ago, has two ideas. One dolphins he would like to stud with crystals. The other would be a dolphin on one side and a dove of peace on the other. It would be antique silver and midnight blue-because those are lunar colors and "because sea mammals respond to the pull of the moon," he says.

Impala Lechner, who is here from Germany, explains that her design will consist of many cultures'' symbols for water, and undertakes a complicated explanation of how unique dolphins are, how they connect humans to nature. "Our world needs us desperately to interact with the earth, with life," she says. "We are destroying our world because of not being connected with the earth and with life."

Charles Fischer is fine with Lechner''s philosophy. In fact, almost any well-wrought design would be welcome, as long as it abides by one rule: "No logos," he smiles.

For more information, call the Monterey Sculpture Center at 384-2100.