Summer Laguna Arts Season Begins This Weekend

The summer arts seen in Laguna Beach includes three separate venues, all located on picturesque Laguna Canyon Road. Opening today, Friday June 26 are the Art-a-Fair and Sawdust Art Festival, with the Festival of Arts opening on July 5. All three run through the end of August and each offer a unique perspective on the arts.

Art-a-Fair, the international exhibition, is located at 777 Laguna Canyon Road, 92651. It is open June 26 - August 30, 2009, Sunday - Thursday 10 am - 9 pm and Friday - Saturday 10 am - 10 pm.

Art-a-Fair guests are offered the opportunity to view and acquire art directly from the artist exhibitors, who are the 125 winning artists and master craftsman from a national juried competition.

The show presents two and three dimensional art, including oils, watercolors, pastels, acrylics, drawings, mixed media, photography, sculpture, jewelry, glassworks, pottery, and furniture. The show also will feature a variety of artist demonstrations and lectures. Visitors will be able to see first hand how the artistic masterpieces are created from conception to completion. Free workshops and supervised children's art activities are also offered.

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The Sawdust Art Festival, the exhibition of Laguna Beach artists and craftsmen, is located at 935 Laguna Canyon Road and is open 7 days a week 10 am to 10 pm through 8/30/09.
The Sawdust Art Festival is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public
and promoting the art created in Laguna Beach. As such, the 2009 show, their 43rd season, dubbed "Where Art Happens", features over 200 Laguna Beach artisans.

To present this annual fine art and craft show, a renowned summer tradition, each year local Laguna Beach artisans join together on the festival grounds and show off their creative talents to the public. Exhibitors personally create artwork for sale using a wide variety of media, including ceramics, copper, glass, jewelry, leather, mixed-media, painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, wood and more.

Many of the Sawdust exhibitors will demonstrate their artistic abilities and teach special workshops and art classes to visitors of all ages. Guests will be able to interact with over 200 local artisans at each of their uniquely built booths, and also learn a wide variety of art skills at the Ceramics Booth, Sawdust Studio, Glass-blowing Demo Booth, and Children’s Art Spot.

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The Festival of Arts, located at 650 Laguna Canyon Road, also home to the Irvine Bowl and the Pageant of the Masters, is open July 5 - August 31 (Closed August 29), daily 10 am - 11:30 pm

The Festival of Arts, staged in a six-acre canyon park near the ocean, began in 1932 and has become a summertime tradition. Presenting will be over 140 of the Southland’s most accomplished artists. This is a rigorously juried show, requiring exhibitors to demonstrate and maintain high aesthetic standards. Their work is truly fine art! The artworks on display are for sale and represent a complete spectrum of art media: paintings, sculpture, pastels, drawings, serigraphs, photographs, ceramics, jewelry, etched and stained glass, fiber arts, handcrafted furniture and even scrimshaw. All of the works are original art .

In addition to a long list of special events, there will be art workshops, daily docent-led tours offering expert insights to the exhibits, musical entertainment and hands-on demonstrations in printmaking, ceramics, painting and paper art. Visitors will also be able to explore the outstanding accomplishments of talented local students at the Junior Art Exhibit, featuring 150 works selected from over 1,500 submissions.

The Pageant of the Masters is the world-famous celebration of art in tableaux vivants – “living pictures”. Staged in the Irvine Bowl, this year's production is entitled "The Muse", and is the Pageant’s theatrical meditation on artistic inspiration in general and the roles of women in art in particular.

According to Diane Challis Davy, the director, “In The Muse, we’re trying to dig deeper into the psyche to discover who or what motivates artists to create.” In ancient mythology, the Muses were the nine lovely daughters of Zeus and the Goddess of Memory. They personified the mysterious and, as some have described it, the “feminine,” process of inspiration, getting in touch with one’s inner wellspring of creativity. For Challis Davy, that’s something worthy of closer examination.

“Not all inspiration is divine, nor does it appear out of nowhere in a blinding flash,” she offered. For French impressionist Claude Monet, his wife was both muse and model for many of his most famous works. By contrast, Paul Gauguin’s travels to the South Seas radically transformed his art in bold, new ways. Paintings by Monet, Gauguin, Salvador Dali and Maxfield Parrish will be among the more than 40 artworks re-created on the Pageant stage in The Muse. “Behind every masterpiece is a story of fascination, love, passion and obsession,” Challis Davy said.

Click here to go to their web site.