Latest news with #SawdustFestival
Los Angeles Times
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Sawdust Festival to host auction to support artists benevolence fund
Laguna Beach may long have looked at itself as a colony of artists, but it's no secret that a career as a creative has its challenges. It's not synonymous with stability, and it isn't always lucrative, which is all the more reason why the artists benevolence fund exists. The fund provides a pool of money that local artists may access in a time of personal tragedy or crisis. It is overseen by a five-member board of trustees. An artist may apply for critical assistance once a year. In August, the Sawdust Art Festival hosts a live auction to raise dollars for the fund. Artists, both locally and from out of town, donate artwork for the auction, with 100% of the proceeds going into the fund's account. David Nelson, a jewelry designer who works with sterling silver, was one of the founding members of the program. While individual cases are kept confidential and the amount of the grants are limited, Nelson said the intention of the fund is to help artists who live in Laguna Beach get back to work. 'When it first started, there was an artist here who had [terminal] cancer and was concerned about how we were going to take care of her 6-year-old, so we all passed the hat,' Nelson said. 'It was the original 'GoFundMe.'' he quipped. 'After that, we realized there's a lot of artists here that don't have insurance, so then we had our first auction. … It was a long time ago. We started doing it every year,,' he said. 'The fund was set up to help artists out who make their living as an artists. It's not just doing what they love, it's how they make their living.' The artists benevolence fund live auction will take place from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday from the waterfall deck on the Sawdust Festival grounds. Admission is free for those planning to participate in the auction. Since its inception in 1987 the benevolence fund has awarded more than $100,000 for resident artists in need. Nelson, who has exhibited at the Sawdust Art Festival for 56 years, is also in charge of a memorial plaque honoring those who have made a significant contribution to the festival. 'Many artists have gotten their start here,' Nelson said. 'Some like myself are still here. Some have moved on from here. … There's 149 names on the plaque of artists who have come and gone, and those are artists who have been here for years and put in their blood, sweat and tears to the show. I've got to add three more names this year. I added five last year and five the year before.' The goal is to raise as much money as possible for the fund, Nelson said, offering up a target of between $25,000 to $30,000. He added that he hopes to have 75-plus pieces of artwork, spanning a wide range in value, to auction off. John Tynan, known to Laguna Beach residents for his involvement with the Third Street Writers and the local radio station KXFM 104.7, is expected to serve as auctioneer. Joan Gladstone, a fifth-year exhibitor at the Sawdust Art Festival, has donated art each of those years, adding the experience has become more personal as she's met artists who have benefited from the benevolence fund. Between the artists themselves and the festival, Gladstone believes the auction is well known to the community. She noted she knows people who look forward to it every year. Gladstone's contribution this year? A popular print of a painting she did of a frozen banana stand on Balboa Island. 'We have a community of artists that are helping one another in a meaningful way through their art,' Gladstone said. 'There's another dimension of this when we think about community, and that is the community of art lovers who come to the auction and are there for three hours to bid on a treasure that has meaning for them. 'They want that art, they want that jewelry, or that ceramic item, and they know that the funds are going to this wonderful cause. We have this great mixture of the community of artists coming together to donate their work, but we also have the community of people who come together once a year to make a financial contribution to the fund.'
Los Angeles Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Sawdust Festival artists take on teaching in seminar at Sage Hill
Ron Shearer's artistic journey began at home, but it wasn't until decades later that he reconnected with those roots through a chance encounter while abroad. Shearer recalls cutting tile for his mother's mosaic hobby in his youth. While abroad in Italy in 2009, he walked into a shop of a mosaic artist, and it brought those memories back to the surface. 'I didn't foster it then, or I didn't fall in love with it [as a child],' Shearer said. 'I was 8 years old, and I wanted to go out and ride my bike. About 52 years later is when I went to Italy, and I walked into this fellow's shop, and I said, 'Wow.' This reminded me of what I did with my mom.' The Santa Ana native came back from that visit and taught himself how to do mosaic art, using what he observed in that shop and a few of the mosaics he still had from his mother's work in the 1950s. Shearer, who said he has exhibited at the Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach for 25 years, started in metal sculpture. He has since rededicated his efforts to mosaic and often teaches classes or works out of his booth while on the grounds. This week presented an opportunity to offer some inspiration to others, as Shearer was one of a handful of Sawdust artists to give students a hands-on experience at Sage Hill School. 'The biggest hurdle that I have to overcome from teaching someone, whether it be kids or whether it be adults, is that it is a deferred gratification,' Shearer said of mosaic art. 'It takes time to do a mosaic, and it's something you can't hurry. A lot of people want to sit down and finish it in an hour and a half, and it's really hard to do. It takes time to do it.' Needing to make the task manageable within school hours, the students worked on mosaic coasters that were approximately 4 square inches on Friday. Shearer came prepared with 10 different colors of cut tile, glue and coasters to serve as makeshift canvases. Students had a chance to cut and arrange tile pieces, then come up with a design before attempting to glue and assemble a finished product. Some packed geometric shapes into stars, while others placed living things such as fish into the body of their design. The workshop was part of the inaugural Sawdust Art Festival Survey, one of nearly two dozen seminars offered to students at the school through the Spring at Sage program. 'Sage Hill and Sawdust Art Festival are natural partners as institutions of creativity and excellence in Orange County,' said Daniel Langhorne, a school spokesman. 'We're very grateful for these professional artists inspiring our students to explore new media and express themselves.' AnnJo Droog, director of art education at the Sawdust Festival, said other participants in the week-long collaboration included Hedy Buzan, Gabe Sullivan and Julie Setterholm. The program also exposed students to copper enameling, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and sketching. There wasn't much work to do in terms of securing artists for the workshops, said Droog, who added, 'Everybody wanted to come.' 'What my job really was to do was to be mindful of what we were going to give the students,' Droog said. 'So try to give them really diverse art experience, so that's why we've jumped from printmaking to painting to mosaics, so they get a taste of a lot. They've had a lot to learn this week, but they're an amazing group, and they're really into it, as well. They're really intent and focused on their work. It's fabulous.' Preserving the artists colony is often a topic of discussion in Laguna Beach, which is home to three art festivals, including the Festival of Arts and Laguna Art-A-Fair. Droog dreamed about the possibility of building the colony with more artists. 'Sharing [art] with the younger generation and getting them enthusiastic,' Droog said. 'If we have created inspiration in somebody in that room who wants to make art a career, 'Wow,' what an achievement.'
Los Angeles Times
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Laguna Beach's Sawdust Festival: A deep dive into the coastal fair
In Orange County, Laguna Beach is no short of populus, where Californians take to the crystal blue waters of Table Rock or 1000 Steps with their sunscreen and flip-flops, in between swimming, playing at the basketball courts or grabbing food at the local cafes. However, amongst the sandy trails and towering palm trees is a vivid, storied art and culture scene: a large piece of Laguna that is celebrated each summer and winter during the city's biannual Sawdust Festival. Formed from a dream of artistic unity in one of the most diverse art centers in southern California, the Sawdust Festival had one goal: to showcase the Picassos of the west coast. Alongside its counterparts — the Pageant of the Masters which opened their doors in 1932, and the Art-a-Fair that followed suit in 1966 — the Sawdust Festival was (and still is) a celebration of years of allowing artists to paint their own stories, to connect and create with others who follow the same stroke of expressive genius. 'It was a chance to be a part of an art movement, and Laguna Beach afforded us that.' stated Tracey Moscaritolo, a Boston-native painter who joined the festival in 1969. For her, early childhood was spent drawing by herself, without a creative community, she said. But after being stationed in El Toro during her days as a Marine, Moscaritolo moved to Laguna Beach, took art classes using the money from her G.I. bills, and joined a group of artists that fostered a rewarding art career. 'It's kind of like a family,' Moscaritolo said. 'A lot of us have been here for a long time, and we support each other in many ways.' Now, 55 years after 69', she has been painting and selling vibrant acrylic landscapes after exploring the world of metal sculpting and discovering her love of color. 'Someone said of my work that it reminded them of a place remembered, but not yet visited. And some of the artwork that I have is from my memory.' Moved by Laguna and the wonderful artists that accompany it, Tracey Moscaritolo also aided in continuing this unwritten tradition of inspiration. Catherine Reade, a friend of Moscaritolo, started out designing jewelry and seeking others to bring the vision to life; that was, until the painter motivated her to learn the craft herself. Reade then transformed into the maker, she said, spending her evenings at an open studio at Orange Coast College with artists who had a diverse range of experience. 'It was so nice to not be working in a formal setting, but to put on my jeans and my sweats and pound metals with hammers,' Reade said. 'It was just so invigorating and empowering. It just captured my heart.' Reade has been showcasing her jewelry at the Sawdust Festival for 24 years, using sheet, wire, and wax castings to create her pieces. As a custom designer, Reade states,'I'm constantly problem-solving new pieces; I'm not just locked into one thing over and over again.' Starting with mostly potters and ceramists, the Sawdust Festival has since never been short of such. After a vacation one summer where she found herself in a painting class, ceramic artist Elena Madureri found herself completely enthralled with the medium. 'I fell in love and said, 'this is what I want,'' she said. Madureri's earth-tone pieces often include carvings of women, which she includes as an ode to her home country Venezuela. In an age where the word 'community' is in most cases spoken in a digital context, and AI. has changed the world of art as we know it, it's difficult to remember what it meant to make something; to not just see, but feel culture. The Sawdust Festival is a reminder of what it meant to be a community, what it meant to be in an art house like Laguna Beach: an ever-evolving canvas by the coast. Sawdust's annual Summer Festival begins June 27. Related
