OUR LAGUNA: Much ado about state of art festivals

Like the song says, “There’s no business like show business,” and it’s showtime in Laguna.

The Pageant of the Masters opened to the public after previews Monday and Tuesday. All of the festivals are opened for business, following private invitation-only parties.

Tableau Vivants, the living pictures that have made the pageant a must-see for 75 years are livelier than ever this year — with singers giving voice to art and dancers kicking up their heels in an animated frieze above the main stage.

Time was that the most action in the pageant was the popular “Builders Scene,” which shows how the live models are fitted into the painted background and made two-dimensional by lighting. This year, a model portraying a delightful Commedia dell’ Arte character popped into the art to help arrange a scene and bopped a fellow model who didn’t get it right.

Other stock commedia characters cavorted on the walkway between audience and the orchestra pit to introduce the second act.

One of the characters proved to be mulish about performing until her buddy also got a part.

Stella, a burro dolled up for the entre’acte frolic, flat out refused to do her part until her pal, Blanche, a goat, was brought into the act. The animals are on loan from Zumars Petting Zoo in San Juan Capistrano.

“They are the only cast or crew members fed and housed by the festival,” pageant Director Diane Challis Davy said. “I don’t know where the reference to ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ came from.”

But she sure knows where the theme for the 75th Anniversary show came from. Captivated since childhood by theater and performing arts, “All the World’s a Stage,” provided her with an opportunity to showcase the influence art has on theater and vice versa.

“In my research, I discovered that artists like Edgar Degas, Toulouse Lautrec, John Sloan, Everett Shinn and others enjoyed spending their leisure hours in the theaters, cabarets and dance halls,” Challis Davy said.

Challis Davy has been director of the pageant since 1995, but her association goes back way further than that.

Her dad, gallery owner Richard Challis, was active in the festival where his daughter was nurtured. She acted as a child and attended the California Institute of Arts, helped out by a Festival of Arts Scholarship, and also studied in England.

Her degree in costume design put her behind the scenes at the festival when she came home.

Challis Davy designs the costumes for the show. Mary LaVenture makes the patterns and supervises construction as well as personally working on some of them.

“It is a great partnership,” Challis Davy said.

Festival of Arts

Works by 154 artists are featured in the 76th Festival of Arts, nine more than last year and the most in recent years. Twenty-six of them are show virgins.

“Each year the festival continues to grow,” said Marketing and Public Relations Director Sharbie Higuchi.

The invitational opening was SRO.

A la Carte prepared an international menu that included Greek spanakopita, Mexican Chilliqueles and American brownie bites for an expected crowd of 4,000.

“Usually we are in the ball park of about 3,500,” said Susan Davies, director of membership and special events.

In the crowd: Councilwoman Elizabeth Pearson, Catrina and former Councilman Steve Dicterow, Steve Kawaratani and Catharine Cooper, Matt and Mary Lawson, Lance Polster, Bobbi Cox and Anne Johnson.

Sawdust Festival

Guests at the invitation-only opening June 26 were greeted by costumed Billy Horner, enjoying his role as the Welcome Wizard.

“I am having a lot of fun,” Wiz said. “I’ve had my picture taken maybe a 100 times in the last half-hour.

A crowd of more than 5,000 jammed into the grounds, according to jewelry exhibitor Ken Lauher.

“And that doesn’t include the artists and booth staffers,” he said.

Which adds a hefty number to the total.

Guests included Gene Gratz, Connie Burlin, Barbara and Greg McGillivray, Jim and Pat Kollenda, Wayne Peterson and Terry Smith, John Keith, Mary Ferguson and George Woods, wearing a jacket and straw hat painted by Joan Corman, who also attended the opening.

More than 200 artists, artisans and craftspeople are exhibiting in the 42nd annual Sawdust Festival.

“This show is as good as any I’ve seen ,” Jay Grant said. “We have some great new artists and a lot of old artists who are doing new things.

Long-time exhibitors include Sally Wilde, who has been in the show since 1971, five years after it opened; Doug Miller, who said he has had the same exhibition space at the bottom of the stairs to the entertainment deck for the last 12 years of his 35 years in the Sawdust; glass artist John Barber, Mother of Pearls jeweler Patti Jo Kiraly, and Ket Youngblood, welcomed back after missing last year’s summer and winter shows, due to ill health.

The show’s theme this year is “Summer of Enchantment.”

Art-a-Fair

It wasn’t just another opening of another show for Art-a-Fair.

The invitation-only party drew a record crowd, according to board President Richard “Scooter” Brewer.

“It was the best in Art-a-Fair’s 42-year history,” Brewer said.

The fire department sets the capacity for the grounds and firefighters and police were on hand to help control the crowd, which at times would have exceeded the limit.

“I think it is because we are different than the other shows and it is starting to show,” Brewer said. “We pull artists from all over the country.”

The roster has 28 new artists this year.

“I think art shows are recognizing that new artists add interest,” Brewer said.

The show has 126 exhibitors, including Brewer’s wife, Mariann, — which accounts for his T-shirt that reads Art Slave — like the one sported by Festival exhibitor Lu Campbell’s husband John.

But that goes for a lot of folks in Laguna at this time of year when the shows must go on.

OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, 92652; hand-deliver to Suite 22 in the Lumberyard, 384 Forest Ave.; call (949) 494-4321, fax (949) 494-8979 or e-mail [email protected]