Art & Nature program explores just that

Lita Albuquerque has led volunteers through the Mojave Desert. She’s led them near the Egyptian pyramids, enduring a brief work stoppage when authorities mistook the design they were drawing for the Star of David. She’s led them on an expedition to the South Pole — and then the North Pole for a companion piece.

Given that, there ought to be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the Malibu-based artist can persuade a few hundred people to join her for a performance piece in Laguna Beach.

Albuquerque, whose installation will open Sunday as part of the Laguna Art Museum’s annual “Art & Nature” program, has an outdoor component planned next month to complement the work in the gallery. On Nov. 8, the artist plans to present “An Elongated Now,” in which participants walk to the beach in a choreographed procession, form an arc pattern facing the sunset and turn on small, blue LED lights before returning to the museum for another performance piece.

Why blue? The color has been a motif in Albuquerque’s ephemeral works — projects that involve a massive outdoor display and are intended to last a short period of time — for years. In Antarctica, the artist and her helpers set 99 blue spheres on the ice to mirror the stars above, while the Egypt project served a similar theme with blue pigment.

“What it really means is the connection between the earth and the sky,” Albuquerque said, taking a momentary break from setting up her installation at the museum Tuesday. “I use it so that there is that relationship — since I’m on the plane of the planet Earth, you know, that if I put it on the plane, then there’s the relationship to the sky. It’s really about that.”

That goes for Albuquerque’s gallery piece as well. “Particle Horizon,” which centers on a mannequin of a blue woman reclining in a white room with the stars of the Northern and Southern hemispheres washing over her, will take up the lower level of the museum through Jan. 25, with the main level devoted to Elizabeth Turk’s “Sentient Forms” and the upper level to the group retrospective “California Rural, 1930s and 1940s from the Collection of Diane and E. Gene Crain.”

All three shows comprise the exhibit portion of “Art & Nature,” which debuted last fall with works by Adam Silverman, Richard Kraft and Tanya Aguiniga and a sand drawing on the beach by Jim Denevan. Curator of contemporary art Grace Kook-Anderson said the museum hopes to do one live piece by the ocean each year.

“It is such a magical kind of experience for people to see and to witness — and to be part of something that’s larger than yourself, I think, is very exciting,” she said. “I think it kind of is an important aspect of what ‘Art & Nature’ is about. It’s way beyond one person.”

Turk, a Newport Beach native, found the inspiration for her four installations at the Smithsonian Institution, where she studied natural shapes under a research fellowship. A recurring theme in her Laguna pieces, she said, is gravity and the ability of matter to withstand it — as with “Cage and Collars,” a series of intricate marble carvings.

“The thesis, or the idea, of going to the Smithsonian was to look at natural forms that have been created, I learned, with pressure out of the oceans or the natural forms that are embedded in the process of making marble, but then which hold for a long time under the forces of gravity,” Turk said.

“So I figured, just intuitively, if I studied a bunch of shells or fish or corals or things that have developed under the immense pressure, then I could create really extreme sculptures that could survive just this intangible force of gravity for longer.”

In addition to the exhibits and Albuquerque’s performance piece, the museum will host an “Art & Nature” festival from Nov. 6 to 9, featuring lectures, a film screening and other events.

IF YOU GO

What: “Lita Albuquerque: Particle Horizon,” “Elizabeth Turk: Sentient Forms” and “California Rural, 1930s and 1940s from the Collection of Diane and E. Gene Crain”

Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday; exhibits open Oct. 12

Cost: $7 general, $5 for students and seniors, free for children under 12 and members

Information: (949) 494-8971 or lagunaartmuseum.org