It’s Art-A-Fair, Sawdust Time in Laguna Beach : 2 Preludes to Festival of Arts in Full Swing

Laguna Beach’s Sawdust and Art-A-Fair festivals--twin preludes to the city’s annual Festival of the Arts--opened over the weekend, and thousands of visitors took advantage of cool temperatures to browse, eat and generally relax in informal outdoor settings.

The 19th annual Sawdust Festival drew about 7,500 people to its opening Friday night. Saturday morning, 150 artists--most of them Californians--began displaying their works in the nearby Art-A-Fair Festival.

For Joe Vella, 70, a retired electronics engineer from Whittier, this year’s Art-A-Fair was an eagerly awaited event.

By noon Saturday, Vella, along with a few women and children, was taking in the first of Charleen Stempel’s free, hourlong lessons in watercolor painting. For Vella, it was like old times.

Teaches Others at Home

Last year, he made the three-hour bus trip from Whittier every Saturday and Sunday of the seven-week arts festival to take the free painting lessons. Then he returned to the Whittier Senior Citizens Center to teach others there what he had learned in Laguna Beach.

“He was here every weekend last year, and here he is again. We’re glad to see him,” said Beverly Reordan, a member of the festival’s board of directors.

Vella said he planned to resume his regular visits this summer.

“I’ll be coming every Saturday and Sunday, every weekend. This is very nice . . . to be here again taking lessons from Mrs. Stempel,” said Vella, who came to California from his native Malta 32 years ago.

“It a pleasure to come all the way down here. I enjoy it so much, and I get to go back and teach the senior citizens in Whittier,” he said.

At the Sawdust Festival, in a eucalyptus grove about 300 yards down Laguna Canyon Road from the Art-A-Fair scene, 6,000 people had shown up by mid-afternoon Saturday, and officials said they expected thousands more visitors by closing time.

Face Painter’s Return

The day had special meaning for face painter Star Shields. A regular participant in the festival’s early years, he had been absent since 1973.

Shields was primed for action Saturday, and he found a willing first customer in Chris Evans, 6.

The artist, who once used the name Rainbow Star, was wearing a rainbow of colors on his own face. It took him less than five minutes to airbrush a gaudy spider mask of black and white, with streaks of red, on the face of the Laguna Beach youngster. Chris proved to be a good sport, but his 3-year-old brother, Damion, refused to have one of the $5 face decorations done on himself.

“I don’t like that stuff,” Damion said, pointing to the makeup base Shields put on his brother’s face before he sprayed on the Halloweenlike mask.

One of the most popular artists at the Sawdust Festival seemed to be Jim Fyhrie, maker and player of the dulcimer, a stringed instrument that produces soft, sweet tones.

The bearded Fyhrie played almost non-stop in an impromptu concert at his Pick’n Parlor, the festival shed where he shows and demonstrates his instruments and also sells copies of his two albums and tapes.

A former schoolteacher, Fyhrie said he first became interested in the dulcimer about 17 years ago, and has seen its popularity grow in recent years in Southern California. In the past few months, he said, he has made and sold 32 of the instruments, which are made of laminated mahogany and finished with four coats of lacquer.

32 Double Strings

The Appalachian-type dulcimer Fyhrie played Saturday was a 32-double-string beauty mounted on a tripod. “It’s a very logical instrument,” he said. “Every four strings is a key. It just has a very nice sound to it.”

The Sawdust Festival and Art-A-Fair Festival each year precede Laguna Beach’s more formal Festival of the Arts and its popular Pageant of the Masters, which features re-creations of well-known masterpieces using living models. The Sawdust and Art-A-Fair festivals, housed in booths built by the exhibitors, feature fine arts, crafts and specialty foods for sale as well as entertainment and demonstrations by local artisans.

Over at the Art-A-Fair Festival on Saturday, one artist was running a bit behind schedule.

An hour after the exhibit opened, Pat Halbert and her friend Peggy Bushweyler were still painting the display booth of Dick Halbert, Pat’s husband.

Last-Minute Paint Job

“He wasn’t going to paint it, but we thought it looked tacky and went out and got some paint,” Pat Halbert said.

“The moral of the story is: Never marry an artist.”

She was probably right. Halbert, a Laguna Niguel artist, was nowhere to be seen as the two women were putting the finishing touches on his booth.

The Art-A-Fair Festival is at Laguna Canyon Road and Canyon Acres Drive; the Sawdust Festival is at 930 Laguna Canyon Road. Both run through Sept. 1. Hours for both festivals are 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.