Local Artists Lobby Board to Spiff Up Art Festival

Concerned with what they perceive as a decline in reputation and a concurrent drop in attendance, a group of local artists is lobbying the board of the Laguna Festival of the Arts to hire an outside firm to polish up the annual event’s image.

Carrying a petition signed by 84 festival artists (about 90% of the participants), several artists met recently with two committees of the festival board to air their concerns. The artists’ proposal will be discussed informally at Tuesday’s board meeting.

“They really made a lovely presentation. They put a lot of work into it,” said board president Jacquie Moffett. “I was really impressed.”

Artists in the festival show and sell their work in booths on the grounds outside the Pageant of the Masters, the annual stage show in which models re-create famous works of art with the help of elaborate sets. Festival attendance went up slightly this summer but in general has been in a 10-year slump.

Part of the problem, believes sculptor David Sabaroff, is that the festival is promoted as a tourist event rather than an art event. “We need to define an image and present ourselves better in the art world,” Sabaroff said. “The festival doesn’t have as much respect as some of us would like.”

The proposal Sabaroff and others have made is to hire an outside arts professional to promote the festival. “What we are really asking is to move (the promotion) up a notch and start promoting it as an art event, and promoting it to the art world,” Sabaroff said.

Another artist touting the changes, Dan Miller, said the festival has increasingly taken a back seat to the pageant over the years. Both events started in the 1930s.

“Long, long ago the artists came before the pageant,” Miller said. “A lot of people out there feel like we’re all dressed up and nobody’s coming out to see us.” Poor attendance has a direct effect on the ability of local artists to live and work in Laguna Beach, which has long touted itself as an artists’ colony, according to Miller.

Sabaroff said the board has been unreceptive in the past to suggestions from artists, but feels that may be changing. “It went quite well, actually,” Sabaroff said of the recent presentation to the board committees. “I had a real positive feeling about the reaction of some of the people.”

While the festival attendance has slumped, visitation at the newer Sawdust Festival nearby has been on the rise. Artists and organizers, though, say they feel that the relationship between the two events, and the nearby Art-A-Fair, is cooperative rather than competitive. Visitors commonly attend more than one festival during a visit.