NEWPORT BEACH : 2nd Career as Sculptor Shaping Up

By day, Michael Paul McGinnis shapes and dries heads of hair at his posh, full-service Newport Center beauty salon. By night, he molds and fires pounds of clay at his Spartan Corona del Mar garage studio.

Now, the grueling juggling of dual careers has paid off.

McGinnis, 43, is one of 190 artists recently selected for the prestigious La Quinta Arts Festival starting next Thursday in the city after which it is named.

The third largest outdoor arts event in California, this year’s 10th-anniversary show drew almost 1,000 applications from artists across the United States and as far away as Czechoslovakia, festival officials said. The seed of McGinnis’ art career was planted about four years ago when the former triathlete, who then owned a salon in Costa Mesa, saw a psychic who told him he would some day open a salon in Fashion Island and be a famous sculptor.

“Actually I didn’t take any of it seriously and forgot all about it,” he said, laughing. “I hadn’t touched art since I did one project in high school, and I never thought I’d have my business here.”

But six months later, after opening Salon Wave in Newport Center, he came across the videotape of the session with the psychic and remembered the predictions. For fun, he enrolled in a ceramics class at Orange Coast College.

“Putting my hands in clay became a passion,” he said. “I’d work 13 hours a day in the salon and come home and throw pots for four hours every night and all weekend long. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and draw things.”

Until now, McGinnis has only sold his work through his salon, which serves about 50 people a day, and to private individuals who have commissioned pieces for their homes.

Today, he is preparing about 40 pieces to show in La Quinta, where about 30,000 people are expected to view them during the four-day festival.

McGinnis’ colorful discs, pots and figures are modeled from clay and finished with two unusual techniques.

One of these is raku, a Japanese method whereby sculpted pieces are pulled out of the fire and placed in a can filled with special leaves and paper that are then ignited, thereby producing a crackled effect, he explained.

The other technique, called pitfire, an Indian method that involves placing the sculpted figures with seaweed into a bonfire such as McGinnis builds on Corona del Mar State Beach.

“You let it burn out and it creates interesting colors,” he said. “I get some very curious people watching when I do this one.”

His dream, McGinnis said, is to become one of the 3% of all artists in this country who actually make a living from their creativity. “I really enjoy doing hair and the people,” he said. “But it’s not very creative because people put so many limitations on you. Their husbands like it long, they don’t want you to cut. I feel more like a draftsman than a creative person.”

“There are so many ideas wrapped up in me,” he said. “I get so frustrated inside. . . .”