LAGUNA BEACH : Jewelry Maker Files Suit Against Festival

Donna Campbell has participated at the Sawdust Festival annually since 1968, exhibiting and selling her Victorian-inspired costume jewelry, much of it to clients who have been collecting her antique reproductions over the years.

But this year, Campbell will have to get help from a judge if she wants to show her customers her work. After 24 years, the jewelry maker is not being allowed to present the majority of her creations because the festival’s current board of directors has determined that it does not fall under the show’s guidelines of what is handmade.

Campbell’s attorney, Tom Wright, will go to Orange County Superior Court today to seek a temporary injunction against the Sawdust Festival Corp. to prevent the exclusion of the items banned until the merits of the case can be heard. Campbell said she plans to go all the way with her suit to protect her work and that of others who have experienced similar trouble.

Although the nonprofit festival is not juried, exhibitors participate in a series of “show-and-tell” sessions every January, when directors can see what they plan to display at their booths. This is when much of Campbell’s work was excluded from the show, Wright said. Festival officials refer to a “75% rule,” that requires three-quarters of any particular work to be the artist’s own original handiwork.

“When you take some of Donna’s jewelry and place it next to approved jewelry--it’s obvious there is no fundamental distinction,” Wright said.

Sawdust Festival attorney Michael Dawe said the board’s reason for denying some of Campbell’s work is that “they were made of component parts and didn’t have enough handiwork to qualify under their 75% rule. It’s a judgment call for the board and it’s not an easy decision. But it’s very important to the festival that all the work shown be original and handmade.”

Under festival guidelines, Dawe said anyone who seeks to become an exhibitor must sign an agreement that they will abide by all the rules, including the show-and-tell process. Dawe added that Campbell signed the agreement.

This latest trouble is not the first for Campbell, who has vocally defended her work and that of other artists with the board since the late 1970s. But Cambell’s concerns have escalated this year. She contends she is the first of many artists who have shown at the festivals for years whose work is now being rejected for falling under the category of a craft and not a fine art.

“It’s always been an arts and crafts show. But they’re after crafts now,” Campbell said Sunday from her home in Sedona, Ariz. “They scrutinize everything we create, the materials and how it’s done.”