October Fires Talk of Day at Laguna Art Festivals

The oil and watercolor paintings were carefully mounted on makeshift walls, the ceramic mushrooms protruded from the sides of a moss-covered rock display. The crowds, heavier than usual, milled about the colorful artwork.

It appeared to be a routine Saturday as the first of the summer art festivals got underway in Laguna Beach.

But much of the talk at the Art-A-Fair and the Sawdust Festival was not about the fine ink and watercolor paintings depicting wizards and gnomes or the smooth gray-and-white sculpture of a dolphin.

Exhibitors and patrons alike were talking about the fires last fall that ravaged the city, the rain and mud that damaged the home of the Pageant of the Masters and the quick recovery that allowed the city’s biggest tourist attraction to open on time this year.

It’s hard for visitors not to talk about the fires. They drove into town mostly on Laguna Canyon Road, where the charred and denuded hills were just outside their car windows. They asked the local artists if the fires came close.

“And I tell them, ‘You are sitting in fire central,’ ” said Scott Sutton, a Laguna Beach artist and author whose Art-A-Fair booth was filled with his children’s books and ink and watercolor paintings.

This year, curiosity about the fire and rain damage is generating big crowds, said Martin Roberts, a spokesman for the Sawdust Festival, which opened Thursday. From the grounds, tourists simply look across the street at the blackened hills for a constant reminder.

The crowds will get bigger next Friday when the Festival of Arts and the Pageant of the Masters open. All four events are next to each other on either side of Laguna Canyon Road.

“This show has been going nonstop for the past 28 years,” Roberts said. “It has been through every political and economic change in America, and it triumphed over the worst natural disaster to hit Laguna Beach.”

But now, “look around,” he said, pointing to the sea of colorful booths stocked with everything from musical instruments to children’s costumes. “You would never know the show was ever threatened by flames.”

Still, while the visitors are talking about the fires, the locals are thinking about the catastrophe, said Alice Helcuk, a Laguna Beach resident attending the festivals.

“You won’t find any of the locals talking, but you know it is in the back of their minds,” she said. “No one will ever forget what happened here, but you try to move on. And by not always talking about it--that makes it easier.”