Facing a Tough Crowd

If the 68-year-old Laguna Beach Festival of Arts moves to San Clemente, there’s a good chance that Mission Viejo Mayor Sherri M. Butterfield will be branded as the Pied Piper who led the march.

Butterfield is the target of a recall effort as president of the Festival of Arts board of directors because she and the board recently entered into exclusive negotiations to move the seminal summer arts show to San Clemente.

A majority of the festival’s eight-member board supports investigating a move to cheaper digs. But many others, including festival artists, oppose even the thought of splitting the festival from the city and urge working with the city to seek a compromise on escalating rents.

“She is seen as the leader of the push to leave Laguna Beach,” said Robin Hall, a member of the committee called Artists Resolved to Stay, or ARTS, which recently circulated a petition among the festival’s 160 exhibitors seeking a recall of the board. “Here is this show that has been in Laguna for 68 years, and all of a sudden [Butterfield] decided that we can’t afford it anymore.”

Butterfield’s connection to the festival dates back nearly two decades. She became involved 18 years ago when her youngest daughter, Tara, wanted to take part in the internationally known Pageant of the Masters, in which people pose as re-creations of famous works of art.

When her daughter got the part, Butterfield volunteered to help behind the scenes for the same reason many come to Southern California: She wanted to be in show business.

“This gave me a chance to get a little closer to show business,” Butterfield said. “The pageant also raises money to support the study, practice and performance of the arts, so while I was there doing something fun and creative, I was also doing something satisfying and worthwhile.”

Butterfield’s older daughter and her husband, Marion, got into the act the next year. Her two daughters are now grown with families of their own, but Butterfield still works backstage. Her husband has played the part of James the Lesser in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” every year since 1984.

After working so long as a volunteer in the women’s makeup department, Butterfield came to view the other families and volunteers at the festival as her “summer family,” she said.

In 1996, she was made a life member of the Festival of Arts in recognition of her service. In January 1997, she was invited to complete the term of a board member who resigned.

Butterfield was elected to the board in 1998 and elected president that November, then again in November 1999.

Now her critics contend her push to leave Laguna is leading the entire festival program down the wrong path.

Hall said one of the artists’ biggest complaints has been the number of closed-door meetings conducted by the board and its reluctance to share information about the San Clemente proposal with the people the board is supposed to represent.

“Our biggest question in this whole ordeal is that they keep telling us [the move] is such a fabulous idea,” Hall said. “Then why won’t they show us?

“I have made multiple requests for minutes from the meetings and mailing lists for the members of the festival, because we would like to poll the members, but I have been denied that information. They are hindering our efforts because they won’t give us the mailing lists and everything is so secret.”

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Accusations of working behind closed doors and not being open with the public have been made before against Butterfield.

She and two other members of the Mission Viejo City Council have been named in a lawsuit alleging that they violated California’s open meeting laws during a closed session in April. A political watchdog group in the city, which filed the lawsuit against Butterfield, also has accused the mayor of secretive tactics in an attempt to push through the approval of a new city hall.

Butterfield insists that she and other board members have the best interests of the artists and the festival at heart in their talks with San Clemente city officials. And the criticism, at home and in Laguna, is taking a toll, she says.

“I feel like I’m wearing a target on my chest going from City Council meetings on Monday night then to board meetings for the festival on Tuesday,” Butterfield said. “Of course it bothers me. Nobody likes to read letters that are really nasty or vicious. But my real concern, and the rest of the board’s, is that we are really concerned with the future of the festival.”

David Young, a member of the festival’s board for 46 years and an outspoken critic of the proposed move, believes the festival can remain a success in Laguna Beach.

“The board members feel they are saving the festival, but that is a little off-base, I feel,” Young said. “The rent from the city is high and the city knows it’s high, and they have been negotiating to get it down.”

But Butterfield said she is determined to find the best deal to guarantee the future of the festival.

“The most important thing to me and the board is that the lease be the kind of lease that ensures the festival’s financial survival,” she said.