Truly Pizza debuts ‘Fire Heart’ sculpture from artist Michael Kalish in Laguna Beach
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Art lovers don’t have to go too far to find art in Laguna Beach during the summer season. From Pageant of the Masters to the Sawdust Art Festival, there is plenty of options to choose from. This summer, an art installation has also landed at a more unexpected place in town — Truly Pizza.
The grand opening of Truly Pizza in Laguna Beach this spring was a homecoming for co-owner/founder Donna Baldwin. A resident of the city for nearly 20 years, bringing a second location of her successful Dana Point pizza restaurant to Laguna Beach was “always our hope,” Baldwin told TimesOC in April.
Operating in the former Madison Square & Garden Cafe space, the Craftsman style house is now a kitchen where award-winning pizza is made by Truly co-founders and World Champion of Pizza winners John Arena, Chris Decker and Michael Vakneen. The outdoor patio serves as the dining room, where night after night, tourists and locals alike clamor for a table. At the patio’s front gate, near the hostess stand, an art installation from renowned sculptor and contemporary artist Michael Kalish greets hungry guests.
In honor of the installation, Truly Pizza hosted a special dinner with Kalish on July 22 , serving a specialty summer pizza for the occasion and giving diners a chance to meet the artist behind the art.
Kalish is a multidisciplinary artist who has exhibited in group and solo museum shows at institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, Verket Museum and the Riverside Museum of Art. His work is in the permanent collections of the Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta and the Pratt Sculpture Garden in Brooklyn.
“I have been a sculptor and artist for 30 years and I do a lot of large scale public work,” Kalish said.
He has created more than a dozen public works that are permanently exhibited in cities across the country. His mixed media work “reAlize,” completed in 2011, was the winner of the AlA Sculpture of the Year award. Like Baldwin, he also has a close connection to Laguna Beach.
“One of the things I love about this community is that it is just oozing with art. It was the very first gallery I ever had, right down the street,” Kalish said. “I have traveled the world looking art communities and my two favorite places are Santa Fe and Laguna.”
For his work at Truly Pizza, Kalish created a large scale metal sculpture of the Truly Pizza logo, a heart with flames dancing above it, meant to symbolize the passion and hospitality at the heart of the Laguna Beach restaurant. Intertwined into the frame of the piece are the words, “Liv Lov,” the restaurant’s slogan. The entire piece is lacquered red and Kalish said he referenced his 20-foot interactive public art sculpture, “The Art of Finding Love,” which debuted at the Grove in Los Angeles in 2017 for this new piece.
“Years ago when I created this interactive love sculpture, the whole idea was to connect, and I think that’s why [Donna] and I are very similar. When I heard about her mark of “Liv Lov” it really resonated with me,” he said. “So to get to create this fire heart sculpture, wrapped in her message, it really means a lot.“
