Sawdust Festival brings ‘magic’ during kickoff event for its 59th season
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It was an unmistakable scene as a line of foot traffic weaved its way toward downtown and threatened to overtake the Village Entrance.
Laguna Beach’s local-focused Sawdust Art Festival reopened its doors for an invite-only preview night on Tuesday, and what played out was nothing short of a family reunion.
Just ask Doug Miller, the lively acrylic painter who was sorely missed when a battle against sepsis landed him in a hospital during much of the show last summer. The 78-year-old was treated like a hometown hero, guests lining up to say hello, and in kind, he greeted many by taking their picture.
“I rebounded,” Miller said. “I came from the dead back, I think. My skin turned gray, somebody said. It was pretty scary. The doctor said it’s like an oil spill in your bloodstream, and it has to clear out. It takes about two months to clear that out.”
The Sawdust has been a second home to Miller for much of his life. He told a tale of his wedding day, when he married Becky on the grounds in the summer of 1979, long before there was a performance stage above his booth.
Miller showed off an assortment of his mini canvas paintings, explaining that he painted for 30 years consecutively without missing a day, amassing a catalog of 20,500 paintings.
All the while, he was presented with gifts, one person bringing him a beer and another offering him chocolate.
“This only goes as far as you live, so I want to hang on for a couple more years,” added Miller, who said he has exhibited at the festival for 55 years.
As the sun rises on the 59th season at the festival, several creative souls are making their debut.
If the sage burning in her booth didn’t immediately set her apart, Jennifer Kennedy was quick to express her affinity for the perfectly imperfect.
“What I don’t like about perfection is I feel like it’s been made by a machine,” said Kennedy, a ceramics and sculpture artist. “And we’re so mechanical now in society that I want to get away from that. I want to get back to nature.
“I took ceramics in high school, and I did the wheel, and I could do it, but I decided I didn’t want to do the wheel,” she said. “It was too mechanical. … It just wasn’t my gig, so I got into hand-building, and I fell in love.”
Then there was mixed media artist Linnea Brooks, whose artwork included a multi-level, ladder-climbing scene she whimsically referred to as “Thousand Steps,” after the beach in South Laguna. She also produced sculptures of the Victoria Beach Pirate Tower.
“I had a pile of wood sitting in my yard,” said Brooks, who said she started building her pieces in October. “I was looking at it one day going, ‘What am I going to do with that?’”
It’s a homecoming of sorts for Brooks, an architect who grew up in Laguna Beach before moving to Hawaii for 31 years. She’s been back for three years.
New additions to the grounds go beyond the select first-time exhibitors at the summer show.
Starfish, an Asian fusion restaurant in Laguna Beach, is debuting a culinary experience at the festival called the Cove. With sand poured out around the dining area and a DJ spinning tunes deep into the night, it kept the crowd coming and energized for more following their meals.
A short walk from the Cove down the southernmost aisle, one could find the husband-and-wife duo of Jason and Sarah Hanck exhibiting together. Jason, who said he is in his eighth year as an exhibitor at the festival, added his wife is “hooked” after he “drug her into the goodness.”
“We both independently were artists,” Jason said. “She hadn’t done this type of work before, she hadn’t been working in oils and doing plein air. John Eagle and I got her going in that direction, and so now she and I go out and paint all over the place together.”
An action-packed night was rounded out with musical sets, as well as performances by Cirque du Soleil Echo and an Orange County-based aerial-and-ground act called Palindrome Entertainment.
Hannah Lawson of Palindrome indicated the group was also able to tap into the small-town vibe of the evening.
“For the community, it’s always more fun because it’s so personal,” Lawson said. “Everybody interacts a lot more. We’re local to the area, as well. All of the performers are from Orange County — San Clemente, Dana Point, Laguna — so it’s really fun to see our friends and colleagues and neighbors and family when we’re performing. It’s really fun to give back to the community while having a lot of fun and doing what we love.”
A band played its last song as 10 p.m. approached and the dancing had not stopped on the hilltop. When the creatives and locals gathered for the first time in six months since Winter Fantasy, no one wanted the party to end.
The Sawdust Art Festival kicked off its summer season, welcoming the public to opening day Friday. The festival will be open through the end of August, with weekend hours from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Sunday. It is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for children ages 6 to 12. Kids ages 5 and younger get in free.
“You really got to feel that energy to really understand what the Sawdust is,” said Joshua King, president of the board of directors for the Sawdust Art Festival. “It’s not a typical art show. Obviously, the artists are so good, and everybody’s there to sell their work, but there’s much more there. The experience is so rich. It’s different than anywhere else. Our environment underneath the eucalyptus trees and the waterfalls — all of that — it really does bring out some magic.”
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