Art beyond the festivals: Four other shows to catch around town this summer
By MARRIE STONE
Festival season has officially begun in Laguna with all three summer shows – Festival of Arts, Sawdust Festival and Art-A-Fair – are now underway. There’s plenty of attention focused on the canyon this season, but art installations continue to bloom up all over town. Here are four other exhibitions you shouldn’t miss this summer.
LPAPA Gallery’s Less is More Show
LPAPA Gallery’s 19th Annual Less is More Art Show opened this week and will remain on display through August 4. This juried show features small works (18 united inches or smaller) from plein air artists.
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Mike Hill’s “Laguna Surf” (8” x 10”)
“Small-scale paintings – whether painted en plein air or refined in the studio – wield a profound intimacy that draws viewers in close,” said LPAPA Executive Director Bonnie Langner. “Their compact size demands meticulous detail and precision, inviting deeper scrutiny and fostering a personal bond between observer and artwork. These small masterpieces prove that potent emotion and meaningful messages aren’t bound by scale; in fact, their understated format often heightens their impact.”
The 39 top-scoring finalist pieces hang in the LPAPA Gallery and 24 additional pieces, which represent the top-scoring semifinalists, are shown in the online catalog. Both studio and plein air pieces are included in this show.
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Danny Folkman’s “Planetarium” (6” x 9”)
Also happening at LPAPA Gallery this month is a small Artist in Residence showcase by Aimee Erickson, who will be giving a sold-out workshop in July. LPAPA’s Featured Signature Artist of the month is Debra Huse and their Featured Artist Member of the month is Meisha Grichuhin. Featured artists have three pieces hanging in the gallery that are for sale.
For more information on LPAPA and these events, visit their website here.
Community Art Project (CAP)’s Hooked on a Feeling at City Hall
Consistent with CAP’s mission to increase the visibility and appreciation of art, they were once again invited by the Arts Commission to curate an exhibition at City Hall. Their chosen theme, Hooked on a Feeling, was designed to encourage artists to submit work that elicits a strong emotional response. Eight local artists responded to the call with 17 pieces that evoke a wide spectrum of emotion.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
David Milton’s “Vintage Machine with M&Ms”
CAP’s President Charlie Ferrazzi and Secretary Faye Baglin shared the following: “Kirsten Whalen’s Shake, Rattle and Roll and David Milton’s Vintage Machine with M&Ms bring forth a sense of nostalgia. Jeff Rovner’s quartet of Cirque Noir images, on the other hand, inspire awe and mystery. The beauty of nature is showcased in Carolyn Machado’s mixed media piece, as well as in works by LCAD students Vygante Lane and Roya Shamdiba. Finally, the joy of a beach day is captured in the paintings of Janine Saltzman and Robin Hiers.”
Rovner said of his Cirque Noir images: “Ordinarily, circuses call to mind the colorful big top tent, the cheerful calliope music, the sweet smell of cotton candy. But that innocence is balanced by darker notes, without which these entertainments would lose much of their fascination, thrill and emotional resonance.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Jeff Rovner’s “Fire Eater”
Hooked on a Feeling will be on display through August 7 and available for viewing during City Hall hours.
You can see more works by Machado (Booth 51), Milton (Booth 92) and Rovner (Booth 79) at the Festival of Arts this summer. Milton’s work is also on display at the Sawdust Festival.
Harboring Community: Ships of the 20th Century in Southern California at foaSouth
Several never-before-shown pieces from the Festival of Arts’ permanent collection are now on display at foaSouth (located inside Active Culture on Anita and PCH). Harboring Community contains roughly a dozen paintings spanning much of the 20th century from such notable masters as Edgar Payne and Frank Cuprien, as well as Festival favorites like Roy Ropp and Hal Akins.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Frank Cuprien’s “Three Masted Schooner” (1921)
“A lot of our collection has been in storage for so long that only a handful have been shown to the public in recent years, namely pieces that were in the John Wayne Airport show in 2023,” said FOA Art Collections Specialist Morgan Matthews. “While looking through the inventory, I came across several pieces I hadn’t seen before, so I decided to look for a subject that could act as a common thread between the lesser-known pieces and the ones that had been on rotation more recently. I was also thinking about a subject that worked in tandem with the ‘California Gold Coast’ theme of the Pageant as well as the sense of community that the Festival brings each summer.”
The prevalence of boats and the water in the collection stood out to Matthews as the perfect theme. “Boating culture reaches so many different walks of life across class and profession, whether it’s small fishing boats for production and industry or large sailing vessels for exploration and adventure,” Matthews said. “In the tradition of the California Impressionists, each of the pieces also captures light in a uniquely Californian way.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
“Harboring Community” will be on display through September 29. For more information, visit foaSouth’s website here.
Casey Parlette’s Epicenter on City Hall’s lawn
Now through September 26, our community can enjoy local award-winning artist Casey Parlette’s sculpture Epicenter installed on the City Hall lawn.
Sculpted from bronze and stainless steel, this spiral sculpture showcases our coastal ecosystem and features many of the species seen along the Laguna Beach coastline. Parlette hopes it sparks conversations about our valuable bluebelt, and inspires residents and visitors to protect our marine environments.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Casey Parlette’s “Epicenter” will be on display at City Hall through September 26
“I’ve spent most of my life in and around the ocean, and diving off of our shores has always filled me with a sense of awe at the natural world that we are a part of,” said Parlette, who took home the Laguna Beach Art Alliance’s Artist of the Year award in 2024. “Epicenter is a sculptural representation of being immersed in that environment.”
In his artist statement to the city he added, “The blacksmithing and metal fabrication techniques used in creating the work give it textures and layers that add to the tactile nature of sculpture. It is meant to be experienced from all angles in the round. Unfurling from the first creatures we often see in tidepools, the mussels, Epicenter also evokes all the life we cannot see. Raising from the ocean floor to the kelp forest above, the sculptural spiral expands to include octopus, abalone, and starfish sharks with the movement of the ocean reflected in the kelp.”
This isn’t Parlette’s first installation on the lawn. In 2021, the city hosted Shark Migration, four metal sharks of varying sizes that swam along the grass. Parlette’s public artwork can also be seen around town in permanent installations including Dawn Patrol (installed on the outside wall of Coast Liquor) and Tide Pool Kraken and Strand of Life (both installed at the north end of Heisler Park above Diver’s Cove).
The public is invited to an oceanography presentation inspired by this explorative sculpture on Monday, July 14 at 5 p.m. on the lawn at City Hall. Parlette will share his knowledge of marine ecosystems and conservation, as well as his creative process in designing and sculpting this work.
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Courtesy of Casey Parlette
Casey Parlette appears with his wife, Gina, and sons Brooks and Koa
Parlette has also shown at the Festival of Arts since 2008. You can find more of his work there this summer at Booth 56.
This exhibition is facilitated by the city of Laguna Beach Arts Commission & the Cultural Arts Department and funded by Laguna Beach residents Mark Porterfield and Steve Chadima. It will be on display through September 26.
