Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach, California

For Jim’s birthday yesterday we went to Laguna Beach, mainly to attend the Festival of Arts. Jim used to paint water colors a few decades ago when he was in K-12 and college. Then paying bills got in the way………..

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Laguna Beach is an arts community. Throughout the city are more art galleries than you can visit in one day. In fact, the city is one great big piece of artwork, from the finest public restrooms you’ll ever visit that are not inside of a Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott; to artwork on the sidewalks, on the beaches…. absolutely everywhere. I’ll take you on a walk through some of the city in a future post this coming week.

Festival of Arts is a two-month-long event (ends August 31, 2013) featuring some of the finest art you’ve ever seen, and art in this case is much more than a painting. There were artists working in acrylics, ceramics, charcoal & pencil, encaustic (have no idea what that is and I’m not googling it right now), fiber arts, glass, gouachie (more googling to do), jewelry, mixed media, oils, pastels, printmaking, sculpture, watercolors, wood, and, of course, photography.

My favorite was wood (I have a B.S. in Forestry from Texas A&M University), specifically the wood furniture, and even more specifically the wood clocks and wood mirrors from this artist:

Anyone want to gift me about $20,000 so I can buy some of his stuff? I want the clock on the far left; the second hand rotated backwards!

I think one of the artists has a degree in psychology, specializing in reverse psychology:

I decided to ignore his instructions because the last thing I wanted to do was walk around with my eyes closed and bump into something and break it, thereby owning it.

Some of my favorites, all of which were too expensive for my little wallet:

The last picture was titled “Cat Eyes,” and I believe it was done by a girl in the fourth grade if I remember correctly. There is something about it that really touches me, even inspiring me, an inspiration which I will share in future posts.

Cat Eyes reminds me that Edgar Degas was born on this day in 1834. He died in 1917 at the age of 83. Edgar Degas is a French Impressionist who influenced Picasso and many other leading artists of the 20th Century. I became quite familiar with Degas when I visited the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in October 2010 because they have quite a few of his paintings. On the wall near one of the paintings was a quote from him that I will never forget: “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” That young girl who did Cat Eyes accomplished something by intriguing me, puzzling me, inspiring me….

I regret that I don’t know the names of the artists but there’s a reason for that. Photography of the artwork is prohibited. However, photography of the grounds and booths is not. Quite interesting because someone like me — and I’m sure I’m not the only one — can take high-definition pictures and then simply crop the pictures and photoshop them. Photoshop has a couple of great tools to sharpen cropped images and even to increase their size, perspective, etc. All of the pictures above were cropped from bigger pictures and then photoshopped to make them look presentable.

Lastly, I found the best restroom sign ever at the Festival of Arts:

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