The 2020 Festival of Arts Starts a New Chapter for this 88-Year-Old OC Tradition

10 Aug The 2020 Festival of Arts Starts a New Chapter for this 88-Year-Old OC Tradition

Paradise for SoCal art lovers during summertime is usually Laguna Beach. With three art festivals, the Pageant of the Masters, many art galleries displaying their treasures and rotating exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum, the city has been a garden of earthly delights for decades.

Of course, this summer is different. The throngs of art-viewing tourists and residents — along with local artists eager to talk about and sell their work — are replaced by quiet streets and empty art venues, thanks to COVID-19. However, the abundance of fine arts and crafts in a plethora of styles in Laguna Beach are now replaced by virtual viewing opportunities and self-guided tours. 

Laguna’s award-winning Festival of Arts (FOA) with 130 exhibiting artists this year has updated the festival to a virtual experience; its website now offers an immersive platform, enabling viewers to see in large format every piece of art in this summer’s exhibition from their computer, tablet or phone. The online template is so cleverly created, it is itself like a work of art.

The virtual festival is divided into nine individual galleries, which feature alphabetically all of this year’s artists. The first artist in Gallery 1 is Scott Albert, whose watercolors capture Southern California landscapes and seascapes. The last artist in Gallery 9 is Yuri Kuznetsov. Originally from Russia, he creates fanciful and wildly colorful paintings in oils and acrylics. You can tour through each gallery at your own pace, moving about in the galleries as if you would in person.

A “View Digital Catalog” button is at the bottom of each gallery. Click on that button to enjoy the work within the gallery. There you will find on one page all of the art pieces and artists statements as thumbnails. Click on any thumbnail of an artwork, and it will enlarge, while also displaying the title of the piece, a detailed description, other works by the artist in the FOA show and contact information. 

The artists statements are fun and interesting to read. Mary Aslin’s statement says that she recently received an invitation to exhibit her work in a curated show of “American Women Pastelists in France.” She creates classical figurative pastel paintings, working from her heart. Paul Bond’s statement explains that he was born in Mexico, that his work is inspired by the Latin American movement of Magic Realism, and that his paintings merge symbolic, surreal and allegorical elements with realistic atmospheres.

The Enter Gallery button for each gallery of 12 to 15 artists takes the viewer to a page with two options. In one option, the viewer can take a Guided Tour. This short video features every artist within the gallery, with every artist statement followed by a few-seconds display each of the artist’s individual pieces. By entering Full Screen or looking at the site on a large monitor, the viewer can get the sensation of actually walking through the festival, deciding which booths and artists to spend more time looking at.

The Enter Exhibition button enables the viewer to create her/his own tour. Instructions on the website explain: “Self-navigate around the gallery by clicking on the arrows on the screen or your keyboard or take the guided art tour to be sure not to miss a single piece of art in the gallery.” And, “To review a piece of art up close, you may simply click on a piece and it will zoom into it.”

Here is a selection of four artists in the FOA online exhibition that stood out among the rest; although all are worth exploring. 

Ron Azevedo explains about his photos of Chernobyl. “My goal is to display the beauty that can be found in a zone left uninhabitable for humans, and to portray earth’s amazing ability to teem with life, not long after annihilation.”

JP Greenwood’s photos of beach scenes include “Tower” of a lifeguard stand and “Palapa” of a beach umbrella. In these and two other images, people are noticeably absent, allowing the artist to focus on the clean lines and minimal aspects of the objects. 

Tom Swimm is known for his exquisite representational and impressionistic renditions of water, light, boats and fishing villages. Many of his paintings are inspired by his travels to Italy, Greece, the Caribbean and other locales.

Wendy Wirth’s paintings of canyons, beaches and water are inspired by Orange County scenery. For each piece, she applies numerous thin layers of paint, resulting in landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes that capture the brilliant SoCal light.

Viewing any website, no matter how deftly created, is not a substitute for seeing real art. Yet perusing this virtual festival evokes memories of idyllic afternoons and evenings visiting the Festival of Arts. And having finely crafted virtual tools such as these available to us will help keep alive the role of art —inspiring us and uplifting our spirits during times of change and confusion.