An art and nature confab
The Laguna Art Museum sits atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, on a spot picked in 1929 by artists who had settled in Laguna Beach to paint the natural landscape.
Given its site and its historic association with art devoted to nature, Malcolm Warner, the museum’s executive director, thinks it’s only natural to host an annual conference and festival examining how art and nature intersect.
The Nov. 7-10 inaugural edition of Art and Nature, announced last week, is expected to feature a gigantic commissioned drawing in the sand of nearby Main Beach as a centerpiece. The keynote speaker will be USC professor and former state librarian Kevin Starr, who’ll talk about shifting attitudes toward the Golden State’s environment.
The program also will include two panel discussions bringing together scientists who study nature and artists who take inspiration from it. “This museum is uniquely positioned to celebrate the interaction between artists and nature,” Warner said.
Planning for the Art and Nature conference began early this year, he said, and its final shape is “still very much in the white heat of creation.” A key moment will likely come on July 16, when museum leaders are scheduled to ask the Laguna Beach City Council to OK plans for Santa Cruz artist Jim Denevan to temporarily occupy up to a mile-long swath of Main Beach with one of the drawings he makes using just a rake and a large stick.
“The beauty of it is that Jim doesn’t mind people using the beach at the same time he’s making the designs,” Warner said. “He can work around them, and he said he’s found from experience that people are quite respectful of what he does,” finding spots for volleyball, strolling and sunbathing that allow the art to coexist with beachgoing as usual.
Warner said he’s aware of one other comparable museum program, the Art and Environment Conference at the Nevada Museum of Art. Having discussed his plans with William Fox, director of the Reno museum’s Center for Art and Environment, Warner thinks Laguna can find its niche by emphasizing the shore and ocean, steering clear of architectural themes that are featured in the Nevada conferences.
It was a “happy coincidence” rather than a matter of deliberate planning, Warner said, that two special exhibitions that will be on display during the conference will dovetail with its theme. “Sea Change: Tanya Aguiniga’s Bluebelt Forest,” which opened in June for a nearly yearlong run, has turned a museum gallery into a colorful evocation of Pacific kelp forests and coral reefs.
“Adam Silverman: Clay and Space,” opening Oct. 27, is the first solo museum exhibition for the Los Angeles ceramic artist, who often looks to the shore for his materials.