The Sawdust Art Festival started in the mid-1960s as a reaction to — or a “rebellion,” as one of the participating artists put it — Laguna Beach’s more uppity Festival of the Arts, home to the long-running living-pictures show known as the Pageant of the Masters. Today, it’s a professionally-run affair, a place to hang and drink and dine as much as it is to explore handmade art.
And in the winter, its hippie edge is arguably softened a little more. For that’s when Santa Claus moves in for five weekends throughout November and December.
Children explore the gingerbread house at Sawdust Winter Fantasy.
Millie Johnson, 5, and Gunner Johnson, 9, fifth-generation Laguna Beach residents, sit on Santa’s lap.
But no matter, if Sawdust is no longer a feisty little upstart it once was, it’s still a home for anything-goes, left of center art. More enticing: To step into Sawdust is to wander into a theme park-like world of winding paths covered in wood chips, one where artists booths are fashioned as mini cottages and every turn is full of surprises — psychedelic ceramic mushrooms nest around one bend, a waterfall and a concert stage around another.
Sawdust is an artist-filled wonderland, and never is that more apparent than during its Winter Fantasy event, which will wrap Dec. 21. Christmas lights glisten, a communal tree beckons to be decorated and a marionette handler wanders the grounds. Artist booths place an emphasis on smaller, gift-ready items — think ornaments, colorful candy dishes, mini plates designed to nest a wine bottle — but Sawdust’s Winter Fantasy stops just short of going full holiday party, as this is still an art-driven event where one can join a pop-up ceramic class or crowd around a table and connect with strangers for a painting session.
“Sawdust is an experience,” says the festival’s President Jay Grant, noting that even today it conjures a different vibe than the concrete grounds of the nearby Festival of the Arts. “You walk through the front gate and you’ve got sawdust-strewn paths. You’ve got a rustic village. You’ve got waterfalls. You’ve got three stages, and you’ve got demonstrations going on. There’s an excitement to watching artists create their art.”
And if one is too shy to bring out their inner artist, they can hang with a spiced wine in the dining alcove.
Sawdust’s winter edition launched in 1991, although the team had been talking about it since the ’70s, says Grant, who has been involved with the festival for 52 years, first as a sales manager but occasionally as a participating artist selling ceramics and wind chimes. As for why a holiday event took about two decades to get off the ground, Grant cops to being a “canyon hippie” and says, “We took it one year at a time.” It’s shifted over the years — there were stilt walkers for a bit, and Sawdust’s historical site notes there was once a mascot in “Jelf,” part jester, part elf.
Petey the dog peeks out as his owners, Erick and Natasha Blaha, not pictured, buy artwork from artist Tim Hahne.
Jelf didn’t stick around long, and when asked why there’s no formal mascot today, Grant laughs. “We have enough characters just in the artists themselves here,” he says. “We don’t need to hire any characters. They’re some of the most eclectic, interesting ex-hippies.”
Muffin Spencer-Devlin may not be an ex-hippie, but she is a former pro golfer, once an outspoken celebrity persona on the tour. Today, she’s a Laguna Beach resident and a full-time glass artist, her work experimenting with dashes of color trapped throughout her creations. I met Spencer-Devlin while eyeing her tiny glass angels with multicolored hearts.
Glasswork started as a passion project, but then became a second career for Spencer-Devlin. “I wish it was a hobby,” she says with a laugh. “I have to make a living somehow. I didn’t save all that money that I made, but I’ve been really good at spending it.”
She’s been attending Sawdust since the mid-2000s, and worked as an apprentice glass artist before eventually starting to sell her own work around 2009. The event has been a refuge, she says.
“I felt like I had found my peeps,” she says, “the people that I resonated with. Anytime I had a chance in those days, I was talking glass with somebody, and there were all kinds of people to do it with here, so it was an education for me.”
1. Shamus Skoch, a found object artist, displays his work. 2. Gabe Sullivan is a fine art photographer and director. 3. Michelle Burt, an expressive impressionist artist based in Laguna Beach, stands in her booth. 4. Artist Lupe Blanton makes ceramic garden art.
Folkloric and whimsical ceramic artist Lilia Venier has been exhibiting at Sawdust’s winter fest for 22 years. Sawdust’s main summer event allows only Laguna Beach residents to have a booth, but in the winter, the festival is open to those from other cities. Venier, based in La Crescenta, has found it welcoming, so much so that Sawdust Winter Fantasy is the most successful show the full-time artist presents at.
“The people who go there are very loyal,” says Venier, who also teaches at the Creative Arts Group in Sierra Madre. “Every year, people come to see me and say, ‘What do you have this time?’ I have customers in Laguna that have 40 to 50 pieces of mine. It’s very important that festival. It’s people who get what I do.”
Sawdust is on the verge of turning 60, which it will do when it returns to Laguna Beach next summer. It continues to evolve.
“Sawdust was a kind of rebellion from the Pageant, which was first. That’s very high-end and classy,” says Venier, when asked how the festival has changed in her two decades of coming. “The Sawdust is more crafty. When I started, there were a lot of artists who were hippies. They were having fun, selling surfing clothing. You know, hippies on the beach. There’s not many anymore — a few.”
David Zhang holds his granddaughter Zoey Huang, 5, while viewing Santa.
A concern among many artists was the cost of living in Laguna Beach, which has Grant wondering how to get younger artists involved when they can’t afford to live within city limits. As Sawdust heads into its sixth decade, Grant acknowledged they may need to relax some rules for the summer exhibition, such as allowing non-Laguna residents to present.
“There’s all kinds of ideas,” he says of trying to recruit younger artists.
But no major changes are yet on the docket for next season. Sawdust is still, after all these decades, taking it one year at a time.