LCAD students show skills in LPAPA’s Next Generation Paint Out
Laguna College of Art and Design may be tucked away in the canyon, but collaborations within the local arts community often give its students and their work a presence in town.
Dozens of students worked in the public eye around Heisler Park on Thursday, as participants in the Next Generation Paint Out, part of the 26th annual Laguna Plein Air Painters Assn. Invitational.
From Jon Seeman’s “Breaching Whale” sculpture near the Laguna Beach Lawn Bowling Club to the north to Bird Rock beach to the south, the young creatives put paint to canvas to capture the sights of the outdoors.
Max Ratner, a junior and an entertainment design major, held up his work at the end of the three-hour session, a depiction of a wave crashing against a rock in the shallows.
“The intention behind it is to bring a lot more energy into the composition,” Ratner said of the attention he gave the splash. “Also, it can be a really good way to kind of draw your eye because it’s a lot of really chaotic brushstrokes, whereas most of everything else is pretty controlled, especially as you start refining shapes.”
Topography was top of mind for two friends, Raquel Jimenez and Fatima Fernandez-Stoll, both sophomores at the college.
“We were both out here maybe two or three days ago looking for a spot, and we really liked this one for the view,” Fernandez-Stoll said of their chosen location, which overlooked Monument Point. “It’s got all the plants. At least for me, I really like this spot in particular because it feels very quintessential Laguna Beach, because you’ve got that cliff that goes out, and you’ve got all the palm trees and the beautiful greenery.”
Jimenez and Fernandez-Stoll worked side by side during the session along a railing at the edge of the cliff.
“It was really nice,” Jimenez said of stepping outside the classroom. “Class is a little restrictive because we have to have a limited palette, so it’s just really nice to fully do my own thing, like outside of class and learning the fundamentals.”
Organizers have been attempting to grow the Next Generation Paint Out for some time, LPAPA Vice President Celeste Gilles said. It had to be capped at 40 students this year. Scholarships totaling $1,000 were to be awarded to the top four competitors.
Gilles added that Mason Williams and Kelley Mogilka stepped up as invitational artists who have taken on a mentorship role with the LCAD students.
“Mason and Kelley were LCAD students who went through this program with us years ago,” Gilles said. “They went on to graduate from LCAD, now they teach at LCAD, and now they’re actually running this Next Generation Paint Out for us. This is the first year that they’re running the paint out for LPAPA, and they volunteered to do that.
“We’re excited if we get a dozen LCAD kids to participate in this program. This year, we did cut the list off at 40.”
Laguna Plein Air Painters Assn. Invitational began Oct. 5 and runs through Sunday. The nine-day festival also saw 30 award-winning artists invited to paint outdoors in and around Laguna Beach for cash prizes. The pieces created during the week will be judged for awards and available for purchase during a collectors party at the Festival of Arts on Saturday.
Tickets are $175 for LPAPA members, $200 for non-members, and $250 at the door. The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. For more information, visit lpapa.org.
“Through this process, this year we’ve also learned that the plein air club, it’s [LCAD’s] largest club on campus,” said Gilles, who added the club president reached out to LPAPA about a month ago. “... We actually were so excited about that, we offered all of the students in the plein air club a free student membership for the year.”
Ratner, a board member of the plein air painting club at LCAD, appreciates the tradition of the art form.
“All throughout history, there’s been a lot of plein air painting around Laguna Beach,” Ratner said. “It definitely feels like we are almost resting on the laurels of that history.”
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