The circle of life

A variety of art elements, from plein-air painting to sculpture to multimedia, are featured at the new Nix Nature Center, which will have its debut Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The nature center’s theme, “Full Circle,” is also the name of a sizable mural, created by Laguna College of Art & Design students.

The mural’s designer, Katy Betz, graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the college earlier this year.

She was one of many students to submit a design for the project two years ago to teacher Mia Tavonatti. The design had to depict the area over time.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” Betz said, laughing. “We spent the whole first semester researching.”

When Betz’s design was selected, she gave assignments to her classmates while she developed her final model; several versions were critiqued in class before she came up with her final version.

“We broke up into groups; some interviewed, some did research,” she said. They met with park rangers and other interested parties.

The colorful mural is composed of circular panels that are staggered to resemble a topographical map.

“We had 18 inches of depth to work with,” Betz said.

She recalled playing around with geometrical shapes and taking hikes out to the canyon to get ideas.

“It started out as a nonlinear timeline,” she said. “The entire scene is a montage of different places in the park.”

She has also added sculptural elements, including a bronze hawk and a bas relief of the Native Americans. Scott Ferguson, the county liaison for the nature center, is also depicted walking through the wilderness with his two children.

The mural will also feature cowboys, indigenous plants and a tree with fire on it that depicts both the area’s history and its regrowth.

A key part of the mural is a 17th-century oxcart wheel that can be turned by visitors — they found it on eBay.

The wheel, with its placement in the fauna of the canyon, is reminiscent of the entrance to a hobbit hole.

The sustainably designed building features rammed-earth walls that were built with local soil, a layer at a time, by a father and his two sons from Napa.

A painter’s pier outside will lead to an easily accessible walking trail.

A Kate Chopin quote about the music of the earth decorates the wall when visitors enter the “decompression chamber.”

Nature sounds will play in the long, narrow walkway, while three projected films screen on glass panels.

The looped films will show pictures and video of local flora and fauna as well as the area’s past, from the 1989 human chain that helped stop the development of Laguna Laurel to the 1993 fire, which originated nearby.

“It’s really honoring the history of how we got to this point,” said Michael Pinto, founder and president of the Laguna Canyon Foundation.

The area isn’t meant for visitors to stand and watch the films; they are meant to permeate one’s subconscious.

“You’re getting ready to see something different,” said Mary Fegraus of the Laguna Canyon Foundation.

The next area will be an art history area featuring six original, commissioned plein-air works by local artists Jacobus Baas, Saim Caglayan, Ken Auster, Cynthia Britain, John Cosby and Jeffrey Horn.

The works were commissioned by the foundation in 2001 and have been displayed in several sites in South Orange County, including John Wayne Airport. The nature center will be their permanent home; the gallery will double as a meeting room.

Another area will help explain, using a bobcat, how different people look at the land.

“This is not your typical diorama at a natural history museum,” Fegraus said.

Several outdoor “portals” frame elements of the natural landscape.

“They focus peoples’ attention,” Pinto said.

One features the peaks of Saddleback Mountain on a clear day; etchings will describe the twin peaks, providing their Native American names and telling why they were important to the early population of the area.

Replicas of whale teeth and other fossils will be embedded in a rock sculpture, and others will be placed in an interactive fossil box filled with gravel, for visitors to perform their own “excavations” on site.

The majority of the items at the location intentionally are replicas or stylized versions of what may be found off-site.

“We only have two ‘real’ things inside,” said Ellen Girardeau Kempler, also of the foundation. “We want them to go out and find the rest.”

The second portal area will frame the area’s namesake little sycamore trees with large fake trees, which would cause the viewer to ask why the real trees are so small, Fegraus said.

A modern, animatronic steel bat exhibit, which will describe the bats’ way of life, was designed by the Art Institute.

The exhibit is intended to teach about the bat boxes that were installed in a Laguna Canyon Road underpass. Bats occupy them now and decrease the insect population along the trails.

Portal three, a large window along one side of the center, will show a variety of indigenous plants.

“It’ll be an excellent example of different habitats,” Fegraus said.

Pinto said that the plants also are meant to show what can be grown at various distances from a building as part of a fire management plan.

The fourth portal will be a photo mural of the canyon, with rocks and a Native American food preparation area, along with more nature recordings.

And the fifth portal will be a rock formation with an exhibit in the style of “The Tell,” a massive photo mural that was dismantled in 1990 after some 8,000 protesters marched through the canyon to save it from development.