April 26, 2022 – On Sunday, April 24, in true Academy-award style, 200 community and cultural leaders came together to celebrate the 14th annual Art Star Awards. The event was held at [seven-degrees] and kicked off with a red carpet reception that included champagne and hors d’oeuvres outside on the terrace preceding dinner and the awards ceremony.
Joy Dittberner, president of Laguna Beach Arts Alliance (LBAA), welcomed the guests and spoke about the importance of LBAA and how it has strengthened the arts in Laguna Beach.
Faye Baglin, Community Art Project (CAP) board member, then introduced the 2019 Honarkar Family Grant winner Allyson Allen, creator of the “Piece-ful Protest” quilt exhibit. Allen spoke about her exhibit’s controversial journey from the CAP Gallery at Wells Fargo to Bridge Hall at Neighborhood Congregational Church, where it has been viewed by over 600 visitors. “Art is powerful and as artists, we have a responsibility to speak up against injustice,” Allen said. “This experience has changed me, and I hope it has changed Laguna.”
Next, the honored guest speaker Marrie Stone spoke about her 25+ year career as a journalist covering the Laguna arts scene and LBAA member organizations and interviewing literary luminaries as co-host of the “Writers on Writing” podcast. She regaled the audience with her interviewees’ stories and her observations of the surprising commonalities shared by Laguna’s artists, from their delightfully imaginative childhoods to how they view the world through their unique creative lenses to the power of their art to spur important and sometimes difficult conversations. “You are always looking for inspiration. You can’t turn it off,” she said. “Art creates a space for us to talk about our ideas and our disagreements. We have more in common than we might think we do, and art is way forward through the morass. This town is rich in its art and lucky through its artists.”
The 2019 Art Star winners were announced:
★ Best Arts Program: City of Laguna Beach – Temporary Public Art Installations
★ Lifetime Achievement: Bree Burgess Rosen
★ Individual Arts Patron of the Year: Carla and Jeff Meberg
★ Corporate Arts Patron of the Year: Quilter Labs
★ Outstanding Arts Collaboration: LOCA Arts Education/ Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) Workshops
★ Arts Leadership: Ellen Richard & Ann E. Wareham, Laguna Playhouse
★ Artist of the Year: Lojo Simon
★ Volunteer of the Year: Charlie Ferrazzi
The evening concluded with a one-of-a-kind musical tribute to lifetime achievement honoree Bree Burgess Rosen, who was recognized for her contributions to the dramatic and performing arts in Laguna. Rosen summed up the evening event as a celebration of the community’s resilience, saying, “A supportive community is everything. We most certainly couldn’t have survived these last two years without helping one another. I’m happy to live in a town that fully embraces the value of the arts, most certainly the performing arts, and it’s gratifying to share my passion with so many other dedicated artists and supporters.”
ABOUT THE WINNERS:
★ Best Arts Program: City of Laguna Beach – Temporary Public Art Installations
The City of Laguna Beach has launched an innovative and diverse temporary public art program that has included internationally known artists such as Mark Jenkins and his sculptures “The Caretakers” outside City Hall and Chakaia Booker’s recycled tire sculptures “Pass the Buck” in Heisler Park. The program also has given opportunities for local artists such as Casey Parlette, Jeffery Skarvan and Gerard Stripling. Still in its infancy with plenty of exciting potential, this new program has been experienced for a couple of months, to the most fleeting, with chalk artist David Zinn’s ”Hide and Seek” surviving only a couple of hours. These installations have received national media coverage and most importantly a significant amount of public interaction and healthy dialogue about art.
★ Lifetime Achievement: Bree Burgess Rosen
Bree Burgess Rosen has more than four decades of experience in the performing arts as a professional entertainer, writer, producer, director, and educator. Local since ‘88, she is a former member of the Laguna Playhouse Board, the creator/writer/producer/director of Lagunatics, writer/creator of LagunaTOTS, and writer/director/performer with Pacific Symphony’s Class Act youth education program and the Family Musical Mornings concert series. She is the writer and director of biographical concerts for No Square Theatre, which she co-founded in 1997, and she continues to serve on its board. For her on-going work in Laguna Beach, Bree has been recognized as Woman of the Year and Citizen of the Year, one of Laguna’s Most Influential People, and as Orange County’s 2014 Theater Woman of the Year.
★ Individual Arts Patron of the Year: Carla and Jeff Meberg
One does not have to look far to see the impact of Carla and Jeff Meberg on the arts world in Laguna Beach. They act as a team in so many ways, supporting each other’s vision and commitment to the arts all over town. Carla is President of LOCA Arts Education, an organization that she and Jeff support. She also teaches printmaking at Glenwood House and provides art direction and art therapy workshops at the Youth Shelter. Jeff is a member of the Board of Trustees at Laguna Playhouse.
★ Corporate Arts Patron of the Year: Quilter Labs
As the “Q” in QSC Audio and the Quilter in Quilter Labs, Patrick Quilter is an acknowledged genius in the world of sound. With more than 50 years of experience, he is one of the few designers whose career spans tubes, solid state and the new switchmode technology. Quilter Labs has provided free QSC hardware and professional sound system guidance for most of the performing arts organizations and venues in Laguna Beach. Patrick has shared his wisdom, purchased a beautiful Yamaha piano for No Square Theater and freely shares his expertise with multiple venues in town.
★ Outstanding Arts Collaboration: LOCA Arts Education/ Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) Workshops
In this collaboration, LOCA Arts Education & Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) offered a series of grant-funded painting and drawing workshops. Taught by professional artists from LOCA & LPAPA, these workshops have brought the world of art to a large group of individuals from the beginner to novice to advanced, allowing all who participate to enhance their skills in a particular medium or to explore the many mediums available.
Adult Plein Air painting workshops include both outdoor location painting and in-studio format where students learn how to develop and complete their own painting in an outdoor workshop. The Watercolors on the Beach workshop teaches participants local tide pool life and conservation efforts as they learn to create their own renderings of local sea life. This educational program beautifully melds the arts and sciences.
★ Arts Leadership: Ellen Richard & Ann E. Wareham, Laguna Playhouse
The Laguna Playhouse team of Executive Director Ellen Richard and Artistic Director Ann E. Wareham made significant contributions to the arts in Laguna Beach. Under their leadership, the Playhouse revenue grew along with the caliber of actors featured on the stage. Other successes included growth of Playhouse subscribers to 5,000 in 2019 from the previous 3,000 subscribers. Ellen and Annie’s passion for theater and community is a common thread and bond they share.
★ Artist of the Year: Lojo Simon
Lojo Simon is a playwright, dramaturg and writer of prose and poetry whose works focus on the universal human struggles with identity, purpose, love and connection. As Laguna Beach Literary Laureate, she taught classes at the Boys and Girls Club and Susi Q and wrote the play Freaks of the Cosmic Circus about Tennessee Williams’ time in Laguna. Lojo also created the multi-disciplinary project “Word & Image in Dialogue” with the Laguna Art Museum. Through this project she recruited artists and writers to use both visual arts and literature as inspiration for the creation of a new work. She is a three-time winner of the Laguna Beach poetry contest, former Laguna Beach Magazine writer, former Laguna Playhouse Literary Manager and founder and curator of Bare Bones Theatre.
★ Volunteer of the Year: Charlie Ferrazzi
A volunteer is a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task. Charlie fits that definition to a tee. She is known throughout the art community for her generosity with her time and talents, lending her strong background in the visual arts and journalistic expertise to her volunteer work with CAP and LPAPA. Charlie has had the immense task of arranging and hanging hundreds of pieces of art for the annual LPAPA invitational. She writes art reviews and press releases for CAP, using skills honed over more than a decade as owner/manager of the Esther Wells Collection. Charlie’s keen eye, artistic knowledge and energy are a gift to the art community.
The Laguna Beach Arts Alliance was established in 2002 as the result of an exciting partnership among more than 20 Laguna Beach organizations. The mission is to serve as an advocate for the arts, promote collaboration and networking among the arts organizations of Laguna Beach and serve as a united voice for the arts in the city. Members of the Arts Alliance include: City of Laguna Beach Arts Commission, Community Art Project, Festival of Arts, First Thursdays Art Walk, KX FM Radio, Laguna Art-A-Fair Festival, Laguna Art Museum, LB Cultural Arts Center, Laguna Beach Craft Guild, Laguna Beach Live!, Laguna Beach Sister Cities Association, Laguna College of Art & Design, Laguna Concert Band, Laguna Dance Festival, LOCA Arts Education, Laguna Playhouse, Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, LagunaTunes Community Chorus, No Square Theatre, Sawdust Art Festival, Third Street Writers and Visit Laguna Beach.
