Laguna Art Museum Dives Into The Sea Around Us With Rebeca Méndez

LAGUNA BEACH, CA — Laguna Art Museum presents its 10th annual Art & Nature, a multidisciplinary exploration and celebration of art’s various engagements with the natural world, beginning November 3. The multi-faceted event is the museum’s largest public program of the year, bringing together thousands of participants to foster a love of nature, raise environmental awareness, and discover cross-sections between science and the arts.

Julie Perlin Lee, Executive Director of Laguna Art Museum, spoke on the festival in a recent news release.

“This year’s 10th annual Art & Nature Festival will once again bring the community together to appreciate the intimate connection between art and nature,” Lee said. “The festival celebrates the museum’s long-standing history as a cultural center, offering in-depth programming and impactful exhibitions that honor the rich history of California art.”

Artist Rebeca Méndez returns to Art & Nature as the featured artist with her newest project The Sea Around Us, which will make its debut in the museum’s historic Steele Gallery on November 5.

The Sea Around us is an immersive 360-degree video art installation that visually transports viewers to an area of the Pacific Ocean 30 miles away from the Laguna Beach Coast. It portrays the ocean as a fully animated body as well as a place of deep interconnectedness for all living things.

The installation uses scientific footage, the video shifts to thousands of oozing barrels of DDT on the seafloor being sampled by robotic arms.

"This hidden ecological calamity is revealed in conjunction with imagery that inspires awe and strengthens the bond between sea and viewer, inspiring the courage to face environmental wrongdoing, to take restorative action, and to avoid repeating transgressions against our natural resources," according to Méndez.

This is the first outdoor exhibition since 2020.

The museum will bring Kelly Berg’s Pyramidion to the City of Laguna Beach from November 3-6.

Pyramidion is an interactive sculptural experience inviting contemplation of the layered history and unique geology of Laguna Beach. Beginning at the museum, participants will journey to several sites through the local park and beaches, encountering pyramids of various sizes and colors that reflect the ever-shifting nature of the landscape. The temporality of the installation parallels much of the earth’s landscapes that shift and change due to weather, geology, and the effects of climate change.

The display will remain in the California Gallery starting November 3 will be Robert Young’s The Big One, which is thought to still hold the record as the largest painting ever created in Laguna Beach.

As a resident of Laguna Beach, Young began his 9-by-15-foot painting in 1971 and continued to work on the piece throughout his life.

Additional Art & Nature festival programming includes the First Thursdays Art Walk, a keynote lecture from National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence Dr. Sylvia Earle, and the annual free Family Festival.

Continuing Laguna Beach's legacy as a center for the arts, Art & Nature provides a unique opportunity for the Southern California community to come together for a festival of art and ideas, to inspire artists, and enhance the appreciation of nature as a place that inspires awareness about the environment we share.

For more information about Art & Nature and Laguna Art Museum, visit lagunaartmuseum.org.