Creativity and Sustainability Collide at This Year’s ‘Art + Nature’
- Ashley Ryan
- 4 minutes ago
- 8 min read
The latest iteration of this annual initiative, organized by Laguna Art Museum, explores the intersection of artistic expression and the beauty of the natural world.
Every autumn, Laguna Art Museum celebrates the natural world with “Art + Nature,” an immersive initiative that brings together a flurry of installations and experiences that spotlight environmental conservation and the transformative power of art.
Currently in the midst of the 13th annual iteration, this year’s festival is highlighting the work of commissioned artist Ana Teresa Fernández along with special exhibits and events that paint a picture of our evolving relationship with the planet, shaped by resilience, reflection and the urgent call to protect what remains.
“Art can break down numbers and statistics into something that is poetic, raw and somatic,” Fernández said. “I often say art can serve as a gateway into doing … something to move the needle and make real change.”
“Art + Nature” continues through Nov. 10, with Main Beach activations, an artist talk, a paddle out and a keynote speech still to come. Learn more about what you can experience along the coast in Laguna Beach this week.
Saving Our Seas
Born in the port city of Tampico in northeastern Mexico, raised in California and now living in San Francisco, Fernández has spent her life near the sea. So it’s no surprise that her “Art + Nature” projects center around Laguna’s coastal locale. The main attraction, “SOS,” will roll out in phases, beginning with a discussion with the artist herself on Nov. 6 during which she will talk about the concept behind the installation and what it has taken to put it all together.
“ ‘SOS’ comes at the heels of recent text installations I have been making – both about climate change and the relationship of sea level rise and language loss,” Fernández said. “Several thousand languages will be lost due to the displacement of communities around certain endangered coastlines. Morse code, a language of light and a universal language, will be used … (in) Laguna. This is a direct extension and embodiment of the work I have been making for the past several years.”
Two special events will follow her artist talk: a show choreographed by Laguna Dance Festival founder and artistic director Jodie Gates taking place on Main Beach on Nov. 7, featuring dancers wearing mirrors, and artistic performances by swimming team Meraquas that will emphasize both the abstract and emotional elements of water at the community pool at Laguna Beach High School on Nov. 8.
All of this culminates on Main Beach on Nov. 9, when Fernández will enlist the help of 800 local volunteers to put on the ‘SOS’ social sculpture activation. Using her handheld acrylic mirrors to spell out SOS – which, in this case, stands for “save our seas” while paralleling the traditional meaning as an international distress signal – in Morse code, participants have the opportunity to step into the world of performance art and be a part of an important movement at the same time.
“I am both terrified and so excited for the ‘SOS’ activation,” she said. “It is the largest scale I have attempted thus far. I look forward to witnessing people holding up the mirrors and having them speak with light. They are quite powerful: Watching those mirrors dance back and forth as if they are the voice of the ocean will be breathtaking.”
Mirrors have become an important part of her recent work, allowing her to lead with the familiar for her first activation in Laguna Beach. “Reflective surfaces are not just beautiful and playful; they can allow for moments of sincere and deep reflection and change in perspective,” Fernández said. “We often engage with mirrors indoors and in private, so placing them in a public place and giving the ocean (the chance) to see itself – and us to see it through these reflections – offers a different vantage point.”
Two other installations by Fernández are also being shown on Main Beach. “Ocean in a Drop” features three large sculptures. Shaped like a dodecahedron, a cuboctahedron and an icosahedron, these sculptures were crafted with wooden rods that feature circular mirrors at their ends. “They are intended to be frozen drops,” she said. “The molecular formation of ice drops is hexagons. I wanted to connect the glaciers melting with sea levels rising.”
Additionally, there is a “We Are Water” photography station, inspired by interactive photo opps at fairs where visitors can position their face into a cutout to transform who they are. “This portrait station allows for the ocean to step into and be a part of our bodies, be part of us,” she said. “There are different-sized mirrors that can go on participants’ faces … and allow for the ocean to be reflected … suggesting we are all part of this planet together. We are the water.”
Finally, Fernández will host a paddle out on Nov. 10, inviting locals to join her in paying respect to the ocean, its importance and its need for protection.
“I hope visitors feel special to be part of the making of art,” she said of this year’s “Art + Nature” festivities. “I hope they are moved and will be encouraged to move others towards initiatives that help the environment, no matter how small.”
Natural Beauty Contrasted With the Built Environment
While much of the excitement of “Art + Nature” lies in its specially commissioned works, there is always more to experience during the festival. For 2025, there are two distinct exhibitions within the museum itself that explore themes related to natural beauty and conservation efforts.
The first, “Solitude and Silence: Conrad Buff, Painter of the American Southwest,” showcases the rugged vastness of lesser-explored areas in the American Southwest. Using a self-created crossed-hatching style of applying paint to canvas, Buff, who became a prominent landscape painter by the 1930s, honored the profound connection between artistic expression and natural beauty.
The second exhibition, “Eternal Construction: Photographic Perspectives on Southern California’s Built Environment,” was developed after the Buff exhibit was in place, drawing entirely from Laguna Art Museum’s permanent collection. Guest curated by Tyler Stallings, who formerly worked as the museum’s chief curator from 1999 to 2006, this collection showcases the continual reinvention of California’s built environment.
“ ‘Art + Nature’ isn’t just about wilderness; it’s about the relationship between people and place,” Stallings said. “In Southern California, that relationship is rarely untouched – it’s mediated through concrete channels, subdivisions and skylines. ‘Eternal Construction’ expands the conversation by showing that even human-made spaces have an ecology of their own.”
There’s variation in the exhibit as well, with artists like Lewis Baltz, Laurie Brown and Tom Lamb documenting the results of nature merging with human-engineered designs while Marcia Hafif and Robert von Sternberg simply showcase observations of everyday scenes. “While Buff’s paintings show nature as grand and eternal, these photographs show the same landscape transformed by our ambitions and sometimes our mistakes,” Stallings said.
When selecting pieces for this exhibition, Stallings said he sought artists whose work captured the dialogue between documentation and construction. “Since this exhibition draws entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, I focused on depth mostly – artists represented by multiple works – so we could see the evolution of their thinking,” he said. “Seeing two or three works by an artist lets you trace patterns (or experience) the formal systems or conceptual frameworks that define their practice.”
Image that are included in the “Art + Nature” exhibit, “Eternal Construction: Photographic Perspectives on Southern California’s Built Environment.” IMAGE 1: “Big Horn Palm Desert” by Jeremy Kidd. IMAGE 2: “Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations, Union 76, Ludlow, California 1986-88” by Jeff Brouws. IMAGE 3: “At the Crossroad” by Jacques Garnier. Images courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
In October, Stallings was in conversation at the museum, discussing tracing the lineage of the landscape image from 19th-century painters to 20th-century photographers and beyond. “I wanted to show how every generation redefines what a landscape means,” he said. “I discussed how contemporary artists like Jeremy Kidd and Barbara Kasten continue that dialogue, but with new tools: Photoshop, digital layering, constructed studio sets. The talk also touched on Orange County’s particular role in this story – how its industrial parks, subdivisions and freeways became the unlikely subjects of fine art photography.”
Between curating “Eternal Construction” and sharing his thoughts on the subject when in conversation, Stallings said that being a part of “Art + Nature” has shown him how fluid the term “nature” really is. “Living here, you can’t separate the wild from the designed. The hills have retaining walls, the rivers have concrete beds and even the desert is crisscrossed by power lines. But there’s beauty in that hybridity. Working on “Art + Nature” has deepened my appreciation for artists who find poetry in those intersections – who see the built environment not just as loss, but as evidence of our ongoing dialogue with the land.”
Both of these exhibits will be on display through January 2026 – Jan. 18 for “Eternal Construction,” and Jan. 25 for Conrad Buff.
The 2024 Art + Nature upcycled fashion show, with designs by students and young professionals. Photo courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Diverse Perspectives
In its early days, the museum’s initiative featured one-of-a-kind commissioned pieces as it does now, but it also invited Laguna’s vibrant art community to showcase its own interpretations of the intersection of art and nature at nearby galleries. While the movement is now more centralized to the north Laguna spaces surrounding the museum, it continues to extend beyond the exhibition walls with specially designed events that further the message.
At the start of November, things kicked off with the “Upcycled Couture: Restoring the Future” runway fashion show. The Nov. 1 event was the follow-up to last year’s inaugural show, with students and young designers creating sustainably minded couture items that are modeled in the museum’s galleries. Each piece is inspired by community partners who are making a difference.
The following day, the Art + Nature Block Party was held on Main Beach’s cobblestoned courtyard, offering free access to live music, interactive art-making booths and refreshments from local businesses such as Açai Republic and Jedidiah Coffee. Visitors could also opt to attend a Laguna Live! at the Museum performance on Nov. 2 with violinist Iryna Krechkovsky and cellist Sara Koo Freeman while the Steve Johnson Trio will perform on Nov. 6 during First Thursdays Art Walk.
Jonathan Trent, a former NASA scientist and founder of both UpCycle Systems and the Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae (OMEGA) Global Initiative, will give the Art + Nature keynote address on Nov. 8, touching on his idea to grow oil-producing algae on municipal wastewater and his time with NASA, when he was an innovator in nanotechnology.
Once a year, art, nature and conservation merge in an initiative that reminds us that creativity and conservation are deeply intertwined and that, through art, we can reimagine our relationship with the natural world and inspire those around us to take collective action to do what is necessary to protect it. In a city as progressive as Laguna Beach, it only seems fitting.
‘Art + Nature’
When: Nov. 1-10
Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach
Cost: Free museum admission throughout the month of November; Main Beach activations and the artistic swimming performance are also free; $45-$55 for Ana Teresa Fernández’s Nov. 6 artist talk; $50-$60 for Jonathan Trent’s Nov. 8 keynote address
Contact: lagunartmuseum.com
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