Laguna Canyon Project

The Laguna Canyon Project was a multi-phased environmental art project (1980–2010). With the project’s early phases as backdrop and stimulus, artists and activists lobbied local and countywide forces to prevent construction of a 3,200 unit housing community in Laguna Canyon—a wide swath of undeveloped land east of downtown Laguna.^[1] With a growing cadre of supporters, they achieved their goal in 1989; and the canyon is designated as undeveloped land into perpetuity.

The project, created by artists and teachers Jerry Burchfield and Mark Chamberlain (photographer), evolved in response to the construction plans. In the process, the Project influenced Laguna residents' understanding of the canyon’s ecological importance, of the ongoing environmental debates and ultimately decision making by community leaders.^[2]

While the Laguna Canyon Project had 16 distinct phases, the most impactful was Phase VIII, The Tell,^[3] a 636-foot-long photomural, erected in 1989 in Sycamore Hills, in part of what is now Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.^[4]

Laguna Beach Legacy

The most traveled route into town is the nine-mile Laguna Canyon Road within the 7,000-acre (2,800 ha) Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.

The Wilderness Park has some of the last remaining undeveloped coastal canyons in Southern California. The park is dominated by Coastal Sage Scrub, cactus and native grasses. Over 40 endangered and sensitive species call Laguna Coast home, including California Gnatcatcher, Cactus Wren, and the endemic Laguna Beach Dudleya. Drive further down the road toward the Pacific Ocean, and you pass the campus of Laguna College of Art and Design, artists’ studios, numerous public art pieces, and three world famous summer art festivals.

Laguna’s artistic legacy stretches back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when people from across this country and Europe, many steeped in French Impressionism, moved to this area. Artists, including Frank Cuprien, Joseph Kleitsch and William Wendt, settled here, formed an art colony and used Canyon landscapes as subjects of their paintings. They employed the broad-brush strokes and pure, bright colors of their earlier French counterparts to capture the canyons; their artistic style came to be called California Impressionism.

Genesis of Laguna Canyon Project

Mark Chamberlain and Jerry Burchfield opened BC Space, a combination photo lab/studio/ gallery in 1973, to provide photographic services for galleries, museums and artists.^[5] During their many hours working together, they often discussed what they could do to protect the Laguna Canyon. They ultimately agreed upon a course of action and in the spring of 1980 commenced the "Laguna Canyon Project: The Continuous Document," their long-term environmental art project. The immediate goal was to preserve the canyon in the tradition of documentary photography, while challenging the community to preserve it in reality.

For Phase I, with a handful of volunteers, they photographed both sides of the Laguna Canyon Road. The resulting 646 frames per side were printed into twin color prints, depicting their passage down the “last nine miles of the westward migration.”

Evolution to Performance Art

Soon after, they repeated the survey, but this time at night, and dubbed it Phase III, "Nightlight Documentation.” Publicity from these ventures was beginning to generate responses from people offering to help with future phases. The partners also realized that the project was becoming performance art, in addition to documentation.

The art partners then intended to “paint the canyon with light.” This phase took two years of planning, required more people, expensive equipment, and permits from multiple level governmental agencies. The pair lobbied regional environmental groups, the art community, and local public officials for permission and support.

In September 1983, Chamberlain and Burchfield executed Phase V, "Primary Light Documentation.” For this phase, 65 designated participants (plus backup) obtained 13 vehicles and a 30,000-watt generator, towed by a 40-foot flatbed truck. They moved this entire caravan down Laguna Canyon Road from 6 PM to 6 AM, while escorted by three different police agencies and Caltrans officials. The resulting images were printed onto a single print 3.5 inches wide by 516 feet long, depicting the entire length of the Northeast side of the road in kaleidoscopic color.

The Tell Photographic Mural

By 1987, core samples were being taken for Southern California's first toll road, which would bisect Laguna Canyon, and maps were being drawn for the 3,200-unit Laguna Laurel housing development, which the road would serve. Construction for both was scheduled to begin in 1989. In response to these expected developments, Burchfield and Chamberlain began extensive lobbying to execute their next phase, which was to build a giant photographic mural in the canyon directly in the path of the toll road, and across the highway from the proposed new city.

On May 1, 1989, after three years of planning and months of fundraising, the art partners, along with a growing army of environmentalists, began constructing an outdoor photographic mural called The Tell. Since 1989 was the Centennial of Orange County, CA and the 150th anniversary of the discovery of photography, they decided that the project would be composed of photographs, contributed by people from all over the country. The installation would also express concern, artistically, about the survival of the historic Laguna Canyon. When completed, Phase VIII, The Tell was a contemporary mound of artifacts, an environmental artwork that reflected the community's past and looked to its future. They erected the installation in the Sycamore Hills area of Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.^[6][7][8][9]

The name "Tell" comes from the archeological term for a mound of artifacts from prior civilizations, buried over by natural elements. This Tell was built (rather than unearthed) as a small mountain composed of thousands of photographs, reflective of the lives of the people who donated images. It grew to 636-feet long and ranged from 36-feet high, dwindling down to the ground, as it undulated across the landscape and dove back into the hillside. The sculptural character of the artwork resembled the voluptuous nature of the surrounding canyons, with echoes of a female figure in its shape. It had a stylized Easter Island head as its physical and philosophical foundation.

The pictures, glued onto the wooden framework, were woven together like pixels in a pointillist painting by density, color, content and type of material. They told numerous stories of man, woman and the land. These symbols were positioned by story lines on the chakra points of the larger body of the mural.

Visitors in the early spring were rewarded with vibrant, colorful images of themselves, their families and friends as part of the very large art work. Later in the summer and fall, as the canyon was transformed into desert colors, these photos and stories faded to become a part of the background fabric of a larger story of man's relationship with spaceship Earth. During the months of construction, the mural became the focal point and catalyst for numerous events and demonstrations. Some were planned and many happened spontaneously.

For the August 19 dedication of The Tell, more than 2,000 people attended, including scores of environmental groups from all across the county. The installation also attracted media attention, including numerous articles in the Los Angeles Times,^[10]

The Walk

On November 11, 1989, The Tell became the destination for an estimated 8,000 to 11,000 people who marched there from downtown Laguna Beach for the "Walk to Save Laguna Canyon." These participants then held a demonstration protesting the proposed 3,200 unit Laguna Laurel housing development, which was scheduled to be built across the road from The Tell site. Largely as a consequence of months of community involvement in the building of this mural, and of this dramatic public display, Donald Bren, who owned the Irvine Company, agreed to negotiate with the cities of Irvine and Laguna Beach to release that land for public acquisition. In 1990, Laguna Beach residents voted overwhelmingly to tax themselves to purchase the land to keep it as open space. ^[11]

When The Tell was dismantled, it was coded and stored with the hope that it would be installed in a museum. But it was so politically charged that no art organization would assist in its preservation. Lacking safe storage, most of the photographic mural burned in the Laguna Beach fire of 1993.

Unlike an actual Tell, the structure was carefully removed to leave little evidence in the land it was attempting to save. All that remains at the site today are 88 barely visible postholes filled with pea gravel rhythmically spaced on the hillside for future explorers to discover.

Additional Phases of Laguna Canyon Project

Phase IX: The Daylight Document II, April 1990

Phase X: The Nightlight Document II, November 1990

'Phase XI: “Tales of The Tell” Exhibition, BC Space, Fall 1990

Phase XII: “The Witness Box,” July 26, 1994

Phase XIII: Into Grace Under Fire, December 21, 1994

Phase XIV: The Daylight Document III, April 2000

Phase XV' The Nightlight Document III, November 2000

Phase XVI: The Daylight Document IV, Final Phase, June 21, 2010 (A dozen participants documented the 9-mile Laguna Canyon Road)

References

External links

• Laguna Canyon Project Images
• Orange County Parks/Laguna Coast
• Laguna Canyon Foundation
• Laguna Greenbelt
• BC Space website
• Article on “The History of Saving Laguna Canyon”
• Laguna Canyon Project Page