Drive up Laguna Canyon Road past the farmers market crowd on a Saturday morning in August and you'll pass three art venues within a few hundred yards of each other: the Sawdust Art Festival at 935 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Art-A-Fair at 777, and the Festival of Arts tucked behind the hill between them. Most people who've lived here a while know all three exist. Fewer know why there are two separate canyon-floor festivals instead of one, or that this year both are marking the same round number.
Sawdust and Art-A-Fair are both turning 60 in 2026. They didn't grow up as friendly neighbors who happened to land on the same stretch of road. They started as one group of artists who had a falling out.
The Argument That Started Two Festivals
In the mid-1960s, a group of traditionalist, representational-style artists found themselves increasingly shut out of the Festival of Arts, the juried show that has long anchored Laguna's summer art scene, as tastes in Southern California moved toward more abstract work. In protest, they hung their paintings on fences at Glenneyre Street and Park Avenue. The impromptu show drew enough of a crowd that the group needed a bigger space the following year, so they moved to a vacant lot on North Coast Highway.
They only lasted two seasons together. At the end of the second, the group split over what the local arts nonprofit cultureoc.org describes as irreconcilable differences. One faction moved up Laguna Canyon and started spreading sawdust on the ground to keep down the dust and mud, which is exactly how local media landed on a name. The other faction stayed closer to the original spot, grew, relocated more than once, and finally settled into its permanent home at 777 Laguna Canyon Road in 1988, a few doors down from Sawdust and directly across the street from the Festival of Arts they'd all been kicked out of a generation earlier.
Jay Grant, who has served on Sawdust's board for 53 years, put the milestone simply this year:
"Celebrating 60 years of Sawdust is truly an honor."
Same Age, Next Door, Still Different Rooms
The split wasn't just a matter of geography. It hardened into two different philosophies that still shape what you see when you walk through either gate today.
Sawdust kept a rule from its founding: every exhibiting artist has to be a Laguna Beach resident, and that requirement hasn't budged. This year 183 artists, spread across a hillside on Frontage Road, are showing ceramics, glass, jewelry, painting, and sculpture, with some having exhibited for more than half a century. Art-A-Fair went the opposite direction. It never adopted a residency restriction, so its lineup draws artists from outside the county and outside the country alongside local names, with more than 70 returning exhibitors and roughly 40 new ones joining this year's 60th season.
Neither approach is better. But if you're deciding where to spend one free afternoon in the canyon this month, that decision made in the 1960s is still the reason one gate gets you an all-local show and the other gets you a wider mix.
What Actually Changed for the 60th
Anniversary years tend to bring out the archives, and Sawdust used its 60th to bring back a piece of its own history. The entrance now features a recreated Windmill Booth, originally built by artist Tracey Moscaritolo and rebuilt this season by artists Trevor and Eden LePenske with iridescent plexiglass blades. Inside, a dedicated History Booth displays pieces from founding-era members. Elsewhere on the grounds, graphic artist Laurel Grace built a giant red octopus booth out of cardboard boxes, roughly 100 cans of spray foam, and pool-noodle-stuffed drop cloths rigged to bend like real tentacles, a bit of homegrown engineering that says more about the festival's do-it-yourself spirit than any plaque could.
The food lineup also got a real refresh for the anniversary. The Cove by Starfish returned with its coastal menu of bowls, sushi rolls, bánh mì, and dim sum, plus a new churro bao bun. AhbA made its Sawdust debut this year with an Americana, 1960s-inspired concept built around Wagyu burgers and the festival's first-ever soft serve, a theme that happens to line up neatly with the decade the festival was born in. Taco Loco rounded out the lineup under chef Gonzo Rebollar, who has been part of Laguna's dining scene for more than three decades and previously ran a longtime spot on Pacific Coast Highway. Sawdust also announced a 60th-anniversary partnership with Earth Shoes this year, its first outside brand tie-in of this kind.
The Detail Locals Actually Need
If you've been putting off a visit because you already know what Sawdust looks like, here's what's worth knowing before you go:
- Dates and hours: June 26 through September 6, 2026. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Single-day tickets: $12.50 for adults, $10.50 for seniors 65 and older, $5.50 for youth ages 6 to 12. Kids under 5 get in free, and veterans get free admission any day with a valid military ID.
- Free admission for Laguna Beach residents: every Thursday, all day, with valid ID. That's a standing weekly perk, separate from the one-off free county days scattered through July and August for visitors from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside/San Bernardino counties.
- Getting there without fighting for parking: a free trolley runs between downtown Lot 16 and the festival grounds Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., during the show. Metered parking on Frontage Road and Laguna Canyon Road takes cards only, and overflow paid lots sit a short walk away near downtown at Lot 10 and Lot 11 on Laguna Canyon Road.
None of that is new information in the sense of being a secret. What's easy to miss is that this is the version of Sawdust built specifically to mark 60 years, and once the anniversary season ends on September 6, the Windmill Booth and History Booth go with it until the next milestone comes around.
Why This Reads Differently Than "Sawdust Is Back"
The easy version of this story is that a beloved summer festival returned with some new food trucks. The version that actually explains what you're looking at is that two of Laguna Canyon's three art institutions trace back to the same argument, that the argument produced two competing ideas about who gets to show work here, and that both ideas are still standing sixty years later within a few hundred feet of each other. Walk the sawdust path this month with that in mind and the whole canyon reads less like a summer event and more like a long-running conversation the founders never quite finished.
If you're the kind of Laguna Beach resident who notices when a decades-old local institution quietly changes, that same attention to detail is worth having on your side when it comes to the property you live in. Team Laguna has been walking these canyon roads for decades, under broker-owner Danielle Purcell, a lifelong Laguna Beach resident. Contact Us when you're ready to talk through what's next for your corner of town.
