page_title: Laguna Canyon Project
section_title: Laguna Beach environment
hierarchical_section_title: Laguna Canyon Project / Laguna Beach environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Laguna Coast Wilderness Park entrance
context_page_description: The Laguna Canyon Project, a long-term environmental art project, used a variety of tactics and techniques to focus attention on the bucolic Laguna Canyon Road, one of the last undeveloped passages to the Pacific Ocean. The project, created by photographic artists Jerry Burchfield and Mark Chamberlain, was a response to explosive growth in south Orange County and especially to the threats of development within their hometown of Laguna Beach, California. What began as a 10-year project lasted for three decades.
  Over its first 10 years, the project drew an ever-expanding number of supporters. It empowered local artists and concerned citizens to get actively involved in the fate of the Canyon, while informing the greater Orange County, California about the environmental issues.
  The project reached its high point in 1989 when, in celebration of the Orange County Centennial and the Sesquicentennial of the discovery of photography, the art partners erected a giant photographic mural in a critical location of the Canyon. They built this 636-foot-long mural, entitled The Tell, in the Sycamore Hills area of Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.
context_section_description: 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, which 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. These paintings, displayed all over Laguna today, have transcendent qualities, expressing reverence for the beauty of the land. As you drive, hike or bike through Laguna Canyon, you can view vistas evocative of these paintings.
caption: Laguna Coast Wilderness Park entrance
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