With Orange County locals in the Olympics, contentious City Council elections and those Mitt and Barack guys who kept grabbing headlines, it was a busy year for news — and the arts proved to be no exception. We could try to order this into a conventional "top 10 stories" or some such thing, but since the arts are always playful and surprising, and sometimes impossible to classify, we'll approach our year-end roundup the same way. Here were some of the highlights on Laguna Beach's cultural scene in 2012:
Recipe for Success: The 2012 season of Festival of Arts, a longstanding Laguna Beach tradition, was a fiscal and creative success story. The festival's permanent collection was also bolstered with a Roy Ropp painting donated by Realtor Michael Gosselin.
"This was our most successful year ever," festival treasurer Anita Mangels said.
According to Scholarship Committee Chairwoman Pat Kollenda, $84,000 in scholarships, including 18 freshman awards — three in dance, two in film, five in music, three in theater, four in visual arts and one in writing — were awarded in the 2012-13 academic year. This represents a substantial hike from the $26,000 granted last year.