From belly-dancing on the main deck to Platinum palladium prints, Mary’s Sawdust story spans decades,
and keeps unfolding.
If you ask photographer and mixed-media artist Mary Church when her Sawdust journey began, she won’t point to a camera or a gallery booth. She’ll take you back to 1999, to the main deck stage, to the sound of music pulsing through summer air. “I had just moved to Laguna Beach,” Mary recalls. “I was going through a divorce, trying new things, and I joined Jerry and the Habibies, a local belly-dance troupe. We performed at Sawdust three times that summer. That first time dancing on the main deck…I’ll never forget it.”
It was her first taste of the Sawdust magic, the energy, the community, the overwhelming sense that creativity wasn’t just on display here. It lived here. She had no idea that decades later, she’d return not as a dancer, but as an exhibiting artist with seven shows under her belt, hundreds of thousands of images in her archive, and a deepening bond with the community that nurtured her craft.
A Photographer with an Old-School Eye
Though Mary grew up in Chicago, Laguna Beach is where her visual voice found its footing. Her earliest foray into photography began with something small, a gift from her brother. “For one of my birthdays, he gave me this teeny tiny Sony digital camera,” she laughs. “And I just went mad. I photographed everything, Main Beach, birds, shells, sunsets.”
She entered a one-day Women’s Center art show with her small, matted prints… and something life-changing happened. “They sold. People were excited about what I was capturing. And then a gallery approached me, they wanted to represent me. That was the moment I felt truly seen as an artist.”
From there, Mary pursued a photography degree from Saddleback College, learning photography the traditional way, through film. “I started in the darkroom. You only had 36 shots on a roll. You had to think about composition, about what you were trying to say. No clicking away endlessly. It trained my eye and taught me to deliver an image the first time.”
When I’m out shooting, I’m in this moment of connection with the scene. I don’t always know what I’ve captured until later—when the film comes back, or I scroll through the dailies. But when the feeling I had matches what shows up on paper…that’s the magic.
Today, her work moves between analog and digital worlds. Her Platinum palladium prints are hand-developed on watercolor paper. Her darkroom black-and-whites carry that intimate, timeless grain. Her digital color images bring the vibrancy of the present into focus. What unites them is the feeling she’s chasing.
“It’s the awe,” she says. “When I’m out shooting, I’m in this moment of connection with the scene. I don’t always know what I’ve captured until later, when the film comes back, or I scroll through the dailies. But when the feeling I had matches what shows up on paper…that’s the magic.”
Seven Shows, Hundreds of Stories
Mary began exhibiting at the Sawdust Festival in 2023 and quickly embraced its rhythm, Summer, Winter Fantasy, Spring Fling, then back again.
In the process, she discovered something profoundly unique about how Sawdust artists choose their booth spaces.
“There’s this whole etiquette code,” she explains. “The people who’ve been here since 1968, they don’t technically keep their booths, but everyone knows their preferences. It’s unspoken courtesy. You don’t take Doug Miller’s spot, for example. It’s kindness that’s built into the process.” That sense of respect, and history, touched her deeply. And from the start, the veteran artists welcomed her in. One memory stands apart.
The Glassblower Who Changed Everything
“My first show in 2023 was John Barber’s last show,” she says softly. “He’d been a long-time glassblower at Sawdust and was world-renowned.” Mary had admired him for years. During her first season exhibiting, John walked into her booth. “I was painting watercolors in the booth, and he had just started doing watercolors too. He bought one of my little Scotland pieces. I couldn’t believe it.”
Then came the advice she carries with her: “He said, ‘Listen, you’re like a freshman. If you want to try another medium, explore it.’” It was permission. Encouragement. A widening of her artistic world from someone she deeply respected. “He was saying don’t limit yourself. Create everywhere you feel moved to. That moment meant everything to me.”
A Sawdust Life, in Many Chapters
Mary’s artistic life has never moved in a straight line. With her decades of experience as a massage therapist and healer, work she still does, it has shaped the emotional sensitivity at the heart of her art. She danced. She traveled. She photographed relentlessly. And through it all, Sawdust remained a kind of compass point.
“Even when I wasn’t exhibiting, I was connected to people here, photographers like Doug Miller and Jim Nordstrom’s photography shop in old Latitude33 on Ocean, Ave. Doug used to carry his rolls of developed film in a postal bag. If he took a picture of you that year, he’d find you downtown and hand you the prints. That’s the kind of place this is.” It’s this spirit that keeps pulling her back. “Sawdust feels like one of those Blue Zones you read about, places where people live longer because there’s community, creativity, purpose. That’s what it is for me.”
Teaching, Creating, Connecting
When Mary teaches—whether photography, watercolor, or creative practice—she brings the same emotional intentionality that guides her art. “I want people to feel what I feel when I’m creating. Peace. Beauty. A moment of joy. A connection to spirit.” It’s not about perfection or technical polish. It’s about presence. “If I could tell my younger self anything,” she says, smiling, “it would be: Make a bigger mess. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. That’s where the discoveries happen.” “And clean up your bigger mess so mom takes you back for art supplies…”
Looking Forward
As Mary has prepared for Winter Fantasy and future seasons, her excitement is unmistakable. “I just feel blessed,” she says. “Sawdust has been special for me in so many different ways. And I’m still evolving, still exploring new mediums, still finding new light.” Her journey began with dance. It grew through healing. It expanded through photography. And now, with every print, every class, every booth conversation, Mary continues to do what she’s always done: Capture the beauty of being fully, vibrantly alive.
