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Soccer is artist’s muse

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For as long as he can remember, Chris Beas has been troubled by the idea of American exceptionalism.

The phrase “I’m proud to be an American” confounded him even as a young boy.

“It’s like, what are you proud of?” he asked. “It’s an accident that you happened to be born here. You had nothing to do with it.”

Despite belonging to a mixed family, the Los Angeles resident has neither identified as Caucasian nor Mexican. Beas insists he is just a person.

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So the 43-year-old artist took a professional stance against the jingoistic norms he found himself surrounded by. Also, unlike sports with a strong American identity, his favorite has an international flavor — soccer.

“Art is a way of rebelling against society,” Beas said, further explaining his aversion to more traditional choices. “Now football is more mainstream here, but in the ‘90s, being a football fan and wearing a jersey around was kind of a weird thing. So it was a rejection of American xenophobia, which I did not partake in.”

Beas, who manages to combine the sport with his work, will be at the Laguna Art Museum at 7 p.m. Thursday as part of the venue’s “Conversation With...” series. The event, timed ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup’s opening on June 12 in Brazil, will give him the opportunity to discuss his football-themed pieces, three of which are currently on display in “Fútbol: The Beautiful Game” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The “Conversation With...” program debuted in December 2011 and is hosted on the first Thursday of every month except July and August. Artists Deborah Aschheim and Arie Galles and sculptor Andre Woodward are among the guests who have been invited to speak.

Presented in conjunction with the First Thursdays Art Walk, the program has been set up as a conversation in a relaxed atmosphere and not a formal lecture.

“The audience for the first ‘Conversation with... [Amy Caterina]’ was only seven people,” museum executive director Malcolm Warner recounted. “For the recent one with Elizabeth Turk, it was 90.”

He added that guests will be able to interact with Beas and learn about his artistic practice and the source of his ideas.

“As a lover of both soccer and art myself, I’m keenly interested to see how an artist translates his passion for one into the other,” Warner said. “Chris’ images of classic Manchester United players of the 1960s — George Best, Denis Law, Brian Kidd — have a special resonance for me because I was fortunate enough to see that team play when I was a boy. “

Beas, whose art encompasses sculpture, painting and drawing, makes a concerted effort to steer clear of abstract work. He chooses instead to base his work on information, reveling in deconstructing facts and putting them back together in various visual forms.

Gearing up for his first visit to the Laguna Art Museum, Beas admitted that his fascination with football is grounded in his being a fan, in particular of Manchester United. Bad knees keep him from playing, but not painting.

“Football is this sort of cauldron of different aspects of life, whether it’s violence, beauty, politics or economics,” he noted. “There are all these social aspects of the game outside of the physical act of playing, so for me, it’s a great place to gather information.”

Beas recalled kicking a ball around in elementary school but never pursued the sport to the point of joining a team. In that sense, his interest was passive, he admitted.

That changed when the 15th annual FIFA World Cup was presented in nine cities across the United States from June 17 to July 17, 1994. Not only was he able to watch “high-quality football played by real stars from up close,” but sports bars and channels, including Fox and ESPN, quickly capitalized on the fans’ excitement and began broadcasting highlights of the English Premier League, UEFA Champions League and Spain’s La Liga.

“The World Cup represented this whole new way of viewing things — it was international and more open and diverse,” Beas said. “For me, it was perfect.”

If You Go

What: “Conversation With... Chris Beas”

Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach

When: 7 p.m. June 5

Cost: Free

Information: https://www.lagunaartmuseum.org or (949) 494-8971

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