Four feet by 1293 miles

Four feet by 1293 miles

This weekend I drove down to the Lincoln City Cultural Center to see the Seventh Generation panomural as presented by the Elizabeth Jones Gallery.

Hundreds of artists are joining to create For the Seventh Generation: a free-standing, two-foot by mile-long painting dedicated to ocean protection. When the mural is complete, every mile of the California, Oregon, and Washington coastline will be represented by an artist who has created a four-foot section of the total mural – conceptually a continuous landscape, a panorama of the western coastline.

A few of you may remember that a year ago I turned in two paintings to this project; however, with COVID I never got to see the show. I’m sure that the show last October did not have as many paintings. As the literature pointed out, the exhibit this weekend had over 1/2 mile of paintings representing the Mexico/California border to the Washington/Canada border.

I have created a slideshow that (hopefully) will give you at least a little of the experience of the show. I have made every effort to capture the names of the artist as well as the location. I am also hopeful that the show will run in order, starting at Mexico and ending at Canada.

Thoughts

The scope of this project is inspiring, but it was also inspiring to see how many artists were contributing. While every piece was not spectacular, even the ones that had some technical flaws were beautiful because it was a group of people trying to express the same thing.

I wished I could have gone with some of my artist friends just to discuss the techniques I saw. The piece by Ian Nyquist (Morro Rock) was probably my favorite. His use of understates shapes within blocks of the same value just made me drool. The photo of the piece by Anne Gibson (Otter Point Passage) really isn’t a good representation of how fabulous the painting was; the texture was the making of that painting. And seeing my work nearly side-by-side with another painting of the same place was wonderful. Two people can stand in the same place and see completely different things. I did take photos of my paintings “in situ” and I thought they held up well.

But it wasn’t just techniques that made the show wonderful. Anne Magratten (Rolling Fog (Waldport, OR)) painted a place that I knew, which is why it caught my attention; I knew it, but I had never seen it that way. Lolita Ceisi’s piece, Seahorses (Sunset Beach, OR), stopped me in my tracks and made me miss my dad SO much; we’d walk along the beach and pick up pieces of driftwood to look for animals.

The show worked on so many levels. I’m disappointed it couldn’t be displayed for longer, but I spoke to the gallery reps, and they are looking for additional venues. The next time it goes up, I want to be there!

 

 

 

Personal Update

I didn’t “publish” last week’s post the way I normally do. It wasn’t private, but it felt like too much to put out on social media. Still, a few of your read it and reached out. Thank you. So, I wanted to report back.

I met with my “regular” doctor this week and while I’m still not “better”, we were able to sort through a lot of information and come up with a plan. There are still some more tests to run. I need to REALLY work on my weight. But until a long-term solution is found, we have a game plan. I’m delighted to report that several days this week I broke 7,000 steps (Key was THRILLED).

I’m not ready to say I’m out of the woods, but at least branches are no longer falling on me!