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New Arcadia Beach Print Release | April Shows & Magazine Release | Shop at Sea Gypsy Gifts in Astoria
Arcadia Beach Print Release
Winter storms are nothing short of exciting here on the Oregon Coast. We are young and we are old... in geological terms. The Northwest coast of the United States is the newer edge of land on the North American continent compared to the Atlantic side, thanks to the slow force of the Juan de Fuca plate, Ice Age glacier movement, and volcano eruptions in the Cascade Range! While we are talking millions of years and many Ice Ages of lapsed time in terms of it being "new," the coast has been actively changing in dramatic amounts since our beautiful basalt boulders were hardened from magma on the shores of the Pacific, such as this Lion Rock on Arcadia Beach.
Stormy weather brings in pounding surf and dramatic King Tides that bombard softer cliff rock called 'mudstone' which has a lot of clay and slips down in boulder-sized chunks. Thus our landscape is altered and different each time this happens, but it makes exploring fun and the discovery of fossils more likely! Just behind me in the photo above, I was standing on top of a finger of rock protruding towards the ocean away from a cliff that lost huge amounts of its content in a clean 'slip' down the cliff-side. The cove got smaller!
Ask for a signed print from my studio if you wish. A proof will be on its way shortly, and the photograph will then be available on Etsy.
April Show at Cannon Beach Art Gallery
April is officially my month at the Cannon Beach Art Gallery! Well, dang it, I've been a volunteer here for almost a year, and it is finally time I get a chunk of their real estate all to myself! Images of Washington and Oregon will be for sale at very reasonable prices till the end of the month. Your purchases here dually support my continued work and this non-profit gallery, which offers scholarships and grants to our coastal community, as well as workshops for hands-on art education throughout the year.
Cannon Beach Art Gallery is located at 1064 Hemlock Street in Cannon Beach and is open Wednesday thru Sunday, 11am to 4pm. (503.436.0744)
Squid Magazine Release in Manzanita
Just like we have our RAIN Magazine in Astoria, Manzanita produces Squid Magazine, a collection of poetry, prose, and art from coastal residents. Included works, such as my photograph 'On the Bellingham Tracks' above, are on display at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita for the month of April. When you visit, you will see three large framed prints of my work for sale. Thanks for your patronage to this gallery as well, because your purchases support the continuance of my work as well as this non-profit community center.
Hoffman Center for the Arts is located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita and is open April 6 through April 28, every Friday and Saturday from 2-5 pm. (503.368.3846)
Shop My Photo Goods at Sea Gypsy Gifts in Astoria
There's a new kid in town at an oceanic shop in downtown Astoria! Sea Gypsy Gifts is an immediate 'POW' of everything mermaid and seashells, as soon as you walk in the door. You will feel like nothing less than a sea goddess when you dangle their bangles from your wrists and twirl the driftwood, seashell, and glass chimes that hang throughout the store. The shop owner is known for her mermaid tail costumes that she makes on-site. I am happy to say that she will be carrying items that cannot be found in other shops in Astoria, namely the canvas Storm Water zipper pouches, 5" tabletop wood panel photos of local scenes, 5 x 5 loose prints to frame yourself, and vinyl magnets. Check her out for some of the most authentic beach gifts in town.
Sea Gypsy Gifts is located at 1001 Commercial Street in Astoria and is open 11 to 5:30 daily, and closes at 4 on Sundays. (360.510.2488)
Apple News Publishing | New Ecola Print | Studio Visit
Apple News Publishing: Get Local | Travel Far
After three arduous days of upgrading my decade-old Mac to be ready for publishing this blog, it is finally available on the Apple News app all over the world! It was a very long three days of getting to know my computer in ways I never thought I'd have to... but some things are just worth the struggle, and this was one. My blog will immediately publish on all Mac devices, including a desktop that is running on at least iOS 9. I cover the 'Get Local' portion pretty well, as I keep myself very busy here on the north coast of Oregon planning shows, running two online shops (Etsy and Society 6), and seeking out wholesale opportunities and commissions of my creative work. I'd like to 'Travel Far,' and for now that will probably just be Mexico, Canada, and other parts of the U.S. until I can afford more, so buy some of my work if you haven't! Do you think I'd get a great shot at Banff? Yeah, send me there with a purchase! Want me to document Costa Rica ethnic carvings in process? I do! Yep, buy a print or two from my shop! Spread the word to your friends and family that I produce fine quality landscape photography as my main focus, and send them over. I also give great service!
New Ecola Point Print
This winter, the Oregon Coast felt some strong storm weather. On my drive south from Astoria, I witnessed waves and full-on ocean pounding right into the Arcadia dunes! This is normal stuff that happens out here, but it is still breath-taking to see places which are normally dry become inundated with water. What happens after all of this is we begin living with a dramatically changed coastline. Each shot I create of the same area will be different from then on. Loose soil slides down basalt rock into the ocean, and trees fall in every direction like pick-up-sticks. Small dark boulders tumble and pile on the sand as the softer, lighter sediment is washed away in the following tides. And thus every year, we have a new beach to admire and some to miss.
My last hike was at Ecola Point, just north of Cannon Beach (famous for the Haystack Rock where puffins breed). The trail was a fun and challenging one that took me through deep grass and across a fresh stream, and I dared myself to go to the wide part of the bluff by hiking a narrow path of dirt above a bush whose roots were exposed and hanging off the cliff-side already. Well, I took my chances to get this shot, and it was worth it! The print will soon be available on Etsy, and my first proof looks so dreamy in person!
Studio Visit
I would like to formally invite you to reach out to me via the Contact page and visit my studio! I handle this by private visitation only, for those who are interested in purchasing some of my work. If you are in the north coast area and want to see the prints and products that I have on hand, you are welcome to arrange that with me.
Thanks for all of your support! It helps keep me going on this journey to bring the outdoors into your home, so that you can revel in the beauty of our beautiful earth when you are in your sanctuary away from the craziness of the world. And please leave a comment on my site. My blog feels pretty lonely there without you!
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Our Big Backyard, Spirograph Landscapes, Spring Shows, and Wholesale Newsletter
Our Big Backyard
If I could make it my job to play outside all day... I would. I'm trying. I suppose the best moments in my process are when I am discovering new vistas, soaking in the details, and wondering in awe over the geological clues of our very existence, present namely in rocks that I can observe with my naked eyes. I am no scientist, so I don't do air samples, core samples, water samples.... I'm no Ansel Adams with developing equipment in the back of a van, so I'm not gone weeks at a time making prints on the road. I just use my two eyes and dig into my curiosity using all the resources made available to me by scientists, researchers, and practicing photographers to do what I do and learn about my environment. It is a great, joyful method for me, and the real fun is in making a satisfying print that represents a place and becomes a definition of "place." That's my only job I give myself. I then share this with others in the form of products I design and traditional wall art, hoping that my images of the places you live in become the "spirit" of objects when you invest in my work.
Cape Lookout
Funny thing that I realized on a recent hike where we took the wrong entry and ended up at the beach... is how temporary most of our landscapes really are here on the northwest coast! I took a trip to circle the entire Olympic Peninsula in November and later learned that that region is relatively new land on a geological timescale! This made me think more deeply about rock formations, and I love to look at rocks and even collect them. Well, on the more recent beach hike, which was actually a failed Cape hike (silly me, I led the expedition), I noticed something in the heaping cliff-side that rose high above us on the beach. A sediment layer of blackened everything - blackened soft sediment with hard rocks falling out and blackened tree roots. I looked up at the forest on the hiking trails, meters and meters above me, and noticed a living tree barely hanging onto the precipice, which was perfect for observing root length - they didn't go very deep! What this made me think was that the roots of the tree that I was looking at at my eye level had been buried by new sediment and were very old roots! I guessed first that maybe there was a fire and an earthquake that made this chunk of forest slide down into the ocean and turn black... had to wait till I drove home to do some research.
Well, I found two articles written about an area just a few miles up, as well as another Cape farther south, and I was onto something! It turns out that Oregon's sometimes extreme tidal erosion, of course, was responsible for these roots even being visible, but what was even cooler to learn was that landslides did in fact occur here, exposing "paleosols" (ancient soil deposits) with well-preserved tree trunks in just the right conditions. Scientists believe that these landslides occurred during a previous Ice Age, and just up the coast, similar preserved trees were carbon dated to over 38,000 years old. OMG! What a find! I got to touch them. I saw similar dramatic beach erosion when I lived on the southern coast of South Carolina in my early twenties, and it seems I find myself still attracted to some of the same things.
Spirograph Landscapes
Over the winter, the thought of doing Spirograph designs crept into me, and I went for it head on! It was fun to reconnect with a childhood "toy"... or really an engineer's "drafting aid" is what it was meant to be. These were originally designed in the 1880's by a British engineer, and they soon after were marketed as a toy! Boy would I love to see one of those, if I ever got to search some old attics in England! I drew spiro designs that stand alone on my newest handmade coasters and magnets, and I have just begun to incorporate them into my landscapes, too. I'm pushing out my first "test" designs of the mixed mediums on Facebook (here), and we will see where this goes! I'm curious to hear feedback on these designs... what do you think? Would anyone want them as record covers? Art prints? Pillows?
Spring Shows
January through April will be months for lots of social networking time, if you'd like to discuss my artwork in person. I will be showing for four solid months in Astoria, OR at Good to Go in January, at Three Cups during February and March, and at Cannon Beach Art Gallery in April. THEN it's time for spring shooting, so exciting!
Good to Go is at 1132 Commercial Street, Astoria, OR (thru Jan 31)
Three Cups is at 279 West Marine Drive, Astoria, OR (Feb 2 thru March 26)
Cannon Beach Art Gallery is at 1064 S. Hemlock Street, Cannon Beach, OR (March 29 thru April 30)
Wholesale Newsletter
I am also releasing my first wholesale newsletter-slash-catalog in late February, so if you are a retailer, gallery, hotelier, or business interested in adding my design products to your retail, go to the contact page and let me know with a quick email! I'm happy to do custom projects with my designs and photography.
As always, my work can be found on ETSY. You can contact me and follow my latest using Facebook or Instagram.
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