This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s arts review program! This is my field report about an epic “Three Sister, Ten Day, Oregon Coast Art Crawl” with watercolorist Cheryl Long and textile artist Toren Brolutti.
The Art Crawl was a way for us to reconnect, to do and see as much art as possible between Seaside and Gold Beach in ten days.
It was raining when we rolled into Cannon Beach. Toren dove into Center Diamond, a must-stop for quilters. Toren is creating a line of hand-quilted journals and said she found inspo in Julie Walker’s store and gallery because it specializes in batiks, coastal related prints and Asian-inspired designs.
Cheryl and I made a beeline for Northwest by Northwest Gallery, a fine art gallery featuring American Masters and regional artists. The bronze sculptures of Georgia Gerber dominate the space. My favorite was two very large, very suave bronze rabbits dancing, called “Tango Moon.”
In Yachats, we stopped at Toad Hall, which is featuring a gorgeous collection of photographs printed on transparency film and gilded with gold or silver leaf and framed with elegant Roma frames.
In Bandon, I took the sisters for a studio visit with painter Victoria Tierney. We stopped at Raincoast Arts in Langlois and saw her “Boy with Yellow Socks,” a large watercolor of a young boy on the beach, the surf in the background, yellow reflections in the sand.
In Port Orford, we visited the always-stunning Hawthorne Gallery and were shown around by painter Damein Hawthorne, who posed for me with one of his large black and red oils full of the swirl of masked dancing figures.
Between visits to galleries, we three photographed and painted, took daily walks on the beach and talked, catching up on everything on our hearts and minds since last summer. I highly recommend you design your own version of the “Three Sister, Ten Day Oregon Coast Art Crawl.”
See art, do art, be art.
This is Sandy Brown Jensen for KLCC.
