Opening Reception

Forests of the Sea at Coast Highway Art Collective

The community is invited to an exciting new exhibit exploring and celebrating kelp and its underwater forest ecosystem featuring Amanda Pence and Emma Hurley. These two artists, both raised in the Point Arena area, share a lifelong-connections to the world of seaweed. The opening reception is on Sunday, July 2 from 1 to 4 p.m. Clothing, ceramics and paintings are all part of this show.

Pence was raised in rural Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, and says she was artistically influenced by her mother, who lived in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. She says “living in this three-dimensional mandala where colorful Tibetan banners blew in the wind and the light glinted off the gold leafed stupa, cultivated a love of beauty and an openness to unseen realms.” She studied fine art at UC Santa Cruz and participated in an exhibit of an Eco-Sexual Symposium, where she committed to being a lover to the earth.  In the fall of 2013, Pence had the opportunity to travel to Sarnath, India and assist in painting a mural inside the main hall of the Institute under artists Kaveri and TJ Singh, as well as assisting with installing three-dimensional epoxy resin cast and gold leafed Tibetan script across the outer walls of the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute.

Today, Pence spends much of her time at the ocean, walking around barefoot so she can connect with the earth and harvesting materials which have fallen to the ground or washed ashore. She is particularly fascinated by patterns that repeat themselves in nature and within the human body. Pence elaborates “for instance, branching systems are seen in rivers, veins, leaves, lichen and in valleys, patterns that can transport water and liquid most efficiently. These patterns can also be seen as systems that connect human beings to the natural world, as we are also built and shaped by these systems.”

Hurley was born on the ridgtop above the community of Point Arena. She attended Prescott College, a liberal arts school valuing environmental and social consciousness and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Conservation Biology with a marine emphasis. Learning the scientific method via tide pooling in an intensive Marine Biology field course in Mexico, her summer for-fun tide pooling in Point Arena took on a whole new dimention of resourcefulness, understanding and ID skills. Her love of the ocean turned obsession when she learned to surf at age 22. “Salt veins and more knowedge of tides, swells, weather and changes in the ocean around me than any goings on in the human world defined my 20s living in Santa Cruz. The rugged Point Arena coast always pulled at my heart. I made the long-term move home in June 2016,” Hurley says.

After some time living in Point Arena, Hurley started noticing changes in the local tide pools and nearshore waters where she surfed. “I realized it had been years since I had found my once common companion, the sunflower star. Winters on the beach felt wrong. The smell of ‘’winter-ocean” was missing. My surfboards no longer had giant pressure dings on the underside, which were from hitting big bull kelp “heads”at high speed. The kelp was missing and disappearance dramatically changed our marine landscape.”

Hurley’s concern over the changing and declining ecosystem of the ocean led to a new artistic outlook featuring kelp and the marine world. “On my functional wheel thrown pottery, I carve the tangled fronds of bull kelp that I barely now see on the ocean surface when I am surfing. I carve the threatened fish and understory seaweeds in the underglaze painted on my cups and bowls to pass my love of these on to those who end up with these pieces. NorthCoast Brine, my line of original art screen-printed apparel, is inspired by the life and environment of the cold brine waters off of Northern California. My goal with the apparel is to encourage ocean stewardship through giving the wearer a beautiful rendition of our native rockfish, invertebrates and kelp and knowledge of what these species are.”

The Coast Highway Art Collective is located at 284 Main St., Point Arena, the little red building with the big yellow sun, located next to the Redwood Credit Union. Regular hours are Friday through Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm. This exhibit runs from June 1 to June 25.

Visit the website at www.coast-highway-artists.com for information about the collective’s artists, upcoming events and how to join. To find out more about becoming a member of the Collective, contact Ling-Yen Jones via the website above.