Some of the many beautiful shorebirds

I had a wonderful weekend in Newport Oregon last weekend. My husband and I along with my sister & her husband went for the Seafood & Wine Festival. We ended up just having our own little food & wine fest at the house, cooking and tasting and watching movies, which was much better than standing in line and paying for small tastes. The weather cooperated for walks on the beach every day, which were so soothing and inspiring!

Our first night we had the most glorious sunset

My sister & I did a bit of shopping, including stopping in for an opening along with wine tasting and live music at 9th Street Gallery. Such fun! I love Katie & David’s whimsical taste. And the wines by Lumos wine company were delicious… I especially liked the dry Gewurztraminer.

The show is called Perceptions of the Past and is sponsored by Rogue Community College’s Firehouse Gallery. It sounded so interesting that I thought I should do it. The premise is, 13 professional writers were given historic photographs and asked to write descriptions.  Then 13 artists were mailed the written descriptions and asked to paint an image inspired by the written description (without access to the actual photo).

This sounded fascinating and challenging. I love to work from imagination, and I like things relating to the past. The fact that this exhibit is meant to help celebrate Oregon’s Sesquicentennial also attracted me. I’m a third generation Oregonian. But, faced with a description by talented author Lauren Kessler, I found myself wondering what in the world I was going to do!

I find that the work I’ve come up with doesn’t really look to me like my work. I want to tell people who see the exhibit, “I’m better than this, really!” Couple that with the fact that many of the other artists participating are heros of mine and it all adds up to a big feeling of inadequacy. Maybe I should try to do another one. It is due March 6. But I have a daughter home from college with the flu, a friend coming from Seattle on Wednesday night, and a Japanese exchange student coming on Friday for the weekend. Yikes!

The exhibit runs May 20 and through June 27.

Participating artists are Melinda Thorsnes, Phyllis Yes, Royal Nebeker, J.S.Bird, Frederick James, Bruce Bayard, Judy Hoiness, Annette Gurdjian, Sherrie Wolf, Ruth Armitage, Kirk Lybecker, Ellen Dittebrandt and Lorna Nakell.

Participating writers were Walt Curtis, Carlos Reyes, Lawson Inada, Kim Stafford, Vern Rutsala, David Snell, Floyd Skloot, F.A. Nettelbeck, Monica Drake, Marc Acito, Robert McDowell, Lauren Kessler and Alison Clement.