Rakey rakey
Rise and shine with Art on the Beach, in Lincoln City
By Gretchen Ammerman
Oregon Coast TODAY
The wide, flat stretch of beach in front of Lincoln City’s Chinook Winds Casino Resort is the perfect canvas for sand art. It also happens to lie within the UNESCO Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, which is why scientists and sand artists are gathering to present Art on the Beach on Monday and Tuesday, Aug 23 and 24.
The series of creative events is meant to help connect viewers to the ocean. On the first day, artist Frank Boyden and some sandy volunteers will create the word “wonder” in letters 40 feet tall.
“This is really meant to get people’s imagination going,” said Paul Robertson, CHBR staff scientist and project and communications manager. “There is a lot of wonder in the marine reserves and we really want to fire people’s imaginations and get them to wonder what’s out there, and hopefully, realize that it’s worth protecting. They are more than just our local research areas too; they give us signals for how the marine environments are faring all up and down the coast.”
Rebecca Welti will be the head artist for the second day, and will lead the sand rakers in creating art based on phyto- and zoo-plankton from the offshore marine reserve.
Tuesday evening, Welti will be joined by research scientists to provide an Art meets Science presentation at the Lincoln City Cultural Center at 6:30 pm. Together they will dive deeper into the wonderous world of plankton.
“Rebecca focuses on plankton in her own work,” Robertson said. “I’ve seen her make 15-foot-high plankton on the beach before. She’s bringing micro things into a macro scale.”
The team making the events happen consists of community members who will act as greeters and traffic directors at both the north and south entrances to the beach, marine scientists who will be available for questions, assistant rakers and of course the artists themselves.
“As a longtime resident of the greater Lincoln City community, I am incredibly excited to be involved with the inaugural Art on the Beach events,” Boyden said. “Rebecca and I both draw a great deal of our inspiration from the elements and environment around us. To be able to share our expressions with those attending Art on the Beach will be a true joy.”
Interpretive sandwich boards on the beach will provide education about marine reserves.
Printed information cards will also be provided to all visitors introducing and explaining the art as well as providing information on the biosphere and marine reserves and how visitors can become involved in community events and research.
The art event is part of the 4cast Project (Coastal Climate Change, Community, Art, Science and Tradition).
“It’s our first art event,” Robertson said. “We have a sea star monitoring event coming up, a phenocam project and a ‘wrack line’ monitoring project.”
The wrack line is the area on shore where objects, both biological and otherwise, get deposited by the waves and remain until the next tide that is high enough to sweep them back into the ocean.
“This grew out of evaluating the bio-blitzes we’ve been having where community members collect data and use an app to submit it,” Robertson said. “We’re trying to develop and elevate these citizen-science projects to make what comes out of them more valuable to the scientific community.”
Raking will begin at dawn on both days, and Robertson recommends arriving at 8:30 am to view the completed works.
“Tide waits for no one, so it won’t be there in the afternoon,” he said. “The art is a small-scale representation of what lives within our marine reserves — you have to get out there and appreciate what we have before it’s gone.”
Guests planning to attend should park at Chinook Winds Casino Resort main parking area and walk toward the beach.
For more information, go to cascadehead.org