So many sites to sea
on the Art on the Edge Tour
By Eliot Sekuler
For the TODAY
The magnetic pull of the coastline has drawn artists to the shore in every era. From the painters of the Flemish Renaissance gazing out on the North Sea to the abstract expressionist masters hunkered down in eastern Long Island, the sea’s visual rhythms and shimmering light have beckoned to artists working in every medium. Unsurprisingly, the Oregon Coast has benefited from that appeal, drawing an outsized population of artists and crafters.
About 35 of those Oregon Coast artists will be spotlighted as part of this year’s three-day Art On The Edge Studio Tour, Friday through Sunday, June 28 through 30.
For Krista Eddy, visual arts director at the Lincoln City Cultural Center and the tour’s organizer, the lure of the coast has provided a bountiful pool of artists to showcase for her annual event.
“Creative-minded people gravitate here because it’s so beautiful,” she said. “We’re lucky to have a rich artists’ community and a great deal of quality work we can exhibit.”
This is the seventh year that the tour has been presented. In 2023, the tour sprawled from South Beach and Toledo to Neskowin, and many tour-goers found the distance to be daunting. This year’s tour, again presented free of charge, has been condensed to a 20-mile route stretching from Depoe Bay to just north of Cascade Head.
There are 16 locations along this year’s tour and all but one of the featured artists have participated in previous ones. Examples of all participating artists’ work are currently on view at the Cultural Center’s Chessman Gallery and represent a wide range of media, including painting in oils, acrylics and watercolor, mixed media, oil and cold wax, metal sculpture and casting, driftwood furniture, handmade jewelry, fused glass, glass blowing, clay and ceramic art, photography, weaving, mosaic, reclaimed assemblage art and fabric arts.
Despite the many differences, the viewer can find a connective thread in the artists and their work.
“Even though there’s a great variety of media and styles, I think there’s an undercurrent of love for the natural world shared by the majority of our local artists,” Eddy said. “You can see the beauty of where we live coming through their work.”
One long-standing hallmark of the tour has been its interactivity. At many of the tour’s locations, artists will be demonstrating their creative processes. The Cultural Center will serve as a hub for the three-day event within its galleries and several “pop-up studios.” Visitors may learn about ceramics from artists Rabun Thompson and Pam Young and other ceramicists working at the center’s clay studio. Across the hall, Sharon Cook, Lynne Wintermute and Kay Pendleton will present their work in oil and cold wax painting and demonstrate the technique involved in that medium. Joanne Daschel will offer information on the art of mosaic. Upstairs, Karen Gelbard’s hand woven wearable art will be on sale in Margaret’s Meeting Room, while Jane Wilson’s fiber/gourd art will be on view in the Fiber Arts Studio.
Photographer Bob Gibson, a perennial studio tour participant, will be offering a three-part photography workshop at his studio in Lincoln City’s Taft district.
“I’ve been involved with the studio tour since Krista started it and initially, I opened the studio as a gallery and explained the stories behind the photographs to visitors,” he said. “It was good, but it seemed like there needed to be something else. So now, I schedule a still life photo shoot at 11 am on each day. I show people how to set up lights and explain the elements of photography. At 1 pm, I'll set up a computer with a large screen and process the photos in Lightroom and Photoshop. And at 4 pm, I print. Often, visitors are interested in the post-processing, because they’re trying to do it themselves. And a lot of people want to learn about using a lighting setup with their iPhone.”
The newest face on the tour is Crimea-born painter Natasha Ramras, who was quick to adopt the tour’s interactive spirit.
“I plan to do a quick demonstration at 10 or 11 am on each of the three days,” said Ramras, who works in oils, watercolors, pastels and linocut prints at her home studio at the north end of Lincoln City. She paints in both representational and abstract styles, but many of her paintings feature depictions of the sights to be seen along the Oregon Coast.
“I love the Oregon Coast and I paint it all the time,” she said. “Nature has so much grandeur here, such a great variety of environments: the dunes, marshes, the wild waves of the ocean. You can have such a great diversity of visual experiences without traveling very far.”
The self-guided Art on the Edge Studio Tour will be open from 11 am to 5 pm at 16 locations. Maps and a survey of the work of all participating artists can be found at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, 540 NE Highway 101. For more information, go to artstudiotourLCCC.com or call 541-994-9994.