The walk of frame
Digital Art Trail Pass provides guide to Lincoln City’s mix of public art
By Eliot Sekuler
For the TODAY
The poem, titled "Why They Came,” is etched into a concrete walkway and begins with vivid imagery: “Some came as old stories say, some at the point of a gun.” The words are part of the newest public art addition to Lincoln City’s Art Trail, a project launched one year ago by the city’s Public Arts Committee and the Explore Lincoln City organization.
Public art in Lincoln City takes an extraordinary assortment of forms.
Sculptures, ranging in scale from grand to modest, are scattered around the town. Flamboyant murals bring blank walls vividly to life. There’s a mosaic-bedecked home, a 1930s-era barroom with imaginatively carved woodwork, an assembly of three monumental totems from Korea, a pair of graceful steel archways and “Poppy,” a gracefully towering and kinetic stainless-steel piece that has become an iconic visual feature of Highway 101.
Last year, in an effort to guide visitors and residents to the city’s visual highlights, Explore Lincoln City created the Digital Art Trail Pass, a free digital pass that provides an interpretive guide to the 49 artworks that make up the Lincoln City Art Trail.
According to Explore Lincoln City’s Stephanie Hull, the Digital Art Trail Pass program highlights the city’s aesthetic offerings while facilitating access to the town’s most prominent and lesser known visual treasures.
“We have such an abundance of different types of art here and we wanted to create a way to get people out to experience them throughout the year,” she said. “So, this is something that’s free, something that will make our public art more accessible and something that both visitors and local residents can use to make their Lincoln City experience more enjoyable.”
The digital guide is available via the Explore Lincoln City website. A link takes website visitors to a registration page and a subsequent email offers instant participation. Designed for simplicity and in a spirit of good fun, the program is easy to use and does not require downloading an app. Upon registration, a text directs users to the trail’s art locations and a simple GPS powered check-in brings information about each individual piece on the trail.
The 49 pieces feature a variety of media — some notable pieces include “The Return,” a steel sculpture of a salmon run by artist and Sitka Center founder Frank Boyden located on SW 51st Street; the14-foot bronze sculpture, “Lincoln on the Prairie,” on NE 22nd Street, presented to the city as part of its 1965 re-naming ceremony and “Blue Night on Siletz Bay,” an expansive mosaic installation created by Lawrence Adrian, director of the Oregon Coast Children's Theatre, located on the 50th Street side of the North Lincoln County Historical Museum building.
The Art Trail’s newest addition, The Poetry Pathway is located at the Lincoln City Cultural Center. The walkway, 430 feet long, winds along the front and sides of the converted red brick schoolhouse that houses the center. As visitors stroll along the path, they’ll find the lines of the poem etched into the cement, the words laid alongside embedded colored aggregate rock that accentuates the walkway’s curves.
“Why They Came,” was composed by Lincoln City author John Fiedler following a community process undertaken jointly by the cultural center and the Driftwood Public Library. Community members were invited to a pair of meetings in which their ideas, words and images were solicited in a discussion of the historic, geological and tribal background of the land upon which the cultural center sits. Fiedler incorporated the community’s input into his composition and the result has been described as “a place-based community poem” and “an ode to the natural and human history” of the area. Work on the Poetry Pathway was completed at the end of 2023.
“Ever since we began the design process, back in 2018, we've imagined a sidewalk that would be both beautiful and accessible, curving as it makes its way around the building,” said Niki Price, executive director of the Lincoln City Cultural Center. “We explored many ways of adding color and visual interest. With the help of our contractor, Cascade Civil Corp., we found a method that fit our budget: a variety of colored aggregate and glow-in-the-dark stones that were laid into the path to resemble a stream bed. And, with the help of Oregon Humanities and local poet John Fiedler, our community gathered to write a dedicated poem called ‘Why They Came.’ I'm starting to see the Poetry Path do what we hoped it would do — I see people reading and talking as they walk, pointing and discussing what the poem means, what it says about Lincoln City.”
According to Stephanie Hull, the trail has become popular with both visitors and residents. Expansion and changes to the collection are envisioned for the future.
“We want to keep the trail fresh and exciting and give people more reasons to come,” she said.
For more information on the Lincoln City Art Trail, go to explorelincolncity.com/art-trail.