In my practice I work in the media areas of drawing, jewelry/metals, mixed-media sculpture, and installation sculpture. I live in the little beach town of Waldport, Oregon on the Pacific Ocean and during the first months of the pandemic, I took a break from a long stretch of working in my metals studio and began Pacific Waters, a series of ink drawings depicting the beaches and bays of the central Oregon Coast. The first drawing was a large, square view of the shifting water in North Seal Rocks Cove at Seal Rocks, Oregon. I loved the Daler-Rowney indigo ink I was using, and the huge roll of heavy rough Arches watercolor paper I'd hoarded for at least fifteen years in a corner of my studio. I did a second drawing and just kept going – there are now fifty-five.

My subject matter is observed as I walk my dog along the shore, photographing stretches of water with my iPhone – casually, quickly – capturing tiny, personally-observed pieces of the vast incessant motion going on concurrently all over the world. I am fascinated with how water changes depending on light, weather, time, wind, tide, river flow, and geography. I think of words that relate to movement and shape: twist, eddy, chop, dribble, drift, ooze, ebb, stream, spurt, surge, flood, attack. I listen to the myriad sounds of the ocean and the bays: gurgle, spit, splash, chitter, roar, stream, crash, hum, bubble, hiss, spurt, boom, drip, murmur, drum; at night, I fall asleep to the white noise from the sea. These words and my photos help me to invent descriptive marks with my brushes and ink.

I live next to the water, high above Alsea Bay, and I spend a lot of time just looking at the way it moves and changes. Tori-dog accompanies me as I go on my beach rounds to the north: Alsea Bay, Bayshore, Sandpiper, Driftwood, Quail, Seal Rocks, North Seal Rocks, Ona, Lost Creek, South Beach, and Yaquina Bay. And to the south: Governor Patterson, Smelt Sands, Yachats River, Perpetua, Neptune. Sound is important to Tori and she refuses to step onto the path along the rocky ledges at Smelt Sands State Park where the waves that pound the rock with a deep percussive sound like kettledrums can be felt in our bodies. She prefers to walk through the hissing beach grasses above the tide line on long empty sand beaches.

For forty-five years as an academic and artist, my work in drawing, metals, and sculpture has been narrative in nature and often issue-oriented; however, these drawings are a new channel for me. One might think that my approach to water would be to convey concern over the pollution of water, the scarcity of it in some parts of the world, the superabundance in other places. Water is our greatest treasure and is an increasingly imperiled resource. But we all know this – I find myself disinclined to hit people over the head. Rather, I want to present drawings of such interesting water that the impact comes when people realize that this beauty could be lost as we continue to screw up our planet.

In the midst of disaster – war, racism, sexism, stupidity, greed, violence, climate disaster – each drawing is simply a pleasure, a gorgeous moment of time captured by a bemused human. The shapes of Pacific waters are endless in their variety and infinitely fascinating.