Crafters turn beach finds
into artistic expressions
Story and photos by Eileen Flory • For the TODAY

There’s a real democracy about working with what Mother Nature tosses up from the sea. No matter who we are — artists, fine crafters, or hobbyists — we all have to get our hands sandy as we paint, press, burn, weave, adorn, or otherwise alter our beach finds.

A gallery for all of us
To find beach crafts in abundance, you need only go to the Yaquina Art Association gallery at Newport’s Nye Beach turnaround. The YAA, of which I am a member, is an eclectic group of local folks, most of whom do their work for the love of it. You never know what we will come up with!
YAA member Ann Nicholson’s craft is ribbed baskets — egg baskets, key baskets, and hen baskets, each perfectly designed for its cargo.
“I don’t have much background in art,” Ann claims, but she has definitely fine-tuned her basket technique. She builds the frames in the fall out of beach willow, collected when it’s just right for working, and starts in on the weaving, using commercial seagrass, rattan, and more of the willow.
Then she waits a few months and, when the sun comes out, she gathers bits of dried bull kelp from the beach. She adds it to the weaving and finishes with tufts of surfgrass, also from the beach. I’ve offered to spin some surfgrass into sea twine for Ann — I’ll be honored if any of it turns up in her baskets.
When Pam Parker retired 15 years ago and moved to the coast, she had already been doing wood burning and painting. One day on a beach walk she saw a nice piece of driftwood and thought, “I wonder what that would look like with a lighthouse on it?” Now her house is full of art on driftwood, in various stages of completion. Pam prepares the wood and then uses wood-burning tools and watercolors to create lighthouses and other images that fit right into the wood’s contours. As so many artists have found, it seems visitors to the coast never get tired of our picturesque lighthouses.
Another artist on the driftwood front, Mark Cheney, had made a lot of birdhouses when, as he puts it, “I wanted to do something more creative.” He hit on what he’s come to call “fish sticks.” To hear him talk, individual pieces of driftwood seem to speak to him of their inherent fishiness. Mark listens, and then assembles his whimsical fish sculptures. He gives each fish a name, such as “Old Blue-Eye,” “Agate-Eyed Grunt,” and “Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed” (complete with a bryozoan tail). Now that he has gotten into creating small driftwood horses, Mark says he dreams of someday building a life-sized horse out of driftwood.
For my own pressed seaweed, I let Mother Nature do most of the work. She grows the seaweed, and I make its beauty visible to all. In the summertime, when seaweed thrives, I collect it from the rocks and make a Dagwood sandwich of corrugated cardboard, flannel blotters, and seaweed spread out on stiff paper, all under a weight. After a week of changing out the blotters, the seaweed is dry and stuck onto the paper with its own adhesive. What we usually experience as slippery stuff on the rocks is revealed as beautiful shapes, some delicate, some bold.

Humble shells and rocks
Winter on the coast brings out dozens of agate hunters and the interminable sound of rock tumblers. When a neighbor suggested we do a little agate-wrapping with wire, I rolled my eyes. I shouldn’t have, though, because we came up with some lovely jewelry. For truly classy rock art, meet Iori Uchihata’s painted cobble “cat stones.” If one of them follows you home from the YAA gallery, you’ll enjoy a black or white feline companion that you’ll want to keep on petting.
Creamy-white oyster shells present an irresistible canvas to some crafters. Janice Kobow creates charming, colorful “mer-babies” on the half shell, made with pantyhose. And Jim Squire’s glitter-spangled shells would make a pretty addition to any window or Christmas tree.  He also makes handsome walking sticks out of driftwood.
I have to admit, it’s my own canned rocks and shells (“Preserve your memories of the Oregon coast”) that verge on the tacky. But how better to display those colorful rocks that look so dull when they dry out?
It only gets weirder. On my walks on the Hatfield Marine Science Center’s estuary trail, I collect what I call “estuary paper,” marine algae dried into a fragile, crinkly film. I’ve already used some of it in printmaking — what could be next?

Beach Art with a capital ‘A’
At the other end of the beach art continuum are designerly, skillfully finished objects like what you might find at the juried Arts and Crafts Fair in Yachats, coming up on March 17 and 18. I love to go to the Yachats fairs, sketchbook in hand, for inspiration and the occasional purchase.
Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, on Cascade Head, offers workshops and houses artists in residence. I once attended a resident’s presentation where an artist demonstrated the ultimate in beach art: fabric she had placed on the sand for days or weeks and on which micro-organisms and the weather had worked their artistic magic!
We live in a place of abundant resources. The creative possibilities are endless — what will you make of it?