COOS BAY — There are fish, crab and an octopus but no whales in “By Land and By Sea,” an exhibit opening today at the Coos Art Museum.

The theme of the exhibit for Oregon State University’s 25th-annual Art About Agriculture tour was inspired by a quote from “Moby Dick”: “Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle upon the other?”

Northwest artists entering the juried exhibit were asked to consider both the sea and the land as they investigated agriculture and natural resource pursuits.

“When you have a survey show, everybody’s going to come to it with a different idea,” said Shelley Curtis, curator for the Art About Agriculture program in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “It’s a collection of ideas as much as a collection of art.”

Curtis noted that the exhibit’s 58 works by 48 artists from Oregon, Washington and Idaho are almost evenly divided between land and sea; half of them could easily appear in the museum’s annual Maritime show.

There are several boats in harbors, a log pond, a crab shack and kids picking seashells.

In “Sea of Life,” a mixed media work by Beverly Soasey that Curtis found fascinating, five tintype images of men in peacoats and suits are dangling from fishing hooks in front of a painted sea with maps and other prints embedded in the background.

“The ocean, it’s one of the last places where there’s kind of a hunter-gatherer experience,” Curtis said. “Fishermen have to wait for the fish.  A lot of that has to do with lure. This piece picks up on that.”

Waiting fishermen are seen in the adjacent “Anticipation” by Mabel Haley of Portland, one of few works showing people.

On land, there are three works titled “Red Barn.” One is a painting by Michael Gibbons, probably the best-known artist in the exhibit, which uses a large fir tree in front of the barn to situate it in the Northwest. In another “Red Barn,” a color photograph by Brizz Meddings, the barn’s wall extends beyond and fills most of the frame.

Pete Chasar of Brookings shows his barn from farther away, in an open field under an open sky with large clouds. Chasar, one of two South Coast artists included in the exhibit, has another large painting titled “Pears,” showing the fruit close-up.

Kimberly Wurster of Coquille also has two paintings in the exhibit: “Cowgirls (of Organic Valley Dairy Farm),” featuring cows in a field, and  “The Hay Meadow,” with a tractor in the distance.

Another pear shows up in “Left Behind,” a large photograph printed on canvas by Stephen Datnoff of Hood River, one of the most striking pieces in the exhibit. Blurred trees in the background are all bare while a single pear hangs from the limb in focus.

In “Canola Wedge,” another photo by Meddings, a yellow triangle of crop surrounded by green grass forms an arrow, pointing viewers into the Maggie Karl Gallery’s alcove, where the exhibit’s black-and-white photography hangs.

Inside, cattle drink from the Siletz River in a panoramic photo by Kurt Norlin of Albany, while a scarecrow holds several American flags in a barren field in “Scarecrow,” by Joe Glasgow of Vancouver, Wash.

“The jurors wanted to see how artists would connect agriculture and natural resource pursuits to human activity,” Curtis said. “Man interacts with nature, whether it’s producing, gathering, selling.”

Curtis also noted that most of the works are for sale, with values ranging from $130 to $2,400 listed in the exhibit brochure.

The exhibit jurors were Margaret Coe, a painter and retired University of Oregon art professor; Yuji Hiratsuka, an OSU art professor; and MJ Koreiva, former director of the Coos Art Museum.

An opening reception will be held at 5 p.m. today. The traveling exhibit has appeared in four other cities in Oregon and Washington before finishing in Coos Bay, with a run through Dec. 1.

Another exhibit running concurrently upstairs features recent acquisitions of the museum’s permanent collection.

Admission is $5. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.