When it comes to maritime art, weather is often the main event.

This year, the Coos Art Museum kicked off its 15th-annual Maritime Art Exhibit with a three-day, plein-air workshop. Unseasonably brisk summer winds slapped insects onto the canvases and bugs into the festive barbecue, but fans of America’s seafaring artists found a protected harbor within CAM.

The always atmospheric show is even more richly mounted this year, with nautical items of interest scattered throughout the main floor galleries. A large, highly polished wooden ship’s wheel anchors the entryway, flanked by a pair of vintage, leather-wrapped oars. Businesslike hooks and coils of rope hang from the walls, along with the odd string of block-and-tackle.

Large naval pennants in vibrant, contrasting colors face off like competing sports teams, and an odd, antique brass, glass, and polished wood gizmo (a compass compensating control box) beckons from the gallery’s east wall.

Due north of the compass coil box hangs one of the many impressive watercolors of this show, a beach scene titled “Late Afternoon November Light Over Shortsand Beach & Neahkahnie Mountain.” Artist Steven Thor Johanneson brings a sharp, near-photographic clarity to the rock-bound barnacles and tidepool anemones; even the transitory prints left in the sand by shorebirds have been captured by Johanneson’s brush.

Of the show’s 78 works, a dozen sculptures contribute both depth and ambience. North Bend artist Terry Woodall offers a trio of sea lions carved from a single piece of myrtlewood, called “Land of Titans.” The base is highly polished, fire-darkened, and gnarly. At the top, the familiar honey color of the wood re-emerges. Woodall allowed the grain of the wood to dictate the curve of flippers and the rolls of blubber, as the creatures strain toward one another from atop the rocks.

With “The Sloop CB,” Carol Bellamy of Meadow Vista, Calif., produced a whimsy of a vessel — a boat drawn with wire, rather than pencil or ink. Her wonderfully inventive sculpture features a chubby sail puffed out with iconic wind swirls, crafted from bent wire. Tiny wooden beads follow the curve of the sail, and lengths of wires are bundled and stretched stem to stern, wrapped at intervals, and shaped to portray the boat’s wooden hull. Paint was applied with subtlety, in a palette ranging gently through brown, ochre, and soft yellow. But color is not the point of this piece; it’s about shape and line and skinny wire, transformed through art into a boat under sail.

CAM’s current exhibit represents a special opportunity to see work that is valued nationwide. The bronze and ceramic sculptures of artist Kim Shaklee are valued by civic groups, governmental entities, art councils and private collectors. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park and the Oklahoma City Zoo each own pieces by Shaklee. At CAM, see her take on marine art in the bronze bullfrog sculpture, “Your Pad or Mine??” Eugene sculptor Geoffrey McCormack had three pieces juried into this show: “South Swell,” “Rogue Wave,” and “Out on the Rolling Sea.” Each is polished bronze on a black base, with an entrancing, silver-green verdigris tint.

Exploring the Martime show at CAM is visceral. You can hear the snap of the spinnaker in Spike Wademan’s oil painting “Catch the Breeze,” or the whine of the electric sander in Scott Berger’s “Spring Cleaning.” Catch a whiff of the retreating tide from Johanneson’s watercolor, or smell the oil carried off the chop in the exhibit’s Best of Show, “Death of an Oil Tanker: Prestige 1976-2002” by Christine Hanlon.

Maritime art brings the feel of frigid waters or the thick scent of crab pots drying in the sun. Visit CAM this month to hear waves as they retreat across a rock shingle, or the echo of a forghorn. The exhibit continues through Sept. 20 at the museum, 235 Anderson Ave., Coos Bay. For more information call 267-3901 or visit http://www.coosart.org.

Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World. Comments on or story ideas for this column are welcome, and can be e-mailed to malbert3@verizon.net.