COOS BAY — There are a few tricks to getting kids into an art exhibit.

Bright colors are a good place to start. Making things from recognizable household objects also helps. And glow-in-the-dark items don’t hurt.

But most importantly, everything must be touchable.

Those are the secrets of Bandon fiber artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi in “Low Tide at the Oregon Coast: Undetermined Species,” an exhibit of sculptures inspired by marine life at the Coos Art Museum.

The museum also has a trick of its own: Free admission for children for the duration of the exhibit, through Sept. 20.

 The exhibit features mixed-media sculpture fantasy forms inspired by sea anemones, urchins, corals and other aquatic life. Though Pozzi studies a library of undersea photography for inspiration, there is an emphasis on fantasy, with as much science fiction as science. It looks like the set of a sequel to “Finding Nemo.”

“I describe my art as Doctor Seuss goes scuba diving,” Pozzi said. “I’m not looking to be exact. I want to get the feeling of it and honor nature, but my imagination goes way past the real.”

But sometimes nature catches up with her imagination. At an undersea art festival in Australia, Pozzi won a prize for “Cadmium Caves,” a large piece in the exhibit that she considered one of her imaginative works. But while in Australia, Pozzi said she met a marine biologist who said he recognized the species of coral featured in the sculpture.

“Something like only 7 percent of invertebrates in the ocean have been discovered,” Pozzi said. “Some of these (creatures) might be real and you just don’t know it.”

One object almost certainly not found in nature is “Hot Sea Wall,” a very large hanging sculpture done entirely in the most vivid colors seen in the exhibit. The piece incorporates dust mops, rubber gloves, hair ties, an old prom dress, dog toys, fishing oars, plastic vegetables, ostrich feathers (“I’m thinking of getting an ostrich,” Pozzi said, “so I won’t have to keep buying the feathers.”), rubber bands, feather dusters, sweaters and thumb covers.  

“Part of the fun is they’re all made of stuff you can recognize,” Pozzi said. “Kids usually figure it out faster than adults.”

Pozzi, 51, has some experience showing her art to kids. Before returning last year to Bandon, where she spent summers every year as a child, Pozzi spent 17 years as an art and dance teacher in the Vancouver, Wash., School District. She said she has used some of these works for scavenger hunts in which kids must find the component objects in the sculpture.

But Pozzi’s art isn’t all fun and games. There’s also a strong environmentalist message. Much of her art appears to represent manmade objects that have been thrown to sea and then later washed ashore with marine life growing all over them. Incorporating pieces of trash found on beaches in Bandon and elsewhere, Pozzi juxtaposes the beauty of her corals with the ugliness of pollution.

“I want people to think about the influence that man has on the environment,” she said. “The coral reefs are dying off, because of pollution, global warming.”

Comparing the influence a trip to the zoo might have on someone who wants to save endangered tigers, Pozzi said she hopes her exhibit sparks interest in the fate of coral reefs and other threatened marine life.

Environmental concern also shows up in Pozzi’s recycling-oriented art process. Most of the fabrics she uses come from old clothes, and what she needs to buy she tries to get used at local thrift stores. Even empty glue bottles get reused as armature — the stuff that underlies a fiber sculpture and gives it shape.

In addition to the whimsical and political elements of Pozzi’s art, there is the personal. Two antique chairs adorned with fuzzy marine growth — “Aunt Bianca Was Known to Fantasize” and “Aunt Annie’s Anenomes” — represent family members Pozzi describes as women who were very proper but also crazy and fun. And a series of pieces depicting brain corals, including one lodged in a bike helmet, helped Pozzi work through her grief over the death of her husband, Craig, from a brain tumor in 2004.

Pozzi’s latest project is the largest element of the show, a walk-in “Bioluminescent Sea Cave” that glows in the dark and can hold several people. While the installation is sure to be one of the main kid-pleasing aspects of the show, it’s also an example of how Pozzi designs her art for the widest possible audience. She proudly noted that the cave, like the rest of the show, is wheelchair-accessible; and because all of her art is touchable, she encouraged people who are blind to come explore the exhibit.

Most of the works are for sale and Pozzi said she donates 10 percent of the proceeds to ocean conservancy.

“I feel most comfortable at the ocean,” she said. “It’s a never-ending source of inspiration.”