By Teri Albert, Columnist

Two exhibits take Coos Art Museum visitors around the world

COOS BAY - Take a plunge into summer with a visit to the Coos Art Museum, where watery media celebrate the season.

The 16th-annual Maritime Art Exhibit fills three main floor galleries with art that invokes illusory drafts of salty air, and the distant creak of rigging.

Upstairs, a pair of award-winning traveling shows use the medium of watercolor to wander the world. As CAM director Steven Broocks laughingly remarks, "Between the two shows, we have competing carp."

"Feeding Time" by Soon Y. Warren combines action, atmosphere, and art into a roiling mass of colorful koi. The powerful aqua-media piece took the prestigious purchase award for the National Watercolor Society, allowing CAM visitors to view a part of the NWS permanent collection. With its energetic palette of orange, gold and night-dark indigo, the painting dominates the room.

Coos Bay is one of only five stops during for National Watercolor Society's traveling exhibition. The 29 paintings on display in the atrium represent styles from traditional to experimental, underscoring new directions in water-media while taking the visitor on a trip around the globe.

Visit the sere landscape of the West with Jonathan Frank's brilliant painting, "Serpentine." The artist, whose work appears in collections from the U.S. to Israel, Japan and New Zealand, creates high definition drama on paper. Floating pure color into clear washes, Frank paints abstract shapes. The colors blend visually on the paper, and the artist then outlines every shape with a rapidograph pen. Writing about "Serpentine" and its setting in the canyons west of Moab, Utah, the artist notes, "The scene itself contained so many highly detailed elements that the painting became an exercise in elimination. ... Unfortunately I had to leave some things out, like the smell of the river. I really think I nailed the silence part, though." I agree, and so did the jurors who tapped "Serpentine" for one of the exhibit's 18 awards.

Lake Oswego artist Toshiko Ukon takes us to the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with her award-winning painting, "Love From Malta." Storied home of the nymph Calypso, Malta's ancient and exotic landscape permeates this piece. Ukon's mastery of plein air technique puts us right there in the capital city. We peer down the narrow street, hear the cacophony of cars and scooters. We feel the rising heat, breathe the white stone dust, and across the water we see Africa.

Travel with South Carolina artist Steve Garner to a oceanfront room turned inside out and upside down. Working in what might be termed magic realism, the texture of Garner's paper is an element of his painting "Trout In Hiding." A rising ocean splashes through open doors and down two steps towards the viewer. Salt and foam form a frothy skirt on the floor. A solitary palm tree stands centered within the arch of the doorway, and a red-eyed trout owns the sky.

Across the hall in the Mabel Hansen Gallery, "Lian Zhen: Watercolors" offers a journey with a particular perspective. "Three Gorges - Yangtze River" is a Chinese painting on an accordion book. Using watercolor and ink, we trace the river through shades of black, graphite and bone. This is an extended scene of tiny boats and small villages perched on mountains capped by clouds. There are steep cliffs, precarious bridge crossings and at the end - a city on a hill, its fragility defined by slender, black lines.

Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World. She can be reached at malbert3@verizon.net.

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