‘SAND FACES’
Local artist finds inspiration at the beach
Local artist Claire Iris Schencke describes her latest works as such: “Fugitive, raw art, washed away by the sea, blown away by the wind, pocked by raindrops, run over by dogs, stepped on by birds.”
Schencke’s “Sand Faces” exhibit — featuring framed fine prints, prints on metal and greeting cards — will be on display starting Saturday through Jan. 6 at Just My Type Letterpress Paperie, 235 F St. in Eureka. An Arts Alive! reception is planned from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday.
Creating sand faces, she said, is an opportunistic improvised process: She first finds a drawing stick, then a head piece, be it a big jelly, a crown of seaweed or a cluster of shells. Next come the eyes, which might be blue mussels or half sand dollars. Then, she searches for decorative natural items such as pebbles, feathers, shells and twigs, and she gathers human debris, including plastic, glass, ropes, cans, toys and bullet casings. Schencke then begins to draw and decorate her sand faces, which when finished, she photographs. Afterward, she picks up and discards the human debris and lets the natural items return to the sea.
“I place the sand face near the water’s edge in the hope of seeing it washed away — most likely when the tide is coming in,” Schencke said. “I feel lucky when I can capture it being swept away on video — stealing its ephemeral nature. Sometimes, it gets just a hair wash or a lick. But when I give up, and walk away, the surf often reaches it — a small contest between me and the ocean.”
Schencke adds: “How beautiful we find the dead things that wash up or land on our beaches? Big clam and cockle shells, razor clams, blue mussels, oysters, crabs, mole crabs, medusas, salps, gooseberry jellies, kelp, sand dollars and dead birds. Most beautiful of all are the small translucent blue jellies named By The Wind Sailors.
“When I first started these beach rambles in 2014, they covered the beach completely on a windy day in May, and I fell in love,” she said. “When they returned the next year, covering the whole beach as far as I could see, I expected them again each year, but only very small drifts have appeared since then.
“I have found that the same beach serves up completely new experiences,” Schencke said. “Hundreds of large purple jellies, unbroken double clam shells, moguls of sand in low tide, flotillas of driftwood mixed with tasty treats for the birds, huge bundles of bull kelp and colossal driftwood.”
The impulse for this art came from the beach itself, Schencke said.
“It could be called ‘found art,’ but I can see it resembling rustic art forms such as petroglyphs, Picasso’s ceramics and figures by Jean Dubuffet,” she said. “The ephemeral aspect brings to mind Andy Goldsworthy, who also lives for his wild art.”
Schencke’s art has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries, including Stanford Art Spaces at Stanford University, the Broome Street Gallery in New York City, Vika Congregation Hall in Sweden, the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka and more. Her paintings are held in private collections in California, Oregon, New York, Florida, Arkansas, Washington, D.C. in the United States and in Sweden, Finland and Germany in Europe.