Seaweed Weekend in Oregon
Seaweed Weekend hosted by the Pacific Heritage Maritime Center (PHMC) in Newport, OR was an absolute blast! A weekend full of events and enthusiastic conversations. A combination of art and science as a celebration of The Curious World of Seaweed exhibit by Josie Iselin. Thanks to Josie for creating such mesmerizing art that has the power to bring a whole community together.
The weekend began with a panel discussion around Oregon’s kelp and seaweed populations. Panelists involved were Josie Iselin (artist to discuss bringing art and science together), Tom Calvanese (Oregon Kelp Alliance), Sara Hamilton (Oregon Kelp Alliance), Peter Hatch (CTSI to discuss cultural history and contemporary investment in kelp) and me, Alanna (Oregon Seaweed and Shifting Tides). We all came together to have a very lively and fun conversation around the kelp in our backyard, trends that have been seen over the years, new innovations like kelp/seaweed farming, kelp as an important resource, and so much more.
Josie held a cyanotype workshop that was unbelievably fun! Perfect that it was on a sunny day, cyanotypes use a combination of chemicals that when combined are reactive to UV light. Once painted onto paper, you can lay specimens on top of the paper and expose it to the sun to leave behind a silhouette of the specimen or collage of specimens. Her collection of pressed and dried seaweeds blew me out of the water, and has inspired me to start a little collection myself. I realized how beneficial this was for demonstrating the varieties of seaweed when not physically in the intertidal. It was so cool to see the diversity of everyone’s prints and techniques for letting more or less light shine through the specimens depending on what was wanting to be achieved.
Josie also had a lecture about her work and how she creates her “seaweed portraits”. These portraits are truly some of the most touching seaweed displays I’ve ever seen. I’ve been a huge fan of Josies since acquiring her “Curious World of Seaweed” book some years back and it was these images that first caught my eye and turned me on to all of her work in the scientific world. During her lecture someone pointed out her journey of artist, to ecologist, to activist and it was really powerful for me to hear. To see that someone's love of color, design, and art could make them pay attention and fall in love with something so strongly, to learn everything they possibly could about it, and then share that knowledge with others and begin this progressive movement of love and protection of kelps and seaweeds, is so so inspiring. Josies also talked about her work creating Above/Below, essentially a kelp database where people of all ages can go online and interact with and learn about the diversity, abundance, and importance of kelp forests.
The final day consisted of a Seaweed ID workshop I held at Seal Rocks! It was a chance to get out into the intertidal during one of the lowest tides of the year and see the huge diversity of seaweeds and kelps we have on our rocky shores. I figured being a special weekend I could open it up to more people than normal and we had a full class of 30 people!! It was such a spectacular morning sharing about the beautiful seaweeds I have fallen in love with over the years. We returned back to the PMHC for the phenomenal live tattoo demonstration by artist Luka Weinberger of Low Bar Art. Luka tattooed one of Josies iconic bull kelp portraits to the arm of Oregon Coast Today writer Gretchen Ammerman. It was such a beautiful piece and Luka knocked it out of the park.
I was so honored and excited to be a part of this weekend, and thank Susan Tissot, Executive Direct of PHMC for hosting us and putting together this series of events. Maybe this will inspire more seaweed focused events and weekends in the future.
