The 2011 Project is a work by San Francisco artist Tofu. Each day in 2011 he created a 4”x4” mixed media piece. The finished project was made up of 365 smaller mixed media pieces. In 2013 the individual pieces will be distributed to project supporters. The project also acted as sketchbook for new ideas, which continue to be incorporated into new work For more information please visit 2011project.com
Today is Epiphany or the Feast of the Three Kings. Point Reyes National Seashore is named for those Kings. It’s a place I like to visit whenever I can and it inspired a number of pieces for the 2011 Project including the six ones seen above. I have been painting and photographing Point Reyes for many years.
It’s getting to be that time of the year when folks start heading south to warmer climates. Places like Florida, Arizona and the Costa del Sol start filling up. California is no exception. The Elephant Seals are heading home to California. After summering up in British Columbia, all the way up to Alaskan waters or even a far-flung journey to Hawaii, our winter residents will be home soon. Welcome back.
It’s in the air, today is a fog free, sunny summer day and you can feel the Pacific in the breeze that’s blown 4 miles over Golden gate Park to reach my neighborhood. It just feels like a beach day. If you live near a beach, any beach, you know the feeling. I love that summery feel today. That said, I did not get to the beach.
I have spent more than half of my life near beaches. The moment of finding some sort of “treasure” while walking down a beach never gets old. In California we have geology combined with the grinding Pacific surf. It has created some great beaches that are thick with layers of smooth pebbles. I can spend hours picking through the small rocks at Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. You can find polished little bits of serpentine that look like jade beads. And you always find a few bits of beach glass ground smooth by the surf.
If you’re really serious about beach glass, you need to go further north. Glass Beach up in Fort Bragg is amazing. A former garbage dump! It’s hard to imagine a town dumping its garbage into a cove up until the 1960’s. Fortunately, we know better nowadays. The result though is a beach thick with beach glass. It doesn’t take long to have a handful of treasure. And I owe it all to Huell Howser and California’s Gold. Without that show I would have just kept driving up Route One and never stopped.
There are many artists and craftspeople that incorporate beach glass (or sea glass) into their work. I prefer to do something different. Over the years I have done some paintings that are close-ups of magnified beach glass. They are intensive, detail-oriented exercises. Today’s piece is another portrait of one of my favorite places in California.
