LANDING AT SANTA BARBARA
..........“I shall never forget the impression which our first landing on the beach of California made upon me. The sun had gone down; it was getting dusky; the damp night wind was beginning to blow, and the heavy swell of the Pacific was setting in and breaking in loud and high ‘combers’ upon the beach… We pulled strongly in, and as soon as we felt the sea had got hold of us and was carrying us in with the speed of a race-horse, we threw the oars as far from the boat as we could… We were shot up upon the beach like an arrow from a bow, and seizing the boat, ran her up high and dry… It was growing dark, so that we could just distinguish the dim outlines of the two vessels in the offing; and the great seas were rolling in, in regular lines, growing larger and larger as they approached the shore, and hanging over the beach upon which they were to break, when their tops would curl over and turn white with foam, and, beginning at one extreme of the line, break rapidly to the other.”
─ Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Two Years Before the Mast
Harper & Bros., 1840 ed.
In the past a number of events open only to ASMA members have taken place in southern California, and future exhibits and other types of activities are in the planning stages. The 2007 Annual General Meeting of ASMA was held on November 1-4 in Santa Barbara where, in addition to the meeting itself, the attendees heard a lecture by ASMA President Ian Marshall, had a reception at Santa Barbara’s Waterhouse Art Gallery, toured the Ventura County Maritime Museum in Oxnard, and had ample opportunities for plein air painting along the picturesque coast. From October 9 through December 3, the Maritime Museum of San Diego hosted a juried Region 5 ASMA Art Exhibition, which is covered in a separate page of this web site.
In 2000, 2002 and 2005, the Ventura County Maritime Museum hosted invitational exhibits of artwork by ASMA Region 5 members, titled Aqueous, Aqueous II and Aqueous III. A fourth Aqueous IV show has been approved by the museum for October 3-November 30, 2009 and will be announced in mid-2009. The Museum is known not only for its permanent, world-class collection of marine art and historic ship models, but has established a reputation for exhibiting the work of internationally-recognized contemporary marine artists. Recent exhibits have included the works of Thomas Hoyne and Louis Stephen Gadal, and ASMA President Ian Marshall had an exhibit of watercolors of historic steamships there in 2000. Pictures of the museum and part of its superb collection are shown below.
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Three members of the Region 5 Executive Committee are located in southern California, and can be contacted by marine artists interested in finding out more about the benefits of ASMA membership, by ASMA members wishing to make comments on any of the region 5 ASMA programs or to suggest new ones, or by the general public for information on exhibits and other activities.
Those members are:
SAN DIEGO AREA
Adam Koltz at: adamkoltz@sbcglobal.net
Robert Dykes at: robertdykes@cox.net
LOS ANGELES AREA
Jon Olson at: jonlolson@aol.com |
