For the Seventh Generation
A Community of Coastal Watchers
Call for artists | 2023 Exhibition
Dedicated to our friends and families, and to our family not yet known, not yet born. Dedicated to all the children of all species for all time.
- rewritten from William McDonough
Why Seven Generations?
The ocean will always be vulnerable to human activities. Problems today will be compounded by the unknown problems of the future. Short-term solutions will not suffice, we need to start thinking long-term, seven generations and beyond.
How it works: each person chooses a mile, to revisit and paint each year, joining a system of coastal watchers. To be renewed annually, this process gives the artist the opportunity to connect with the land and to take the role of both sentinel and chronicler of a specific ocean location.
- rewritten from William McDonough
Why Seven Generations?
The ocean will always be vulnerable to human activities. Problems today will be compounded by the unknown problems of the future. Short-term solutions will not suffice, we need to start thinking long-term, seven generations and beyond.
How it works: each person chooses a mile, to revisit and paint each year, joining a system of coastal watchers. To be renewed annually, this process gives the artist the opportunity to connect with the land and to take the role of both sentinel and chronicler of a specific ocean location.
The One-Mile Mural Project
An Artistic Strategy for Ocean Protection
An Artistic Strategy for Ocean Protection
For The Seventh Generation is about connecting with place over time. We are forming a one-hundred year arts organization whose reason for being is the ocean. We want to make art that functions at the center of human life, not at its edges. Our showcase event is the For The Seventh Generation Project, The one-mile Pano-Mural for the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts. Our guiding sentiment is “Above all else, a healthy ocean.” The lengthy time aspect referred to by the title is from a notion that we need to think within a longer time frame to address our problems. We need to make choices not just for ourselves an our generation, or for our children or even our grandchildren, but to acknowledge that this is the only planet that any of us will ever have, for all species, for all life, and that we share this planet with the future. Our decisions should reflect that.
Imagine 1320 paintings by 1320 artists to go with the 1320 miles of the Washington, Oregon and California coasts. These paintings, each four feet in length, when put together end to end, and in geographic order, offer the viewer an opportunity to walk the Western coast. As each artist revisits their location (which we encourage them to do once a year) a new painting is generated. Each year the pano-mural recreates itself. This is a resonant relationship with the coastline, which also recreates itself each year. The For The Seventh Generation pano-mural is different each year from the one before, as new work is painted, new artists join in, and the artwork that is sold is no longer exhibited. It is designed to be passed on to other artists and other generations. In fact, because of the timespan involved, those that begin the project today cannot know the fruit of their efforts, for they themselves will, of course, have passed on. We are a generation beginning something the results of which we will never know.
By the very act of going to their locations and painting, the artists become sentinels of their locations. They are watching and observing what happens. Over time, they become chroniclers of the coast.
Imagine 1320 paintings by 1320 artists to go with the 1320 miles of the Washington, Oregon and California coasts. These paintings, each four feet in length, when put together end to end, and in geographic order, offer the viewer an opportunity to walk the Western coast. As each artist revisits their location (which we encourage them to do once a year) a new painting is generated. Each year the pano-mural recreates itself. This is a resonant relationship with the coastline, which also recreates itself each year. The For The Seventh Generation pano-mural is different each year from the one before, as new work is painted, new artists join in, and the artwork that is sold is no longer exhibited. It is designed to be passed on to other artists and other generations. In fact, because of the timespan involved, those that begin the project today cannot know the fruit of their efforts, for they themselves will, of course, have passed on. We are a generation beginning something the results of which we will never know.
By the very act of going to their locations and painting, the artists become sentinels of their locations. They are watching and observing what happens. Over time, they become chroniclers of the coast.
