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Visual arts, literature,
theater, music & more
‘Vital to the human experience’
Two fi shers continue to create art out of their working lives
By DWIGHT CASWELL
Hear Moe Bowstern emcee at the Fort George
Lovell Showroom Friday evening Feb. 24. On Sat-
urday, Feb. 25, hear her read her work around 5:30
p.m. at the Astoria Event Center and around 8:30
p.m. at the Wet Dog Cafe.
F
For 400 years, George Wilson’s
family has fi shed commercially
out of Portknockie, on Scotland’s
Moray Firth. He followed into the
family business, and he also went
to art school. Moe Bowstern stud-
ied creative writing and journalism
at Northwestern University in
Illinois, then became a commercial
fi sher just to show the men that
a woman could do the work. She
also became a poet, and when, in
2008, her zines were exhibited at
Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen,
Scotland, she met the artist they
called “fi sherman George.” Within
weeks they were a couple.
“The circus came to town, and I
ran away with it,” says Wilson.
Bowstern says she and Wilson
are “open to each other’s sched-
ules.” They collaborate on produc-
tions of the Paper Eclipse Puppet
Company (yes, they do shadow
puppet shows too). When Wilson
is exhibiting his paintings, she pro-
vides support for him, and when
she’s overwhelmed as a fi sherpoet,
he provides the help she needs.
This month, you can see Wilson’s
paintings at Imogen Gallery and
hear Bowstern read her poetry at
the FisherPoets Gathering.
Wilson’s paintings are small
watercolor jewels (the largest are
7-by-9 inches). Many are almost
monochromatic, evocative of mist
and rain, a background out of
which a blue boat may material-
ize, or a green island, a smudge
of dawn, or a red roof at a fi sh
camp. Skiffs ands birds are small
in an Alaskan landscape that is
suggested more than represented.
One might expect the size of the
paintings to limit these landscapes,
but Wilson manages to authentical-
ly convey the scale.
The works are like Chinese and
Japanese paintings, which Wilson
has studied, in which form is more
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“Shearwaters, Uganik Island” a wa-
tercolor on paper by George Wilson.
PHOTO BY DWIGHT CASWELL
View watercolors by artist and fi sherman George Wilson at Imogen Gallery, and hear poetry by writer and fi sher-
woman Moe Bowstern at various downtown Astoria venues during the FisherPoets Gathering.
important than perspective. “I like
their quality and simplicity,” he
says,”the way a landscape can be
translated into a painting so it all
fi ts together in shapes.”
All of the watercolors in the
Imogen show “Uganik Bay” were
painted during seven weeks in
the summer of 2016 when Wilson
worked setting nets on Kodiak
Island’s Uganik Bay in Alaska.
Most of them were painted during
his spare time in the fading light
after a day’s fi shing. “It was the
fi rst time I’d concentrated on art
since art school,” says Wilson, “It
was my fi rst art residency.”
Bowstern took her fi rst job in
commercial fi shing in 1986, at
the age of 18, and was told that
she would never make it. Four
ARTIST
RECEPTION
‘Uganik Bay’
4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24
Imogen Gallery
240 11th St., Astoria
years later, a freshly minted writer
without a job, she decided to go
back to Alaska “to prove those
guys wrong,” she says. “I like
being challenged on so many
levels.” She wrote her fi rst fi shing
poem in 1990, while working as a
deckhand.
In 1995 Bowstern fi shed her
fi rst six-month season, living in a
rented “leaky hovel” that attracted
a number of musicians and artists.
She kept an “art box” in the tiny
entry to the hovel, and all visitors
were asked to either take or leave
a piece of art. When the season
ended, she took the contents home
with her as inspiration for her fi rst
zine, XTRA TUF NO. 1. In 1998,
Bowstern read her work at the
fi rst FisherPoets Gathering. Today,
most of her writing goes into her
zines, and much of her time is
spent reciting her poetry at one
venue or another.
“When I’m fi shing, a lot of stuff
is happening in my head,” Bow-
stern says. “It’s a long season and
a small boat, so I write poems and
sometimes songs.” Like Wilson,
she has combined art and com-
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“Across the Bay,” a watercolor by
George Wilson.
mercial fi shing. “Fishing is such a
visceral experience,” she says. “In
a time when people are building
bigger houses and spending more
time inside them, we’re exposing
people to the outside, to simplicity.
It eases people.”
Bowstern has written poems
since childhood, and Wilson still re-
members the thrill he felt when his
fi rst drawing, done at the age of 5,
was tacked to the wall by a teacher.
Decades later, the two are still cre-
ating art out of their working lives,
writing and painting in the certainty
that, as Bowstern puts it, “art is vital
to human experience.”