Dancing with Sea Lions
The Dancing With Sea Lions project began as a fundraiser for the 20th Anniversary of the Florence Events Center. The volunteers of the Florence Arts, Culture, and Entertainment nonprofit group (previously known as the Friends of the FEC) headed up this project in conjunction with the Florence Events Center Staff. Twenty life size sea lion sculptures were each painted by a different artist. All of them were displayed with their sponsors along the Oregon Coast till October of 2016, when they were then purchased by businesses and individuals. Fifteen of them are still publicly displayed in Florence and near by coastal locations. See our 'Where are they now' map for their current locations, and check our blog for updates. Share your Dancing Sea Lion pics with us and we'll add them to our Gallery of images.
Isabella Castle
Project Name: Sunny the Sea Lion
Our youngest artist, Isabella Castle, is still in her Freshman year at Siuslaw High School. But her art belies her youth.
Castle has spent her entire life watching her mother, an artist that inspired a love of creation in her daughter. Isabella says for a long time she imitated her mother’s work but as she grew older her creative voice and subsequently her artwork became her own. Normally she works in pen, no pencil, no eraser, just her pen in hand. So why did she choose to participate in Dancing With Sea Lions? To push herself, to make her art bigger, to paint.
Her design for Sunny the Sea Lion is organic, in that it wasn’t so much planned as it was like her pen work. It grew from itself.
Isabella created Sunny with Professional Liquitex Gesso, Liquitex Professional acrylic soft body paint, Forney black paint marker, Lascoux acrylic varnish and Escoda Brushes and Artisan brushes.
