San Juan Island: Strolling serious art in shorts and sandals

ROCHE HARBOR — When we planned our summer sailing trip to the San Juans, we knew we'd do our annual hike up Mount Young behind English Camp. At the summit one morning, a foil-wrapped loaf of hot blueberry bread from a knapsack was a tasty complement to the island-studded view far into Canada.

Not in our plans, but now stamped just as firmly in our memory, was another morning last month spent wandering a new find, Westcott Bay Reserve, a 19-acre sculpture park on the edge of Roche Harbor resort, barely a stone's fling from the top of Mount Young.

More than 80 sculptures, crafted from bronze, stone, wood, metal, glass and ceramic in traditional and contemporary styles, lined paths through meadow grasses and lavender-blooming thistles, circling a teardrop-sized pond and meandering into madrona and snowberry woods edging Westcott Bay.

We missed this new art-and-nature reserve on our San Juans visit a year earlier; it opened last September. The private park, a joint effort of Roche Harbor owners and a nonprofit institute, marks its anniversary Saturday with a major celebration, "Best of the San Juans," featuring local artists, food and music, along with a three-day Artists in Action event starting today.

Hound dog for a docent

Displayed on the site are works by the Northwest's most noted sculptors as well as many less known, from the San Juans, Seattle and the region. Included are respected names such as Gerard Tsutakawa, La Conner sculptor Clayton James, Robert Maki, David Nechak, Phillip Levine, Hans Nelsen, Steve Jensen, Ed Nordin, Brandon Zebold and Julie Speidel.

Brian Berman, a stone carver from Suquamish, will demonstrate his work today through Saturday.

The setting is like no museum I know.

My daughter, 10, her friend, 11, and I strolled up from our boat one sunny morning to encounter serious art in a new context: outdoors, totally relaxed, with nobody else around, us in sandals and shorts and accompanied by an old hound dog that followed us through the gate.

We trod paths of our choice, based as much on whether we wanted to see the pond or enjoy the shadows of the woods as a desire to get a better look at a particular work of art.

The girls first headed to the field's edge to inspect a sensuously entwined pair of limestone lovers whose lower limbs morphed into tree roots — a work called "Slow Dance," by Anacortes stone carver Tracy Powell.

The girls wanted to move fast, darting along trails and only occasionally pausing to peer. I lagged lazily behind. It was much more a self-guided art tour than the more forced experience in a museum where crowds push you along a curator's chosen path.

Some works seemed right at home in the natural setting, what you might expect in a garden: sculptor Sammy Long's white marble "Snowy Owl," or Orcas Island artist Dwight Duke's bronze dragonfly perched at the pond's edge (many visitors' favorite, notes reserve director Kay Kammerzell).

Ruth Mueseler's "Remembrance," carved from gray and white basalt, looked like a woman stretching blissfully in the warm morning sun.

Works with more abstract themes, and some with rusty metal or industrial parts (such as Paul Herbert's "Chalice of Bearing," like a bird bath made of cogs and ball bearings), contrasted more with the natural setting, some with humor.

A vision realized

The sculpture park is Kammerzell's baby. A former art teacher at Western Washington University and member of the Bellingham Arts Commission, Kammerzell decided 2½ years ago that she wanted to live in the islands. She and her husband, Arnie Klaus, found a caretaking job near Roche Harbor. (They now live in Friday Harbor.)

Sculptor Sammy Long's white marble "Snowy Owl" peers from a stand of alder by the pond. (BRIAN J. CANTWELL / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

A sculptor herself, Kammerzell, 42, had long had a vision for a sculpture park. In walks near Roche Harbor, she soon realized that the property on Westcott Bay had all her prerequisites: an open field to display large pieces, a pond for reflection, woods for art that needed a more intimate setting, and beachfront.

"So I went to the assessor's office one day and asked, 'Who owns this land?' They told me it belonged to Roche Harbor Resort."

Her husband says "picking up the phone" is Kammerzell's specialty. She did just that, and unfolded her dream to resort manager Brent Snow in March 2001. By May, she had convinced the resort to dedicate the land for use by Kammerzell's newly formed Westcott Bay Institute.

The same day she won the commitment, she got on the phone to artists. The project took off.

A perfect landscape

Artists who donated and loaned their works have praised the site.

At pond's edge, "Chalice of Bearing" by Paul Herbert brings shapes familiar to a garden but crafted from machine parts. (BRIAN J. CANTWELL / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

"It's a beautiful space to present works," said David Nechak, who teaches sculpture at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts. The collection is fairly traditional, befitting a general audience, he said. That inspired the work he created for the park: an artist's easel holding what looks from the back like a large canvas, as if a Sunday painter was at work.

Nechak chose a site at a far end of the field with the "canvas" facing away as visitors approach. When they finally turn to get a look, the surface is a mirror.

"The humor is I'm giving the audience what it expects — coming around it, there's this perfect landscape," Nechak said.

"I loved being there and seeing so many people just strolling and looking."

Surprise checks in the mail

Environmental education, one of Klaus' former careers, is also part of the mix. As island volunteers cleared paths and hauled old tires out of the pond, local Girl Scout Troop 129 created a shoreline loop with interpretive placards telling about wildlife and plants. At the reserve's entrance, next to a donation box that is the major source of funding, maps and brochures include a list of birds to watch for.

Also at the entrance is Kammerzell's schematic of a learning center focusing on art and the environment, that backers hope to build on the site. The idea has already attracted a charitable foundation offering a challenge grant.

A Bainbridge Island architect is refining designs. Kammerzell hopes to break ground within a year.

"We feel this is going to be a world-class destination learning center that people will come to from all over," said Kammerzell, who gets regular feedback in the form of surprise checks in the mail from people who've visited the reserve. "I've had people say they've traveled all over the world and there's nothing like this."

We're adding it to our San Juan must-do list, right after Mount Young.

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