When Executive Director of Oregon Coast Council for the Arts (2007-2020), I planted the seed for mobile art class outreach. In 2021 the “Oregon Coast Art Bus” was born.
This past spring during “Arts Advocacy Day” at the Oregon Capitol, hosted by the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon (CACO), of which I am a board member, I interviewed the artist, Liza Burns and OCCA arts education manager, Sara Siggelkow about the Oregon Coast Art Bus.
Liza describes how she initially created the new Oregon Cultural Trust license plate. Some of those images appear now on the Art Bus.
“I focused on selecting imagery from sources big and small, obvious and obscure, to create a patchwork of symbols in which every Oregonian can see themselves. I began with the Oregon landscape. To me, Oregon culture starts with the land, the sea, the mountains, the forests, the plains, the river valleys and the high deserts,” says Liza.
“The diversity and richness of the Oregon geography mirrors its people, which worked well as the foundation of the piece. Once the landscape was in place, I built a concept of a ‘symbol overlay.’”
During the interview Sara Siggelkow noted that “Funds from the Oregon Community Foundation’s K-12 Summer Learning Fund were used to purchase and build out the art bus, prepare it for safe travel, purchase bus furnishings, and develop onsite arts projects and take-home art-to-go kits.
“It was designed to address the ‘opportunity gap’ associated with educational challenges presented by the COVID- 19 pandemic focusing on underserved youth populations,” says Sara.
Improvements are ongoing as of this writing. The Art Bus is found throughout Newport and Lincoln County.
Read more information about the Art Bus on coastarts.org; newportnewstimes.com (July 22, 2022); Oregonlive.com (Aug. 26, 2022); Culturaltrust.org.
“The Art Bus brings OCCA’s programs deeper into the community,” says OCCA executive director Jason Holland. “It helps us remove some of the barriers to arts and creates more equity and access which is critically important right now.
“Over time, we plan to build partnerships with community organizations across Lincoln County and beyond, to bring our high-quality arts programs right to their doorstep. OCCA’s Arts Bus is fueled by creativity and innovation and you never know where we may show up next!”