“Water Drawings” turn ocean into a performance and “Buoy Portraits” depict facades weathered by exposure. New Work off dry land by CHRIS COFFIN

Chris Coffin explores life near, on and in water. Embarking on a project that would grow to span sculpture, performance and photographic series, Coffin began his latest groups of works with support from the Newport, Rhode Island community where he grew up. He collected 100 buoys from the Atlantic Ocean that were painted, detailed and actively used by local lobster fisherman. Then Coffin set off to create.

After fastening together the buoys on a 300 ft line, Coffin led the way back into familiar waters. Strapping the strand of buoys to his body, Coffin swam and towed the line behind him through the vast blue canvas of the ocean. The performance is equal measures an artist poetically drawing in the medium he loves and conceptually a feat of remarkable endurance as san artist.

Buoys positioned by lobster fisherman to float over traps have markings, coloring and physical features that identify them, even from afar. Chris Coffin captures the character of a buoy’s life at sea up close in his new series of photographs, “Buoy Portraits”. Coffin shoots each buoy with adept gentleness and sincerity which allows the scratches, rugged edges, faded colors, scars and personality of each facade to narrate without reservation their own story.

(More on Water Drawings, Buoy Portraits, Chris Coffin)

50,000 wooden stir sticks woven together on site create a temporary installation juxtaposing natural consumer products among the setting of coffee shop culture. “The Goldsworthy of The Coffee Shop Project” by Jonathan Brilliant

While at an artist residency in 2006, Jonathan Brilliant initiated a project where he assumed the role of a British artist who gathers materials from his natural environment and uses them to execute a site-specific installation. In his version, the natural environment is a coffee shop and the materials are the wooden coffee stir sticks. The resulting work is both ironic and labor intensive with a traditional craft based sensibility.