Year: 1978
Today's item is a bit of a change of pace. Nesting is not a depiction of the ancient world, but rather a drawing by a prominent Northwest artist who was inspired by the region's fossil record. Wes Wehr was a member of the somewhat loose-knit Northwest School of artists, whose most famous members were Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. Unlike many of his peers, Wehr was known for his small landscapes and his imaginary figures or "monster drawings." These latter drawings are wonderfully complex and absorbing, but they become perhaps a bit less enigmatic if you know much about Wehr's biography and the fossil record of the Okanogan Highlands of Washington and BC. Several sites on both sides of the border preserve a rich Eocene flora and fauna, and if you've ever seen the dark compressions of insects, flowers, pine needles, and leaves on the light-colored rocks of the Stonerose site in Republic, WA, you can't help but see those same forms in Wehr's drawings (the feathery "wings" on the figure above are dead ringers for Metasequoia, the dawn redwood so abundant at Stonerose). This is not simply idle speculation on my part, as Wehr himself was an amateur paleontologist who played a huge role in discovering and describing the fossils of Stonerose. His name is forever connected to the site, as a new genus of plant from Republic was named Wehrwolfia in honor of Wehr and his colleague, the paleobotanist Jack Wolfe. Given his connections to one of the Northwest's most important lagerstätten and his membership in the region's most significant visual arts movement, Wehr is proof that not only are science and art not mutually exclusive pursuits, but that each excels when incorporating the other.
Want to see more? Wehr's work is featured in museums throughout the Northwest; the image above is from the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane. If you're interested in Wehr's story, both Jack Nisbet and Kirk Johnson have included sections on him in recent books.
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