My painting “Suitcase Seaweed” has been published.

My painting Suitcase Seaweed was very recently published in the Alaska Marine Community Action Report FY2025. They also publish the Young Fishermen’s Almanac which I have been fortunate enough to have artwork in each of the three volumes. 

They reached out to me about two months ago asking if I have artwork they might use in their report. Being a full-time elementary teacher, creative time is very minimal during the school year. Instead of slowly going through photos of my work, I quickly sent them images of three pieces. Suitcase Seaweed was one of them.

When I got the celebratory email about the finished report and my included artwork, I was so glad it found its publication home. 

It was a bit of a surprise when I went to the link and saw my work.

They rotated it to fit their space needs. I think it’s well placed and was a good layout and design decision.

Here is the rotated version: 

Here is its original position: 

Why was I slightly surprised when I saw it on the page? Because this work was altered after I took the photo I sent. I do think it looks quite nice as published, yet I much prefer the work as it now stands.

The watercolor painting itself was not changed. The beautiful hand-painted ribbons that run through it and the border have also not been changed. What was changed was the placement of harvested and dried seaweed. It was rearranged. Some pieces were removed and others added.

I was unhappy with the placement of the small piece of seaweed in the upper right corner. I also wanted a heavier, darker piece of seaweed in the upper left corner to balance with the painted, maroon-ish seaweed right of the middle. Lastly, I wanted some of the fish behind the seaweed as that would be more life-like.

Here is how the piece currently stands finished:

Here are some of the changes close up:

A fish moved behind seaweed.

A second fish moved behind seaweed.

The seaweed in the upper left corner was removed and a thicker, darker piece was added:

Too, I replaced the small piece of seaweed in the upper right corner with a slightly larger one.

 

Ribbons of color remained as they were.

The piece is titled Suitcase Seaweed as there is seaweed from three very different locations carefully glued on acetate and then overlaid on the watercolor painting. I harvested seaweed from Cordova, Alaska where I was taking an Environmental Science course for teachers and from Northern California where my son lives. I carried both home via my suitcase on one plane or another. A good friend harvested seaweed off the coast of Boston, Massachusetts, a city I call home, and sent it to me still wet and needing to be pressed. Although these locations are not revealed in the title, they are each significant to me and tell more of a story about myself and my travels than the viewer currently knows. A future publications might change that. 

Back to the published version versus the current version of this work, may an artist change their work after it's signed or published if it remains under their ownership? Does it impact the publication of an earlier version? Yes to the first question and no to the second. In fact, I truly value seeing the earlier version in print as it no longer exists on the watercolor page. Those that published it are happy with the work and I did receive their promised thank you note. 

I think the bigger question is whether an artwork may be published twice? The first being the earlier version and second being the latter. I haven't had to answer that yet. I am hoping this work will be included in a show rather than a publication. Yet, what if the show has a catalogue of all included work? 

Truthfully, this is the first artwork of mine that doesn’t completely match its published image. Will it be the last? Not sure as I haven’t painting all the work I will. That said, I've never gone back and altered work that was finished and signed before. I have added elements to a work I thought briefly was finished but then after walking past it several times while it hung in my art studio realized it wasn’t. These two quotes coupled together speak my forward positioning on altering future artworks post-publication: "Never look back" said John Lee Hooker and "Never say never" said Charles Dickens. 

I will pull this all together with a quote by the brilliant poet long read by me, Marie Howe. I found it in the excellent book, The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing edited by Adam Moss and which sits on my shelf when not in my hands. 

"I don't know what I am doing" 

she said. "But I never do. You only 

know later. A while later. And then 

you go, "Oh my God, look at that."

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