Art, Oysters, And Community Kick Off This Year’s 25th Anniversary Humboldt Bay Oyster Fest
A Public Reception On May 21st Featuring Artists Cynthia Hooper and Aldaron Laird Highlights Humboldt Bay’s Environment, Industry, and Shellfish Economy.
A still from Cynthia Hooper’s Natural Resources video shows an oyster farmer working on Humboldt Bay. Hooper’s project honors the many stakeholders and everyday place makers, including seafood, timber, and dock workers, recreationalists, activists, and researchers, that spend a great deal of time on Humboldt Bay, and understand it deeply and experientially.
The Arcata Main Street Oyster Festival will host an evening kick-off reception on May 21, 2015 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM, in the Jacoby Store House’s Plaza View Room. Highlighting the environment, industry, and shellfish economy of Humboldt Bay, the reception will feature artist Cynthia Hooper and her work, “A Negotiable Utopia: The Humboldt Bay Project,” along with Aldaron Laird’s show, “Aldaron’s Walkabout: A Photographic Exploration of Humboldt Bay”. Humboldt Bay oyster growers will be shucking and serving up their oysters, knowledge and passion for ‘Humbay’.
The public is invited to ‘celebrate Humboldt Bay’ at this inaugural kick-off reception hosted and organized by Arcata Main Street’s Oyster Festival and co-sponsored by Coast Seafood. Oysters on the half-shell will be donated, shucked and presented by: Coast Seafood, Humboldt Bay Oyster Co., Aqua-Rodeo Farms, North Bay Shellfish and Hog Island Oyster Co.
About the Reception:
- May 21, 2015, 5:30-8:00 PM, at the Jacoby Store House’s Plaza View Room.
- Reception includes local oysters on the half-shell, appetizers, and a no-host bar.
- Artist Cynthia Hooper showing her work, “A Negotiable Utopia: The Humboldt Bay Project”.
- Aldaron Laird’s Humboldt Bay photos in Plaza Grill.
- Conversation with Humboldt Bay Harbor District Commissioner Mike Wilson and Humboldt Bay oyster growers.
- The reception is open to the public, with profits from the $5.00 entrance fee going to the Humboldt Bay Water Quality Testing Program.
- Space is limited on a first-come basis.
Artist Cynthia Hooper creates short observational documentary videos and accompanying essays that explore and interpret the built environment of our bay- California’s second largest estuary.
“The heart of OysterFest is oysters, and for them Humboldt Bay is utopia” said Nancy Stephenson, event organizer. Arcata Main Street has been cultivating local culture through Oyster Fest for 25 years, and this anniversary inspires a closer view of the beauty and bounty of the bay and its inhabitants. The evening will focus on why Humboldt Bay is the ‘Oyster Capitol’ of California, what makes Humboldt Bay unique, and how the Arcata Bay Oyster Festival became the largest one-day festival in Humboldt County “Showing Cynthia’s videos and Aldaron’s photos in Arcata has been my dream from day-one of Oyster Fest planning, and now, with the generosity of our oyster growers, we’ll get to taste plenty of our bivalve bounty, too.”
Cynthia Hooper creates short documentary video projects about the extraordinary complexity one can encounter in familiar and everyday environments. In fall of 2014, she presented a comprehensive video and essay project about Humboldt Bay at the HSU First Street Gallery in Eureka. For The Arcata Bay Oyster Festival event, Cynthia will restage components of this project, including videos and essays about Humboldt Bay’s natural resource economy, its varied conservation initiatives, and its water and transportation infrastructure.
Aldaron Laird, environmental planner and photographer, completed the first shoreline inventory, mapping, and sea level rise vulnerability assessment of Humboldt Bay in 2013. Photo by Heidi Walters
Aldaron Laird, an environmental planner and photographer, spent 130 days walking, kayaking, exploring, and mapping 102 miles of shoreline on Humboldt Bay, amassing over 15,000 photographic images. A juried selection of these photographs will be showing in the Plaza Grill during our kick-off celebration. “I’m excited to be involved in another collaboration with Cynthia; she is the one who encouraged me to show my photographs of Humboldt Bay in the first place.” said Laird. His Bay photos, which were first exhibited at the Morris Graves Museum Tom Knight Gallery in fall of 2014, portray vistas and settings from each of the three Bays and Sloughs that are Humboldt Bay today. His walkabout was part of a project examining sea level rise and its impact on Humboldt Bay, and he’ll share a few key considerations with us.
Coast Seafoods Company has been a leader in shellfish production since 1946. As a local shellfish grower and steward of Humboldt Bay since 1955, Coast Seafoods’ goal is to produce the perfect oyster that reflects the beauty of the natural environment in which it is raised.
