The line of pelicans seems to glide only a few feet from where I’m standing. I notice a small reflective dot on the moist eye of one of the birds. Expertly, instinctively, the birds maneuver updrafts off the cliffs near where I’m standing. Past them, hundreds of feet offshore, another twenty-five pelicans glide or flap gently, just inches above the water’s surface. I stand awed, marveling. As a painter I ask, "How do I speak of this experience to another?"

I’m at Davenport, California. On a different day my view of the horizon might include whales. Today, though, I see a distinctive stand of cypress trees molded by constant wind, trees often described as tortured looking. In the dried grass at the base of one I notice a small yellow beetle with four black dots on its back and, near it, a metallic-green jumping spider. Behind me stands the cement plant, in front of me, cormorants rest on the remains of a pier that goes nowhere.

But the overwhelming presence here is that of the ocean: the smell, the sound, the immense quantity of it, the vastness of its horizon. Invisible but omnipresent, life thrives under its surface: immeasurable numbers of creatures ranging from minute algae and bacteria to immense fish and sea mammals.

Difficult or Impossible Decisions
Perhaps each of us has a favorite spot along the coast. Looking out over it, we may find ourselves asking, “Will it survive?” Today, overfishing, pollution, and mining threaten the ocean. What will happen as the effects of global warming and ozone depletion become apparent? What unknown phenomenon, next year, next decade, next century will make its dark mark, what new descriptive environmental phrase will become part of our vocabulary and demand a difficult or impossible decision?

If history is an accurate measure, we can count on new, urgent ocean issues to surface. If history is a measure, we can count on human actions to be shortsighted, fraught with politics and greed. And, as in the past, we can count on the decisions we make to address mainly the immediate needs of the next five to ten years, as we fill in ocean estuaries for housing, destroy forests and watersheds for building materials, and permit toxic chemicals from farmlands and cities to wash, by default, into our oceans. Ironically, the “pragmatic, reasonable” solutions we tend to choose frequently prove not to be reasonable at all, and one generation is left with the herculean task of cleaning up or compensating for a previous generation’s pragmatism. The logic of our choices is baffling when viewed over time, and is especially painful to those of us who believe that life is a miracle and that the living integrity of every creature must be respected for its own sake, on its own terms, who believe that we do have the responsibility not to wreak havoc on the planet but to preserve it for our progeny many, many generations hence. What is my role in this as a citizen of the United States, and of the world? As an artist, how can I actively create solutions that will benefit the ocean? I have a unique contribution to make and I do not want to waste it.

To protect the ocean we need not only a strong environmental conscience but a voice to express it, because without both, threats to the ocean are left unchallenged and its health subject to the manipulations of politics and industry. To provide such a voice, a group of artists headquartered in Santa Cruz is undertaking a monumental project, one due to be in place at the turn of the century. The project involves 1,320 visual artists.

Someone to Watch Over Every Mile
I began this story with my experience of Davenport on one day. Imagine other artists each going to his or her own special ocean location. It is a particular failing of modern life that most of us seldom experience the intimacy of earth and place, that such an intimacy is not integrated with our lives or even necessary to function. But imagine that 1,320 artists have each decided to intimately observe, over time, a special location in order to persuade us of its beauty, so that we know, clearly, what it is that we want to conserve. Imagine an artist for every mile of coastline who will speak in its defense-who will observe any untoward action, if any occurs, on that particular stretch and make this threat known to the rest of us. Imagine every mile of the California, Oregon, and Washington coastline having someone to watch over it. Now imagine that the product of these visits is an individual painting of a specific location, one that measures four feet wide and which, when joined with the others of the project, creates a continuous seascape of the coast of the United States measuring a mile in length. This is just a start.

The ocean will always be under siege by humans. Problems today will be compounded by the unknown problems of the future. There will always be problems that must be addressed-and short-term commitment will not suffice. If what we do about those problems is to have significance, we must make plans that will unfold within a significant time frame. This project, from the date of its first completed full-mile exhibition, is to be a one hundred-year project. Because we want to contribute to future generations more than just our good intentions, a special trust fund is being created, one that will accrue and be compounded over the hundred years. During that time, panels will be painted, exhibited, and sold, raising grant money for individuals and groups to generate the circumstances that will bring about a healthy ocean. Proceeds from the sale of the panels, up to two-thirds of their purchase price, will go into this fund.

Where Will the Money Go?
How the money is to be spent will reflect a different approach to environmental advocacy. Periodically the project’s participants will decide how to best spend the money to combat the problems that affect ocean health: Whether it will be given as grants to Save Our Shores, the Sierra Club, the Surfrider Foundation, and other environmental groups involved in watershed and ocean protection. Whether it will be spent on research, conferences, education, and/or development of innovative products that supplant the need for ocean-polluting products-perhaps, for example, development of a solar-powered automobile. (Describing the myriad efforts the project’s funds might underwrite could well be the subject of a separate essay. I welcome inquiry from anyone interested in finding out more about it.)

Taking Responsibility for the Ocean
For the Seventh Generation is a comprehensive project about responsibility and ocean protection. The approach the artists take in order to call attention to the ocean is an important part of the project. If we are to secure the oceans integrity, people must be impressed by its positive tangible and intangible qualities. The ocean is a glory its splendor touches the well of humanity and transcends politics and ideology. Each painting in the project argues the ocean’s value. The mural itself is a positive painting of our coastline that lets us speak to people across the nation about the beauty we experience, wish to preserve, and want to use in a rational manner. To achieve this end, the project’s philosophy is rooted in the ideals of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.; that is, the project does not attack any individual, industry, culture, and so on, but instead seeks to find solutions. “Demand a Healthy Ocean” is its motto, in keeping with Gandhi’s belief that making an ethical, necessary demand is a correct action (even if it were to mean putting oneself in harm’s way-as practiced by Gandhi) in the course of finding those solutions.

The name of the project comes from our belief that we need a sea change in how we make far-reaching decisions, and that one aspect of this change must be a new consideration of the impact of our decisions on many generations in the future, specifically on seven generations. The project also reflects the belief that art is the best and most powerful means for accomplishing these goals. The process itself-of observing, painting, and speaking about the ocean, of acknowledging its value, of raising money for ocean protection, of displaying the mural to policymakers and others-allows us to do more than just continually react when new threats to the ocean, such as proposed oil-drilling, occur. The project’s artists are prepared to expend the time necessary to make this effort significant: it will be renewed each year, and new generations will join it over time.

Mural in Sacramento
The mural’s precursor, the Quarter-Mile Mural, representing a continuous seascape from Point Sur to Point Arena, was completed in 1990. The product of 165 artists, this mural protested the offshore oil-drilling then being proposed for the California coast, and it supported development of a national energy policy. Displayed in Santa Cruz outside the County Government Building in July 1990, the mural also traveled to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and to Sacramento, where it was presented at the Capitol. In conjunction with the exhibit, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Sam Farr spoke at the rally in opposition to oil drilling and in support of a national energy policy.

The one-mile mural too will travel. Already, a two hundred-foot section of the mural has been displayed in two locations in Santa Cruz, first at San Lorenzo Park during Circle Trails Day in May 1997 and, following that, inside the County Government Building. Plans are being made to exhibit portions of the mural up and down the coast and to display individual panels in galleries in every major coastal city, from Seattle to San Diego.

The spirit of the project is best summed up in the words of Wendell Berry: “Without a fascination and wonder for the natural world, the energy needed for its preservation will never be developed. There must be a mystic of the rain if we are to ever want to restore the purity of the rainfall.”

These artists have begun something that will unfold over the next hundred years, whose final results they will never know.