- Hi, I'm Randy, personally inviting you to put the Greater Eastside Remodel team to work on your next remodel, renovation, or construction project.

Always above and beyond, it's our promise to you at greatereastsideremodel.com.

(soft music) (waves rumbling) (birds chirping) - Once you get in a state of flow where you spend hours working on a piece and not even feeling that for hours went by, it's such a powerful time that you spend with yourself, because it's almost like you're cleaning your mind.

People look at your work and they appreciate and they find a connection with it.

It's another level of why do I do this.

(upbeat music) - We live in a special place.

From coastlines to farmlands, Northwest artists are making work that's a product of our distinct environment.

In this series, we'll meet some of the creatives whose art responds to these singular surroundings.

The city of Port Townsend sits on the Quimper Peninsula, which curves like a crab claw into the Salish Sea.

For millennia, the comings, goings and doings of people in this region have been shaped by these waterways, the tides and swells, the creatures that swim within and what washes up on the shore.

This eternal ebb and flow sets a salt scented scene.

Part of the Olympic Peninsula, this area was first populated by the Chimacum people, who for generations have fished its bountiful waters, carved cedar canoes and woven baskets from grasses dyed with local berries.

Artists are drawn to Port Townsend for its small town vibes and stunning natural surroundings, where whispery woods march down to wind swept beaches.

I visited the home studio of Tininha Silva, whose inspiration comes from the shores and seas all around her.

- This is my studio.

- Wonderful.

- It's like my little sanctuary, so I step in here in the morning and I just feel ready and inspired to start working on something.

- And so when you come in here, do you wait to see what catches your eye?

- So the whole process would really start.

I feel like when I go to the beach and I go for a beach walk, whether by myself or with my dog or my family, I see things and then sometimes it's just like a color that sparks my interest, or texture.

And then I decided I want to recreate this in a big scale.

- Silva's so-called beach treasures come in the form of driftwood, an iridescent shell, or a bit of seaweed, clinging to a small stone.

She never looks for something specific, preferring serendipitous searching, her attention suddenly grabbed by an orange crab leg, red seaweed, or a white clump of barnacles on a rock.

She often brings a few items home, tucked into her pocket with stray grains of sand.

- Look at this one.

- Ooh, that's a treasure.

- That's a treasure.

- That's a keeper.

I see all these beautiful colors and shades of greens and pinks and seaweed and kelps, and I suck up all the beauty in them.

And then it gives me inspiration to create a whole new piece based on those colors.

When I see something like this, my eyes go back to what I have at home that can recreate this feeling.

Can I show you my first woven piece?

This is what it looked like.

Day after day, I was just making a lot of little things, and two months later I told my husband, I didn't have a studio and I wanted him to create a big loom on the window that we had in the kitchen with two wooden bars and nails, and that's all I needed.

(tranquil music) - Silva makes her woven works intuitively, never sketching beforehand, working wool, silk and hand dyed into spontaneous patterns.

The wall hangings look organic and pleasingly lumpy, like something that might have floated in with the tide, a mystery she originally contained within the boundaries of a loom.

- After working with a lot of one dimensional large pieces, I just felt the urge to go 3D.

What if it's something between a painting and a sculpture that can come out of the wall, that can pull out and people will have more of this feeling that's alive and in motion.

- And this is all chicken wire?

- To start.

It's strong at the same time it's really thin, and so to create a thicker body, I wrap it with masking tape and evolve all that process with wrapping with the rafia, or silk or fibers.

- And did you have a piece of seaweed, or a stone that you were initially inspired by?

- So for this piece, I kind of went with the colors, with this seaweed that I found at the beach.

And I brought it home and I let it dry on my wall.

I wanted to get a sense of the natural honey color, a little bit of the textures here and there.

For this piece, I just wanted to explore the roundness and the eye, kind of feeling like a portal.

- So when you were growing up in Brazil, what was your relationship like to the beach?

- So I think my relation to the beach is more something that I developed late in my life.

I was born and I grew up in the interior in Brazil, it's a really dry and arid area with lots of cactus.

And I actually started developing this work when I moved here.

I feel like my whole inspiration about creating each of my pieces are really related to being by the water and surrounded by all these ocean and beach elements and colors and textures.

- In a recent show at North Wind Art Gallery in downtown Port Townsend, Silva exhibited works that reveal a coming together of environmental influences, old and new.

Her color palette blends the green browns of the northwest coast with the bright blue and orange shades of Brazil.

Inspired by a recent visit to Brazilian beaches, she has started using encaustic, a wax layering technique to mimic splashes of sea foam.

She's even started adding white sand to the mix to resemble hard crests of coral, continuing her artistic quest to capture the look and feel of walking along the shore.

So I'm curious if you think maybe you wouldn't ever have arrived at this work if you had stayed in Brazil, or stayed in Seattle, what do you think?

- You are absolutely right.

I've been thinking of that for a long time.

In Brazil also, different lifestyle, different environment, so once I started working with creating with my hands, that was the answer that I have been looking for a long time.

I can do this my whole life.

(tranquil music) - [Narrator] Art by Northwest was made possible in part with the support of Greater Eastside Remodel.