Telephone game inspires Lincoln City art exhibit

Most people are familiar with the classic game of telephone where one person whispers a phrase to someone else seated next to them and that person then whispers what they heard to the next person, and so on. The game continues until the last person shares aloud what they heard, often bearing little resemblance to the original message.

Oregon ArtsWatch recently profiled an exhibit that opened in Lincoln City this month that showcases what happens when a group of local artists is invited to play telephone. But instead of a phrase that’s whispered, here the prompt came in the form of two photographs, including one of the Oregon coast taken at sunset. Each of the participating artists had only the work that preceded them for inspiration to interpret visual details, colors or objects they saw or imagined, and chose to pass on in their rendering for the next artist. The result is 18 works in a variety of different media, from watercolors to sculpture, fiber art to spray paint, some bearing little resemblance to the work that came before it. Krista Eddy is the visual arts director at the Lincoln City Cultural Center and the creator of the exhibit. She and Sam Jacobson, a featured artist based in Cascade Head, join us to talk about “The Telephone Game Group Invitational” which is on display until Feb. 11 at the Chessman Gallery at LCCC.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. You’re probably familiar with the classic kids’ game of “Telephone,” where a whispered phrase is passed from one person to the next. The game goes on until the last person shares what they heard aloud. And it rarely sounds anything like the original message, but that’s what makes it fun. It’s a game about distortion, about evolution, about communication, about surprise. Krista Eddy, who is the visual arts director at the Lincoln City Cultural Center decided to use this idea as a basis for a show at the Chessman Gallery. Instead of a whispered message, she had artists pass visual work to each other. Each of the artists had only the work that preceded them for inspiration.

The results are on display right now. The show is called “The Telephone Game Group Invitational.” It’s on display through February 11th. Oregon ArtsWatch recently wrote about the show. Krista Eddy joins us now to talk about it along with Sam Jacobson, who is based in Cascade Head and is one of the featured artists. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Krista Eddy: Oh, thank you. What a pleasure to be here.

Sam Jacobson: Yes, it’s great to be here.

Miller: So, Krista first. Where did the idea for this show come from?

Eddy: Well, I am always brainstorming and trying to come up with new ways to build community in our little artistic world out here on the coast. And I think at heart, I’m a playful person and I don’t know, one day I was just thinking about this game and thought, you could do that with art work. And ever since the beginning, it’s been a complete experiment to see what would happen. And I’m happy to say it was very rewarding and beautifully done by our local artists, and everyone had such a good time doing it.

Miller: Sam, why did you want to take part in this?

Jacobson: I really like having an idea of something to work towards as a way of stretching myself creatively. On my own, I think I have a decent imagination, but it’s always wonderful to have somebody plant an idea and let you go with it. And so I was just delighted to be included and had a ball doing it.

Miller: But the idea of an external prompt, so you weren’t forced to create it out of your own head, that was part of the excitement?

Jacobson: Yes, I was looking at another person’s piece of work and then generating ideas from that. And that, I suppose, is the way a lot of people work in art, to look at other artists’ pieces, but to try to also sort of connect with what was already done and to tell a story from it - but move the story along.

Miller: Krista, can you describe the two starting images, which is actually a little bit different than the way telephone normally works? You actually had two simultaneous games going at the same time with two different groups of artists. So, what were the two starting images for the two different groups?

Eddy: Yes. So I did two circles simultaneously because I only had a year to develop this game and each artist got to work on their piece for one month. And really that went very quickly. I chose two coastal photographers to start each circle. One of them started with an abstract of kind of rusty metal and another is a beautiful seascape at sunset during a storm at Waldport. And the reason I chose photographers to start both circles is because that was the only way that they could participate, because of the way their art works. They couldn’t paint a rendition of someone else’s art very easily in photography. And in this exhibit, I tried to include as many different mediums as possible. So I really wanted to get the photographers included.

Miller: So what was the variety, the scope of the media that were included?

Eddy: That was a big part of it. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know how closely artists would copy the work before them. They were only given instructions to do a rendition, and in a month’s time, were their only guidelines. And so I changed up the medium pretty intensely, going from photography to glass mosaic, to painting, to fiber art, to three dimensional clay. So that it was impossible for the message to stay the same.

Miller: So the only rules were, do the work in a month and do some rendition of the previous work?

Eddy: Exactly. Use it as inspiration, do a rendition. And the styles and the processes and the moods and the perspectives of each artist changed it in really surprising, wonderful ways. I didn’t want to limit them.

Miller: So just one basic rule. I mean, in a sense, just like the game, just pass on your version of the message to somebody else.

Eddy: Yeah.

Miller: Sam, can you describe the image that you were given, your jumping off point?

Jacobson: The piece that I had of mine was really dynamic and almost apocryphal. It was filled with really bright, deep colors. It reminded me of the formation of the world. So I started thinking of connecting that with an article I had read about evolution and the article was about, why do we have mammals in the ocean? And they had done sophisticated DNA analysis of all kinds of sediments and stuff and determined that they were originally fish that had evolved onto land and then went back to the ocean. And so I thought, well, this was sort of an evolutionary part of early earth. I thought about this transfer back and forth, and wouldn’t it be easier if the fish could just sort of walk back and forth? And as long as they are doing that, they may as well give other creatures a ride. So I have a walking fish carrying a slug with a butterfly on its head and then in case they get a little hungry, there’s an apple on the tail of the slug for a little nosh.

My leap was a little more extreme than some. I mean, everybody had different spaces that they took in interpreting, but that’s where my imagination took me.

Miller: Krista, so Sam says that her leap was bigger than, than some. But I mean, from my understanding, this is one of the biggest leaps of all, right?

Eddy: Oh, it is amazing. The piece that she did hers after is a small encaustic, that is, like she said, full of beautiful colors.

Miller: That’s kind of old fashioned. It’s painting, but there’s wax as well.

Eddy: Yes. Exactly. And then Sam’s comes after and it’s just this beautiful, whimsical, three dimensional sculpture of these creatures that you instantly fall in love with, with, with bold colors and kind of almost a Beetlejuice style to it. It’s so cool. And then I have to tell you, Sam took over her circle. Her sculpture was so amazing that every piece of art afterwards showed a lot of the same imagery and patterning and colors. As far as the little apple and the butterfly and the fish and it’s really interesting how her bold wit carried through the rest of the painting, the rest of the artwork in the circle.

Miller: My understanding is that the artists obviously had to see the works that preceded them. But nobody had seen the full circle, the full passed-on image cycle, until the grand reveal, until recently when the show was up. Sam, what was it like for you to actually see all of the work in a line?

Jacobson: It was a delight and on a couple of levels. First, other than the person immediately ahead of me, I didn’t know who all was participating. And so it was so fun to see all of these wonderful artists participating, but it was also really delightful to see how each artist interpreted the piece before it and what they took from it. And each was different. But it also, I think, reflected the personality and the eye of the artist and I really enjoyed that.

Miller: Did you feel significant in the progression here? Given, as Krista described it, that some of the components of your work, that came only from you, were persistent. People kept putting apples in after you.

Jacobson: I was incredibly flattered and it just sort of made me gasp when I saw how much of my imagery had been picked up. So I was really delighted. Now, the pieces are all quite different and they’re in different media and all. But to carry through some drama of the imagery, connected things together in a different way. It was really quite lovely. And of course, the end piece of the thread I was in was an absolute delight and it was this huge apple. It was done by Krista’s 10-year-old son and it was freaking amazing. Everybody wanted to buy it.

Miller: We have to hear about that. Krista, how did that come to be?

Eddy: Well, first, I have a comment about one of the wonderful things about all the artists getting together to see this “Telephone Game” exhibit all together. Everyone that came to the opening reception really looked at the artwork. I’ve never seen people as engaged and as deeply involved in trying to find connections and clues and colors that continue or patterns. It was so nice for me to see people so engaged in the artwork. And that was because of the nature of the way the show was made.

As for my son, Quinn Alexander, being a part of the show - what happened was the Chessman Gallery is, I think it’s 590 square feet. It’s a decent sized room. And as we went along in the telephone game, I realized that I was not going to have enough artwork to fill the space properly. And that the piece that was sort of ending up being the last piece was quite small, beautifully painted, but not the big exclamation point I wanted for this circle. And so my son, who is 10, has been experimenting with spray paint art. He’s really into it. We got him a variety of colors. He practices on the driveway and so I asked him if he’d like to be a part of this game and he said yes. And he did all his spray painting, but I helped him with the template, the stencil. So it’s a big stencil of an apple and you spray the inside, then you spray the outside. And at the end, we used a really old can of white for the highlights and it exploded all over and we thought, oh no, it’s ruined. But actually that was the best part of the piece. So it has this highlight that explodes with splatters of white color. And, it was just a joy to see him and he came to the reception and he was really proud of his work and he stood there and talked to people and he even brushed his hair. It was amazing. It made my heart so happy.

Miller: Now to go back to what you said just earlier, that the visitors to the gallery seemed to pay more attention to the art on the walls for this exhibit, for this show, than for others.

Eddy: Oh, definitely.

Miller: What was that like for you as a curator, as somebody who really values art and community?

Eddy: Oh, it is so rewarding. It is so rewarding. And that’s our entire mission here at the Cultural Center - to build community around creativity and visual and performing arts. And to see people come in and be so interested, it just makes me really happy. And it’s the playfulness and the game to it, I think, that people connect with. They want to figure out what that artist was thinking and where is the part and what is the perspective, and they have to really look at the work to see that, to find that.

Miller: Sam, what do you remember from the opening?

Jacobson: I found it really interesting, the comments of other artists, who, once they saw how this thread moved, [were] thinking, oh, I wish I had maybe taken a bigger leap or a bigger chance with what they had morphed from. And you could just see, not only did the piece before them inspire a certain energy, but the whole inspired additional artistic energy and to push the limit a little bit further.

Eddy: And each one of the artists had their own story of how they attempted it and what they saw in it, and they were all really different. I was really glad to be there and hear all their stories.

Miller: Can you describe, Krista, the way you hung this exhibit, the shape you chose, and why?

Eddy: Oh, I like to torture myself. So I decided to make two round rooms inside a rectangular gallery. And so I spent a good day and a half putting mat boards on pedestals and rolling walls. So when you enter the gallery, there are two separate circular spaces and there are even light gray arrows to guide you in the right direction in the circles. It came out pretty well. I’m very proud of it.

Miller: Sam, how did the shape affect the way you took in the exhibit?

Jacobson: It was perfect to have this flow with no corners. It was just like a river of art that you were following for each of the threads. And I was so in awe of how Krista had come up with the idea. It was just perfect for guiding people in the proper sequence, as well as letting it just kind of flow.

Miller: Krista, as you said, you did this partly for novelty, partly just to build community, as a game, as an experiment.

Eddy: Yes.

Miller: But do you think you might do this again?

Eddy: Oh, definitely. I’ve already got a couple artists starting to think about the first pieces. Yeah, there’s so many wonderful artists that live on the coast. We have a rich community of artists here and a year was not long enough. I ran out of time. There were so many more artists I wanted to invite. And so we’ve already decided that we’re going to do it again in 2026, which gives me two years and we’ll see what happens. The experiment will continue.

Miller: The biennial telephone game.

Eddy: Yeah.

Miller: Krista Eddy and Sam Jacobson, thanks very much.

Eddy: Oh, thank you so much.

Jacobson: Thank you, a pleasure.

Miller: Krista Eddy is the visual arts director of the Lincoln City Cultural Center and the creator of the “Telephone Game” exhibit that’s on display right now at the Chessman Gallery. Sam Jacobson is an artist based in Cascade Head and one of the participating artists for this new show.

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