Wendy Allen is the featured artist
for Winyah Bay Heritage Festival
Last Updated on 12/1/2008
Published on 7/22/2008
By Richard Camlin
For the Times
Wendy Allen has been selected as the 2009 Winyah Bay Heritage Festival featured artist. Her gyotaku of a red drum, also known as spottail bass, on rice paper incorporates fishing as another element of our local outdoor heritage. The committee believes that Wendy's art, as well as her conservation ethic and background as an educator and naturalist, are a perfect match.
Gyotaku is a Japanese fish printing technique used originally to record information on fish. Wendy was first introduced to this art form 30 years ago by a colleague who had a framed fish print hanging in his home. The example she saw "was printed in black ink on light paper and looked like a fossil."
Wendy found the print intriguing and was determined to learn more about the printing process. After coming across a publication that described how it's done, she went to a fish market and purchased a couple of weakfish to make her first prints. A few years later Wendy took up fishing with her husband, Dennis, and began to print fish on a regular basis.
Gyotaku shows almost every detail on a fish, including the scales and fins, which led her to also use this printing process as an activity to teach children about fish anatomy.
Although she may not say this about herself, locals regard Wendy as a fishing expert. When asked about her fishing interests, Wendy said it "is a means for me to get outdoors and experience nature and, as such, my favorite fishing approaches are those that maximize the potential to observe, discover and experience -- wading the salt marsh flats with a camera or a fly rod, casting into pounding surf, or quietly paddling salt creek shallows."
Wendy has been releasing every spottail she catches for years, initially due to reports of declining numbers and later, simply out of reverence for a magnificent fish. Wendy prefers "to see spottails tailing in the salt marsh or chasing mullet in the surf than as fillets in a fry pan." For the committee this is a prime example of her conservation ethic.
Wendy is also eager to share information she has learned. When asked about her interests in nature and conservation, she responded that "we are all born with an innate curiosity about our world. The trick is to nurture this curiosity throughout our lives so we can continue to observe, enjoy and conserve the world we share with all living things. Living things and their interactions with the environment are much more complex and interesting than we could ever imagine and with each new scientific discovery, dozens of new unsolved questions emerge."
Wendy adds, "When it comes to the environment, most people want to do the right thing. Education is key to empowering people to make informed decisions."
Wendy Allen graduated from Lehigh University in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. She worked as the first public education coordinator for the Wetlands Institute near Stone Harbor, New Jersey. She moved to South Carolina in 1978 to join her husband, returned to graduate school and in 1980 received a Masters of Education from the University of South Carolina.
A large part of her career has been spent working concurrently for USC's Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences as an environmental educator and for the Belle W. Baruch Foundation where she started the Bellefield Nature Center, now the Hobcaw Barony Discovery Center. She has worked for the North Inlet-Winyah Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve since 1992, first as education coordinator and since 2001 as its manager, overseeing the Reserve's integrated program of estuarine research, education and stewardship.
Fishing has been and will continue to be a part of the heritage of Winyah Bay, from the commercial fishing of sturgeon for caviar to today's emphasis on recreational sport fishing for many different species.
As this year's featured artist, Wendy Allen is the perfect fit because she has the scientific background of the subject she transforms onto rice paper and because she has explored local waters for three decades. As a result, she knows where fish will be and why they will be there. This year, thanks to Wendy, gyotaku will be a new feature during the festival to help both children and adults learn and appreciate the art of fish printing. If there ever was a conservationist to emulate, it might just be Wendy Allen -- and one can always hope that Wendy might reveal one of her secret fishing spots.
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The Winyah Bay Heritage Festival so far has raised more than $50,000 for the Georgetown County Historical Society. The money will be used one day to build a new museum facility.
The 2009 festival will take place on Jan. 17 and 18, with a special Sponsor Party on Friday evening, Jan. 16.
For more information on sponsor levels and benefits, contact Bobbie McCutchen at (843) 546-0012.
