KALA POINT – Tucked away in the woods near the mouth of Chimacum Creek, artist Larry Eifert examines detailed pencil sketches.
They illustrate the future of the lower Elwha River Valley habitat – without dams.
Eifert, who has illustrated many of the National Parks Service’s most beautiful nature preserves, will do the same for Olympic National Park, which commissioned him to paint two murals of the Elwha River Valley after the Glines Canyon and Lake Aldwell dams are removed.
The dams removal and river restoration project is expected to cost upward of $200 million and is scheduled to begin in 2008.
“I jumped on the chance to do those paintings, because I want my work to be involved in something that monumental,” said Eifert, 60, a Port Townsend-area resident off and on since the early 1970s.
The dams removal is a grand river restoration experiment with the eyes of the world upon it.
At stake are the once-legendary and now-threatened Elwha Chinook salmon runs that the onetime power-producing dams have blocked since the 1930s.
Stories of Elwha Chinook of 100 pounds are mentioned in North Olympic Peninsula historical accounts.
“When the Elwha’s projected salmon runs go from 5,000 to 950,000 in a few years, I want to say I had a hand in that,” Eifert said.
The challenge for Eifert is painting the murals before the dams are removed, a somewhat abstract concept based on the vision of the artist and Olympic National Park officials.
It has required several drafts of Eifert’s original sketches, before park officials and he could agree on the final designs.
Eifert says he will use acrylic on acid-free paper to paint two murals, both 4-foot by 7-foot in size.
“The finals will be initially printed and be used for an extensive traveling exhibit to teach about removing the dams,” said Eifert.
Park officials are also working on an exhibit for the originals to be exhibited, he said.
Where they will be exhibited has not be worked out yet.
As for completing the murals, Eifert says, “Within a month we’ll be pretty well along.”
According to his biography, no other artist has more of his work in the country’s national parks, wildlife refuges, state parks and preserves.
He credits his parents for his early start in art – his mother was a writer and illustrator and his father was a museum curator.
“Early on, I was affected with this is what you did,” he said of his early sketches.
He was already making money as an artist right out of high school.
His parents also encouraged his sailboat racing skills, which he started at 15.
Today, he and his wife own Sea Witch, a restored 1939 sloop designed by Ed Monk.
Eifert made the nearly 30-foot vessel the poster boat of the 2003 Wooden Boat Festival.
He hopes to produce more maritime paintings in the future.
Eifert’s has had a prolific career as an artist.
His Web site biography says that he has finished nearly 4,000 paintings.
For fun, he sails his boat out of Port Townsend.
He has been a board member with Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Foundation.
He also co-founded the first Humboldt Kinetic Sculpture Race – not the one in Port Townsend.
The original race was in Ferndale, Calif., and Eifert participated with his own sculpture in 1973.
Along with his wife, Nancy, Eifert has produced popular publications such as the “Olympic National Park Nature Guide: A Field Guide to the Natural History of the Olympic Peninsula” and the “Nature Guide of Port Ludlow” at their Estuary Press studio.
“We sell all kinds of work in the visitors centers,” Eifert said.
He has been commissioned by the National Park Service since his late 20s.
Box puzzles of Eifert’s parks paintings that can be found in such stores as Fred Meyer’s and Barnes & Noble.
Eifert said he has embraced computers, although he is one of a limited number of artists left who illustrate by hand.
“At first I was worried about losing my job,” he said with a smile, adding that with artist using computers more these day.
“Fewer and fewer people actually know how to draw and paint.”
Eifert is exhibiting a new series of paintings at Frontier Bank, 220 W. Sims Way, and Gallery 9, 1012 Water St.
