Sol Duc Valley Visitor’s Map Kiosk

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Seems like somewhat of a milestone here. This is one of three new outdoor wayside exhibits just “sent to press” for Olympic National Park. I’ll post the other two soon. They’re very large, actually the biggest I think I’ve done, at 48″ x 72″, and are being produced with the fiberglass embedment process. For those reader that don’t know this stuff, that’s when a print gets covered with fiberglass layers until it’s about 1/8″ thick. If we’re lucky, it’ll last 25 years. These three will soon be installed in the gateway kiosk area of Olympic’s Sol Duc River road and will somewhat match the other three I now have out there. I did the art and initial design, but the almost-countless hours of graphic design were done by Janet Scharf, who’s on park staff.

These panel paintings allow me to occasionally insert ourselves in the work. For instance, that’s Nancy sitting by the fire, with out VW camper behind. She originally had shorts on, but that was deemed to controversal for this (I, personally, think her legs look great and might have helped the painting). The hikers at the bottom are the two of us, but they thought I should be turned into a Latino – so that was fun. And Nancy’s also standing on the Sol Duc Falls bridge in the upper right.

The map was another matter altogether. I did the large painting from Google Earth flyover images, then scanned it into Photoshop. Then it was brought into Illustrator for all the roads, trails and those wierd map labels that curve and contort. Finally, that file was brought into InDesign for the final layout with all the other images. What a juggling act!

To check availability of the other small originals I’ve blogged about the past few weeks, check the blog here.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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