Alphaboats: A Maritime Voyage from Anchor to Zulu @ Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria | Mixed Media Paintings

From our sponsors:
Alphaboats: A Maritime Voyage from Anchor to Zulu
Opening Reception: February 20, 2026 @ 2-4pm | $0-18 (Members Free) | All Ages
Exhibit runs through end of 2026
More info: crmm.org

Columbia River Maritime Museum
1792 Marine Dr, Astoria, OR 97103

Set sail on an alphabetical journey through the world of boats in Alphaboats: A Maritime Voyage from Anchor to Zulu, a vibrant mixed-media exhibition by Portland artist Peggy Biskar. Opening February 20, 2026, and on view through the end of the year,

Alphaboats invites visitors to explore vessels ranging from zarocs and xebecs to canoes and dinghies – each one a letter in a visual maritime lexicon. Biskar traces the origins of the project to a single, evocative pairing: a flat-bottom boat and an iron. “Those two similar shapes and their metaphorical content represented for me the contrast between domesticity and the lure of adventure,” she wrote. From that spark, she spent nearly a year developing an alphabet of boat images rooted in research on historical small craft and a fascination with the rich, often layered vocabulary of maritime terms – words like anchor, bow, hold, and tender, each carrying multiple meanings.

The resulting 26-piece series vibrates with color, artistic skill, and a palpable sense of curiosity and adventure. For Biskar, the project became an exploration of how consecutive images can build meaning from a finite body of information tied to a shared human experience. Boats, she notes, embody both promise and peril: the pleasures of travel, the labor of work, the precariousness of floating or sinking, and the profound hardships – and atrocities – endured aboard vessels throughout history.

Each work is a collage combining paint, print, photography, and text, layering materials and imagery to reflect the ideas and histories represented by each boat.