A new piece of art on Highway 101 in Seal Rock is stopping traffic — as is the intention. But the fiber art depicting a mother orca and her offspring is more than a showstopper for a local art gallery. For Newport-area artist Rebecca Hooper, the piece, titled In Her Wake, marks not only a new way forward as an artist, but also an unexpected end to a business that was wildly successful.

Two months ago, Hooper took a break from her work as a weaver for some much needed time off with family. She expected soon to be back to the work that — once fueled by passion — had become a grind. But that’s not the way it went. Instead, Hooper returned a different person with a clear idea that her life had to change. But how? The answer arrived in the form of a phone call and a request.   

About three years ago, Hooper hit upon the idea of weaving discarded marine rope into doormats — a design originally created in the 1970s by Maine entrepreneur Dave Carter. After mastering the art of the doormat, Hooper moved on to making baskets, wall art, and her signature jellyfish. The demand was beyond anything she’d imagined, and soon Hooper was working well into the evening, routinely putting in more than 50 hours a week to keep up.

In 2023, Hooper wove and sold 286 doormats, 364 baskets, 198 jellyfish, 39 wreaths, and 96 pieces of wall art. A year later, when the Lincoln City Cultural Center hosted Hooper’s first solo show, she sold nearly everything on display — then hurried back to her Gypsea Weaver Studio to weave more. On and on it went.

“The business part of weaving mats and baskets and jellyfish just turned my creativity into a manufacturing plant, where it was just weaving to get them done,” Hooper said. “I was running my own little sweatshop.”

In June, Hooper said, she “wove my ass off” to stock shop shelves before taking her daughter and granddaughters to visit family in New Mexico and then overseas.

“None of us had been to Europe, and so we approached it like a buffet,” Hooper said. “We flew into London and then took a train to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Naples…. We would walk five to 10 miles a day, and around every corner was something new. It was just being open and curious and being completely in the right-now, just enjoying what I’m doing, what I’m smelling, what I’m eating, what I’m looking at. It was the first time I felt stress-free in three years. Vacation changed me. When I came back, I knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.”

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She couldn’t “make one more doormat,” but the way forward wasn’t obvious. Then, she got a call from Lori Vallelunga, owner of the Little Taste Gallery and Fire Rock Ocean Sky Healing Arts (under construction) in Seal Rock. Vallelunga said she’d bought a metal arbor — 8 feet in diameter — from a local welder who creates the arbors from reclaimed materials and was hoping Hooper would weave something on it. The outdoor tapestry would be on display outside Little Taste Gallery.

“She told me I could weave whatever I wanted,” Hooper said. “She gave me free rein.”  Hooper, a former aquatic biologist, decided on the orca theme after reading recent bad news about the animals: “I’d just read that there are less than 80 southern resident orcas in existence. That really hit me. I knew they were endangered, but I hadn’t realized the population was so low.”

Along Highway 101, in view of the thousands of passersby, Hooper began weaving.  

“There were people stopping and talking about what I weaving,” Hooper recalled. “They were saying, ‘It gives me goosebumps,’ or ‘I want to buy it when you are done.’ They didn’t even ask what I would charge. It was very rewarding to weave, but also slow and tedious and physically exhausting. I had to get a massage halfway through. But as I was weaving it, every strand just kept getting deeper into my bones. I just felt so alive. I thought, this is what I want to do. I need this — for my art heart.”

Hooper was on site for more than two weeks, weaving 1,500 feet (about 85 pounds) of discarded marine rope over 35 hours. Back in her studio, she put out word that she was done with doormats and jellyfish and sold all that remained.

Since then, Hooper has fielded calls from locals, a city public arts committee, and the people who watched her work alongside the highway looking to commission a piece of their own. She’s been working on a tidepool-themed bench and an ocean portal — both already sold — and has plans to enter In Her Wake, in an international fiber arts show. She’s also planning to create outdoor tapestries on discarded crab rings — about 3 feet in diameter.

“Tapestry has always been an indoor art, woven with wool and materials that will last hundreds of years, but they have to be indoors. This is tapestry made to be outdoor art,” she said. “The thing I love is that it really makes a statement. It’s colorful, fun, and it’s reclaimed material.”

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