Beat the winter blues with an indoor beach at Seattle’s Hedreen Gallery

On a gray, drizzly day like today, wouldn’t you like to be relaxing on a warm beach? An art exhibit at Seattle University’s Hedreen Gallery, called “New Beach,” intends to give you the chilled out feeling a beach can provide.

“The concept came from, me and my collaborator spent the summer exploring a lot of ideas of boredom and how hard it is to not do anything,” says New Beach artist, Graham Downey. “So we wanted to build a place to invite people to try and do that. Putting a beach in a box seemed like a good idea because it’s relaxing, it’s quiet, it’s private.”

Yes, they built a beach in a box inside the gallery.

“It’s a 10×10 box with a hand-laid stone grout floor with in-floor heating and a spray painted plastic sky, that’s actually surprisingly effective for just being spray paint and a tarp. The walls are just this any-color-gray and it’s warm in here.”

Truth be told, you really have to use your imagination if you want to believe you’re really at the beach. To start, there’s no sand…

“Because sand would just get everywhere! Some people are really angry that we didn’t put sand in here.”

There’s no actual water, only the sound of waves crashing through the speakers. But there are seagulls.

“Which is actually just me and [my collaborator], in a closet, making seagull sounds for five minutes.”

But the point is not to build a perfect replication of a beach, the point is to find some peace and quiet. Beach bums are to go into the box alone, and they can reserve the space anywhere from five minutes to an hour. When their time is up, the birds will tell them so.

“So, eventually the birds get more aggressive and they start to go, ‘Get out! Your time is up! Time to get out!'” Graham is squawk talking like a seagull. “That’s the one joke in the piece, which is nice.”

The idea is that you’ll be such a meditative state that you won’t have any idea of how much time passed.

“People are constantly looking for distraction and stimulation. The enemy is boredom and that’s what all of our culture tells us. The promise of never being bored again: you have your phone, which will constantly entertain you, you’ll go home and have your Smart TV. In the car you have radio. Constantly taking stuff in. So to invite people somewhere where they’re encouraged to not engage with any of that. To let it all go has been really nice, and I hope therapeutic for people.”

But since the idea is to go in alone, Graham has no idea what people actually do inside.

“I’ve heard stories of people bringing towels, people bringing beach chairs, bikinis, definitely, swim trunks. Sometimes none of that at all, which is nice. Maybe a margarita, I heard a rumor of that.”

New Beach is open through February 14th, but every single spot has already been reserved.