Frank E. Gaffney - Fine Art | 1st page of Frank's painting portfolio

As a member of the Coast Guard Art Program I was sent on a six day deployment in August 2009 to Nome, Alaska. The Coast Guard, U.S. Air Force, Army National Guard and Air National Guard are part of Operation Arctic Crossroads with medical teams conducting medical outreach to the remote villages. They provided a doctor, an optometrist, dentist, two veterinarians and boating safety personnel plus some support personnel. I was to gather reference material so that I could create some paintings from this deployment later that year. I was with the Team while they visited villages on islands in the Bering Sea. From Nome we flew by helicopters every morning to a different village, two on Saint Lawrence Island and one on an island off the north of Seward Peninsula.

Forty-one works by 27 artists were enter into the Coast Guard Art Program’s (COGAP) perma-nent collection this summer. In all, 79 works by 45 artists— a record number in recent years—were offered to the program.

The two paintings below from my trip were accepted into collection. The inaugural exhibition of the 2010 collection was at the Salmagundi Club and ruan from June 15 to June 26, 2010. The 2010 collection is now on view at Federal Hall National Memorial in downtown Manhattan. Federal Hall is just across from the New York Stock Exchange so it enjoys a large audience. I was told by Mr. Steve Laise, chief of cultural affairs at Federal Hall, that just July 5, some 1,500 people visited and of these some 1,200 looked closely at the art and also took time to read the captions. These statistics were gathered by rangers at the memorial who said visitors really seemed captivated by the art.

I have been told that my painting, "Vaccinating The Musher's Dogs" will join part of this collection in an exhibit in Port Townsend, WA this fall.