Along the Mississippi coast

Yesterday we took a long drive along the coastal highway to the east.  The road runs right along the beach.

Beach and pier on Gulf Coast near Bay St. Louis

The Gulf waters always seem quite calm, and we figured out why -- there are a chain of sandbar-type islands miles offshore, called "barrier islands," that mitigate wave action (although don't do much to protect against hurricanes).

The Gulf is renowned for its seafood -- shrimp, scallops, fish, crab and oysters -- and along the coast are harbours for fishing vessels.

Speaking of seafood: we had a nice lunch in Ocean Springs, a few miles from Biloxi.

Fried crawfish salad (above) and fried shrimp po' boy -- yum!

Along the way we stopped at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, mainly to see the architecture (the museum is mainly devoted to the work of a late nineteenth-early twentieth century ceramacist, George Ohr). The complex of buildings were designed by starchitect Frank Gehry; construction was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and is still not completed.  The curvaceous exterior stairways reminded me of the wonderful stairway snaking upward through the Art Gallery of Ontario, part of Gehry's extensive renovations there.

The Pods, a group of linked galleries still under construction at the museum

(As an aside, Gehry is also the architect of a mammoth development proposed by David Mirvish for King Street West in Toronto.  In defending the demolition of several heritage buildings in the way of this development, Gehry infamously said that the only heritage buildings really worth saving in the city were Osgoode Hall and Old City Hall!  Apparently no heritage structures were deemed disposable for the Biloxi project.)

Ocean Springs, where we spent most of the day, reminded us a little of Bayfield and Niagara-on-the Lake.  We were especially intrigued by a small art gallery dedicated to the work of an (especially) eccentric local nature artist, Walter Anderson (1903-1965), who spent much of his time alone on one of the uninhabited barrier islands where he found inspiration.  Among the many beautiful works there is an entire "painted room" removed from the artist's cottage/studio and installed in the museum.

One corner of the painted room