WILLOW CREEK — For more than thirty years, Iris Beaumont has painted Homan’s Pond — in winter’s deep freeze, in the brief explosive green of spring, in the soft light of autumn, and in the long golden evenings of summer. The resulting collection, titled “Ice-Out Studies,” will be exhibited at the Willow Creek Free Public Library starting this weekend.
Beaumont, 67, retired from teaching art at Willow Creek K-8 School in 2014 after 34 years in the classroom. Her watercolor series began as a personal project — a way to document the pond that had been part of her daily life since childhood — and gradually grew into an obsessive documentation of a single patch of the natural world.
“I started because I wanted to capture the ice-out itself — that moment when the ice goes from solid to cracked to gone,” Beaumont says. “But I quickly realized that you can’t understand the ice-out unless you also understand the pond in summer, in fall, in the dead of winter. It’s all connected.”
The library’s exhibition will feature 24 watercolors spanning 1992 to 2025, arranged chronologically to show the changing character of the pond across seasons and years. Librarian Doris Kim, who organized the exhibition, said she hopes it will draw visitors from outside Willow Creek.
“Iris’s work deserves a wider audience,” Kim said. “These paintings are not just beautiful — they’re a scientific record. You can literally see climate change in the composition of the ice.”
The exhibition opens Saturday with a reception from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Beaumont will be present to discuss her work. Admission is free.