If you want to drive down the East Coast with stops at the big cities and no time wasted in between, you take Interstate 95 and drive 65 or 70 mph most of the way. If you’re an observer with a completely different objective, you might take U.S. Route 1, parallel to the speed zone but out of its sight and hearing.

Artist Steve Hedberg wanted views of fields, small town cafes, and rural buildings lying within the megalopolis but out of its rush and bluster. With video and still cameras as passengers, audio recorder and laptop ready for action, and spirit of adventure in high gear, he left Fort Kent, Maine, in July, 2009, on old Route 1. Two weeks later he reached Key West, Fla., having stopped whenever and wherever he chose along the way. He found what he was looking for and much more.

He collected pictures of groves and single trees; of clusters of farm buildings and isolated barns; of settled rural cottages and the trucks in their driveways. Working his way down the highway, he chatted with residents and found welcome and common ground for conversation, which he recorded. All photos and dialogue he saved for future reference—for painting and sharing.

He made important discoveries, amongst which is this significant one: "Due to the highway system, the way we travel has changed. We now rush to our destinations, passing by life rather than through it. Diners and drugstores have been replaced with fast food restaurants and big box stores." The new highways, while they have given us speed, have changed the way we travel and indeed, the ways we look at things—our culture.

Such a jaunt as Hedberg’s might not be for everyone, he concedes, but adjustments to it, with its basic philosophy intact, could benefit travelers who value the off-the-beaten track.

The choices, infinite in variety and appeal, await our selection. Many sections of the country harbor little-publicized phenomena that speak to the nature lover. All of us recall spots where memories linger, but with a new visit, could rejuvenate the mind, heart, and eye. We could do as Hedberg did: deliberately explore the plain and simple in its quiet yield to the new, the fast, and the easy.

Some of the communities through which Hedberg drove looked vibrant and engaged with the 21st century. Others appeared neglected, sadly diminished by the superhighway that first took away employment, then oncoming generations.

"I got information even from the dilapidated buildings," he said; as an artist, he found the aging forms fit subjects for later paintings. He called the sequence a patchwork—the energetic alternating with the fading away.

The artist admits to a liking for urban subject matter and man-made objects, but he wants "nature’s stamp on them."

His lifelong interest in painting reached a milestone about two years ago when he realized he needed both representation and abstraction in his work. "I needed the contrast" and "decided to integrate the two." A relatively casual painting of a tree happened to have the qualities for which he was striving, and it inadvertently bridged the two approaches. He accepted the challenge, and his subsequent work demonstrates the success of the fusion.

A viewer looking with a serious eye and mind at Hedberg’s paintings gets a message immediately. This artist sees it all—the evenness and the precision needed for the daily grind, and all of it softened by nature’s veiling, with subtly colored atmospheres, the villages where friendly people live their roles.

His realistic structures bring the viewer unabashedly into the community, onto the farm, or far down a fishing pier. Then, surrounding the subject in a loose, impressionistic haze, the artist removes each into the pictorial world and thus into that of the imagination.

Lightly tinged blue-gray fog encloses a tied-up boat. Late afternoon mists hover around a solitary tree. The tints and handling of these atmospheres would bring raves from an ardent Turner devotee. These are some of the experiences—with light and with nature’s touch—that we miss when we take the superhighways.

Hedberg’s work will be on exhibition the month of September at the Glave Kocen Gallery, opening Sept. 3. "I wanted to bring the viewer in," he says; his video at the show will illustrate his involvement with the people and places on the trip. He intended "to do more than just two dimensions." He interviewed many people in their environments, and his footage from the trip will "give the experience," rather than serving as a chronological narrative.

Call the gallery at 358-1990. FP