A glance at Evan Orellana’s Instagram, @long_river_designs, is a dive into archetypal South Florida life: surf scenes, an alligator wrestler, a swamp monster, and any number of exuberantly made characters proclaiming “you’ve surfed worse” with resigned good cheer.
A surfer since college, the PureHoney artist of the month found some of his first collectors for this visual menagerie in the perfect place. “I did one little market at a surf club,” Orellana says. “I always attend — but this time I popped up with some of my art and my own tent, and people loved it.”
Arriving casually on his local art scene with self-taught mixed-media and woodblock prints fits with Orellana’s coastal and community DIY ethos. He is regional manager for the Surfrider Foundation, East Coast Florida and Puerto Rico chapters. When he’s not illustrating surf life, Orellana is working to protect it by documenting beach erosion, fighting for public shoreline access and clean water, and lobbying lawmakers to act. He also runs the Delray Surf Club, which puts on meetups and events including the annual Surf Swap Festival & Flea in West Palm’s Warehouse District.
The practice behind Orellana’s art is similarly aligned: He gets supplies at Resource Depot, the long-running nonprofit creative reuse outlet in West Palm Beach, and he says the collector relationships he establishes selling his work at surfer meetups and elsewhere are at least as important to him as the transactions.
While Orellana sells under the Long River name, this is not a brand story. It’s a process-over-product saga that emphasizes the long game in lieu of visual trends. “I had been doing digital art, messing around with that. But then I went to Resource Depot,” Orellana says, “and they just happened to have this architectural paper vellum, a very nice drawing pad, and old-school xylene ad markers — the ones that really smell.
“There’s something about when you get a nice pair of markers and paper,” Orellana continues. “I started doing the same stuff I would do on the iPad, but by hand.”
More recently he started bringing his woodworking designs to shows. “My first market was the 2023 holiday market at Island Water Sports in Deerfield Beach,” Orellana says. “They let me do a pop-up, and it worked out really well.”
His newest project is a print series entitled Paradise Awaits. “It focuses on the idea of Florida as a tropical paradise,” Orellana says. “People want to be here, but it creates problems. There’s that whole Catch-22 of what you get: Enjoying something, but then you end up ruining it. You can’t help it.”
Paradise Awaits depicts an imaginary setting to embody the love-it-to-death dilemma. “I work with nature and Florida for my conservation job, so I decided to do something cool with the culture and the coastal lifestyle,” Orellana says. “I was like, okay, it’s going to be a fake Florida town that has a little bit of every outdoor vibe.”
Employing what he calls “old Florida pop art style,” Orellana mixes woodblock printing with found materials and retro typefaces like Googie and Art Deco. Many of his prints depict beach life from a surfer’s perspective. “I surf every day if I can,” he says.
While it is at events such as the Surf Swap where Orellana displays and sells most of his work, he has sights set on a gallery show — “where I can tell a story through art,” he says. South Florida gallery goers might not be aware that they’ve already seen Orellana’s handiwork in a museum setting.
“At the Sandoway Discovery Center in Delray, all the exhibition signage is my design,” he says. “I got to make graphics, mount things, and create exhibit flow. Before I worked there, I walked in, and there was nothing on the walls. Or, someone laminated a piece of printer paper and put that up. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if one day I could remake this place?”
Whether he’s redecorating a museum, restoring beaches, or building a little paradise print by print, Orellana wants to better his surroundings and encourage others to do likewise. “I’m a big believer in, no matter what, every day, make something, draw something, doodle, be creative,” he says.
Visit Evan Orellana @long_river_designs on Instagram ~ Kelli Bodle
