‘An exploration’: Massive mural one of many taking over ahead of Noisy Waters festival

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Bellingham is coming to life with new murals all over town this summer ahead of the second annual Noisy Waters Mural Festival.

The largest of Bellingham’s new murals — an ode to the deep sea life that is often unseen just beyond our shores — was finished in June by Bellingham-based artist and muralist Gretchen Leggitt , who is also the co-founder of the Noisy Waters Mural Festival.

“This mural is an exploration — a journey for the viewers to travel under the Pacific Northwest seas,” Leggitt said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald.

The mural — Leggitt said it took her 290 hours to complete over one month — features a kelp forest, salmon and an octopus beneath the surface while a kayaker moves atop the deep sea world.

“(The kayaker) is bringing in the human experience but showing the abundance of life that is surrounding us that we oftentimes overlook,” Leggitt said.

Leggitt said the mural is meant to raise awareness about threatened ocean ecosystems and marine biodiversity. She said the mural is also an opportunity to highlight the vital role kelp forests play in mitigating climate change.

A complex, influential feat

The mural is painted on The Jake, a new housing development on Lincoln Avenue and Samish Way. Leggitt said she hopes her art can help create positive change for the local community by softening the added concrete that comes with mass development and growth.

“The fact that it’s on one of these large new developments that we are seeing pop up everywhere, it just creates this magical unexpected opportunity to step outside of our everyday experience in the city and get sucked into a new natural environment,” Leggitt told The Herald.

The mural is 85 feet tall and about 100 feet wide at the base, viewable from motorists headed southbound on Interstate 5. To accomplish a visual impact that can be appreciated from afar, Leggitt said she needed to focus on including high contrast and bold shapes in the mural.

“When working at that scale, I really need to consider the fact that it’s going to be viewed from a mile away,” Leggitt said.

It’s not Leggitt’s largest mural but she says it’s the most complex with 54 colors.

“This was outside of my comfort zone. It was hands down the most ambitious mural that I’ve ever painted due to the scale,” Leggitt said. “The stylistic approach to it was ambitious for me, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome.”

Leggitt’s murals can be seen across Bellingham, Washington state and the country. Her art often depicts landscapes and images of the environment, ‘encapsulating the energetic movement of the elements and the nuanced geometry of topography,’ according to her website.

As this was Leggitt’s first underwater mural, the artist partnered with Santa Cruz-based artist and muralist Erika Rosendale to help bring the mural to life. Rosendale specializes in painting underwater creatures and also received the 1st Place Voters Choice Award at the 2023 Noisy Waters Mural Festival.

Rosendale spent a week of her time working on the mural’s octopus.

“The fact that Erika is such a wildly talented artist really gave me the confidence to put my work in another artist’s hands and have faith that they could do an outstanding job,” Leggitt said. “It’s been a joy getting to collaborate with somebody I admire so much.”

A sea of murals ahead of the festival

Rosendale is one of several of last year’s Noisy Waters artists who have returned to install additional murals all around Bellingham ahead of this year’s festival.

Artists have painted murals at various locations throughout town:

▪ Dom LaPorte of Ottawa, Canada painted a bird and flowers on the Industrial Credit Union building at 1100 N State Street.

▪ Erika Rosendale of Santa Cruz, California is painting the Natural Systems Design building at 203 W Chestnut Street.

▪ Emily Beaudoin of Calgary, Canada painted the sunflowers on Greene’s Corner at 2208 James Street.

▪ Shogo Ota of Camano Island painted the black and white bird at The Portal Container Village restrooms along Bellingham’s waterfront.

The 2024 Noisy Waters Mural Festival is planned for Aug. 16-18 along Bellingham’s waterfront near The Portal Container Village.

More than 20 internationally acclaimed artists will be visiting from around the world including Helsinki, The Netherlands, Brooklyn and San Francisco to participate in a weekend of mural painting, demos, music, parties, education and inspiration.

The festival is dedicated to the Lummi and Nooksack people, highlighting native artists and their work.

Last year’s festival inspired the Indigeversal Collective Mural, a 160-foot-long Bellingham mural project at the corner of Granary Avenue and the Chestnut Street Bridge created by artists representing seven tribes across North America.