Western Students Present Proposals to City Council for Bellingham Waterfront Artwork

Bellingham residents have been pondering what the city’s new waterfront would look like ever since the day the Georgia Pacific mill closed in 2007, and a group of 39 Western Washington University students and faculty in the WWU Art Department recently presented their concepts of what the site could be like from a public-art perspective.

In collaboration with the City of Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department, six student teams in Werner Klotz’s History of Site Specific Art class presented their ideas on public art concepts for the future Whatcom Waterway Park on March 10 in the Council Chambers at City Hall.

As part of Klotz's course, the students were asked to develop concepts for the future waterfront park that would reflect the history of the former Georgia Pacific site, as well as foster a sense of place in Bellingham's new waterfront district. 

Klotz and Bellingham Parks and Recreation Director Leslie Bryson said that they strongly believe that this project can be an exciting, professional learning opportunity for Klotz’s current students, and for future Western students as well.      

“All six of the teams came up with their own spectacular ideas for the park. I am very proud of the students and their work,” said Klotz.

Mikah Washburn of Vancouver was one of the students who worked on the challenging project.

“Once we started discussing ideas and figuring out common things that we thought were really interesting and would make for a strong artwork we became quite passionate and really driven as a group to make a mature and well developed artwork proposal that we wanted to see made a reality,” Washburn said.

Washburn said that while presenting such a proposal to city council was certainly not without its stresses, there were also huge gains from doing so.

“It's a sort of intimidating position to be in, presenting an idea that we have personal investment in to a crowd – to City Council no less. But in that way it was also exhilarating and wonderful experience for our careers down the road as artists and historians who have to articulate and defend our artworks and theses regularly,” Washburn said.

Another student, Renee Cheesman of Ferndale, said the property’s rich history, combined with the developer’s wish to have that history integrated into the public-art spaces, presented challenges to the design teams.

“Interviews with residents suggested to me that many visitors weren’t really interested in attending too much to the past, but wanted a park that would be an exciting destination. As a team, we tried to weigh the public voice and the vision of the developers,” she said.

Washburn agreed, and looked forward to seeing what comes of the project.

“The ball is really in the city's court now, they have to decide which artworks they feel would be successful in the park,” Washburn said.

This is not the first time Klotz has brought Western students together for public work.  Last March, Klotz’s class presented art ideas for the planned Cornwall Beach Park.

Klotz is an internationally known installation artist, specializing in public art. He has major permanent installations at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport, Staten Island Ferry, in New York City, San Francisco and commissions in Germany and Italy.

For more information, contact Werner Klotz, Western’s College of Fine and Performing Arts instructor, at (360) 224-2657 or Werner.Klotz@wwu.edu; or Julia Burns, Planner at the City of Bellingham’s Parks and Recreation Department, at jsburns@cob.org or (360) 778-7013.