PORT ANGELES — This weekend, Port Angeles will be awash in art as the city celebrates its first West by Northwest Mural Festival.
From noon to 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday, people will have an opportunity to watch three muralists paint two murals at The Hub in downtown Port Angeles. The final products will be displayed on downtown buildings.
During that time, the muralists will give presentations to local art classes and any interested community members. All of the festival activities are free to attend.
This first festival is more of an initiative meant to test the concept of a local mural festival and get buy-in from the community, Port Angeles Waterfront District (PAWD) Executive Director Sam Grello said.
Murals have a long, important history in Port Angeles, Grello told the Port Angeles City council earlier this month. Currently, 12 murals form the basis of a self-guided Port Angeles Art Mural Trail.
“There’s a lot of pride for them in our town,” Grello said.
However, with some of the connected buildings for sale, the future of these murals may be in flux.
“If we want to maintain murals in the community, we need to start looking at that actively,” Grello said.
That is one goal for this weekend, which will kickstart the creation of five new murals, each roughly 96 square feet. Although artists will start the murals this month, they likely won’t be completed until the end of May and installed over the summer, Grello said.
One mural will be placed on the west wall of the Easy Pawn shop, above Kindred Collective. The other one will be placed at Studio Bob, along the top of the wall that faces the alley.
Details for the other three murals are still being determined, Grello said.
To orchestrate the event, the PAWD had muralists and wall owners submit applications to either paint or host a mural. It then acted as a “mural broker” between the parties, trying to match the artist to the location.
The final products will be displayed for a minimum of five years, with the PAWD and the wall owner sharing maintenance during that time.
Each one of the murals will cost the PAWD about $5,000; the wall owners will pay $500 of that cost, allowing them to host the mural.
Given the high cost of public art, Grello said the festival is a way of beautifying the area without requiring building owners to make massive investments.
Although this will be the festival’s first year, Grello said the PAWD received more than 50 muralist applications, with about half being local and the rest being from the Seattle area.
The five muralists who will be creating art are Seattle’s Drew Mortenson, Port Townsend’s Burl Norville and Port Angeles’ Todd Fischer, Baillieu Lewis and Brady Black.
Grello said the theme the murals will be exploring is “who is Port Angeles?”
“Port Angeles is in a moment of great change,” Grello said. “This is a really nice opportunity for artists in the community to say, ‘This is what I think of Port Angeles.’”
Grello said he hopes the festival will renew community pride and start a snowball of future murals in the community.
“We’re hoping to just get the ball started to roll, and hoping to see more independent murals going up,” he said. “This stuff can be contagious, so we want it to catch.”
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
