Arts & Entertainment Community

Chalk the Harbor will be chock-full of new fun

Posted on August 14th, 2025 By: Charlee Glock-Jackson

Grab some chalk and head to the sidewalk along Harborview Drive for the annual Chalk the Harbor celebration Saturday, Aug. 16.

This year, in addition to embellishing the downtown sidewalk with colorful art, folks can also enjoy live music, watch art-making demonstrations, get their faces painted, stroll through Art Walk sites and participate in creative activities like painting wooden fish to add to a “Community Currents” mural.

The Gig Harbor Downtown Waterfront Alliance organizes Chalk the Harbor. It’s been a summertime staple since at least 2010, when it was known as “Chalk the Walk.”

Before this year, Chalk the Harbor was in mid-July, in conjunction with the Peninsula Art League’s Summer Art Festival on Judson Street. PAL moved the festival to Sehmel Park in 2024.

Events planned for this year celebrate the community’s creative spirit with free, family-friendly activities from one end of downtown to the other.

A day of creativity

Pick up a free bucket of colored chalk at Donkey Creek Park or Skansie Park between 9 a.m. and noon. The parks are also where you can get wooden fish to decorate and add to a community mural. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional artist or just like to dabble and doodle – everyone is welcome to participate.

If you’re feeling especially artistic (and competitive) join the chalk-art contest in one of several categories: youth, tens, families, adults or groups. Post a photo of your finished masterpiece by 3 p.m. Get complete details at the registration sites.

Chalk the Harbor 2024

Images from the 2024 Chalk the Harbor

Organizers are also making this year’s event a kind of treasure hunt. Pick up a passport at the information booth at Skansie Park or Donkey Creek Park, have your passport stamped at each Art Walk location and turn it in at Skansie Park and you could be rewarded with a prize.

Art demonstrations

Downtown shops, restaurants and galleries will display original art, along with art-making demonstrations, hands-on activities and live music. Artists will give demonstrations and people can try their hands at making soaps, candles, pressed-flower artworks and temporary tattoos.

At the Skansie Park pavilion, Mayor Mary Barber will weave colorful towels on her four-harness counterbalance loom. The loom was built more than 100 years ago by her great aunt, who taught Barber how to weave. Barber has a supply of different color yarns that passers-by can select to be added to the piece, and she’ll demonstrate several different patterns and weaving techniques as she works.

Live music

Bend, a band from Bremerton, will play at Skansie Park from 10 a.m. to noon. From 12:30 to 2 p.m., it’s KC and the Sound, a band made up of local school teachers. At Curated, Stevenson Brooks will provide the tunes from 2-to-5 p.m.

School of fish mural

Event-goers can paint wooden fish to add to a “Community Currents” mural. Pick up a blank fish and information at Skansie Park, then embellish it. Each fish will become part of a mural that will be installed at a soon-to-be-announced waterfront location, according to Clare Dunis of the Waterfront Alliance.

Pick up a wooden fish at Skansie Park during Chalk the Harbor; then decorate the fish so it can be part of a community-created mural. Clare Dunis of the Gig Harbor Downtown Waterfront Alliance created this example. (Photo by Clare Dunis)

No-chalk zones

Almost every part of the sidewalk along Harborview Drive is a canvas for chalk art. But organizers established a few no-chalk zones:

Skansie Park Pavilion
The narrow sidewalk between Skansie Park and the Fly Shop
The sidewalk area near the three-way intersection
The patio (upper courtyard) at the Threshold Building (Russell Building)
The viewing area beyond the gates at the Threshold Building

Click here for an Art Walk map and other Chalk the Harbor details.