Arts & Entertainment Community
Waterfront Alliance floats new community art project
Gig Harbor might get a bit of a lift, if the city green-lights the Gig Harbor Downtown Waterfront Alliance’s new, semi-permanent community art installation: a line of painted buoys strung along ropes onto which community members can attach charms.
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The Parks Commission unanimously voted at its July 1 meeting to recommend the city approve the project, proposed for the city’s Ancich Waterfront Park. The alliance’s executive director, Claire Dunis, told commissioners that the organization decided to pitch an annual community art installation after the success of last year’s Community Currents piece. That installation, located outside Direction Apparel on Harborview Drive, features more than 700 colorful wooden fish, all painted by community members.
An AI-generated image of what the art installation could look like provided by the Gig Harbor Downtown Waterfront Alliance.
The buoy project would debut at Chalk the Harbor on Aug. 15, which the Waterfront Alliance hosts. Dunis showed the commissioners an AI-generated mock-up of the plan and said the alliance has been working with new-in-town artist, Trisha Radosavljevic, who recently set up shop as Maeberry Design in the old Green Harbor Pets location on Soundview Drive. Using the studio’s laser machine and paint, people could choose the design and color of the charms they would hang from the installation.
“We would probably limit the color or the color palette on some of these items, so it feels nice and cohesive as well,” Dunis said, adding that people could choose from “iconic” designs, like lighthouses, anchors, seagulls, and perhaps fish scales. Two community members volunteered 30 feet of old fishing line and buoys for the project.
Because the art installation is meant to be semi-permanent, and the wood will degrade on its own, commission Chair Louise Tieman suggested asking city parks staff to check on the installation in the course of their normal parks care duties to make sure the lines are still in place.