Arts & Entertainment Business Community

With Maví closure, Gig Harbor down to four galleries

It was not an easy decision to close Maví, the contemporary fine arts gallery Liz Ashe and her mother, Mavi Ashe, co-ran until late last year.

“Not to go into too many details, but my mother had a massive health scare, and that became the dominant feature for her and I to deal with,” Liz Ashe said in January. “Things are going well, but right now, she needs to focus on her health.”

I’d called her because Maví quietly closed the doors of its small space along Harborview Drive in late December, bringing the city’s total gallery count down to four.

But all is not lost.

Maví’s old location along Harborview, seen here on April 13, 2025. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

New Mavi on the horizon

When I caught up again with Ashe this month, she said that not only has her mother overcome her illness, but they are on track to build a new gallery in a vacant lot they own on Soundview Drive. They have plans for the new location that the old space couldn’t accommodate  — things like artist talks and partnerships with museums and nearby arts centers. The idea is to “get more people in the door who are just not casually walking by and realize, ‘Oh, we’re open.’”

“I’m trying to create a space that will foster more intentional visitors, which also fosters people to be more serious collectors, I feel,” Ashe said. “It gives them more information about the work that artists are passionate about making.”

Ashe also said the new Soundview location will allow her to do what she wanted to do in the Harborview space: Host artists-in-residence. Because of the speed with which the original Maví space opened, she was unable to get that off the ground, as local artists had started applying to have their pieces shown in the gallery.

“People like seeing artists making work and doing their work and being able to talk about it without it being a pressure of a reception,” Ashe said of artist residencies, “because people on both ends can be nervous and talking [at receptions or openings], or you can only talk so much before you feel like you’re just exhausted from talking to another person who hasn’t had an opportunity before to get to know your work. So that’s what we’re thinking. Making a more intentional, more layered space.”

Dwindling gallery scene

But 2027, when the Ashes plan to open the new Mavi, feels an awfully long way off for a city whose arts community still feels the impacts of the loss of longtime fine arts gallery, Gallery Row.

The 34-year-old Gallery Row closed in January 2024, due in part to steep rent increases at the hands of John and Luke Xitco. The fraternal real estate partners bought a swath of storefront real estate following the death of the properties’ former landlord. The brothers have also acquired other pieces of commercial property throughout Gig Harbor.

While 2027 will come, this still leaves Gig Harbor with a small number of fine arts galleries.

Unmissable under a banner proudly proclaiming its four decades of existence, Ebb Tide co-op gallery stands along the main drag across the street from Waters Edge Gallery & Framery.

A few skips of the crow away from Ebb Tide and Waters Edge, is nestled Birdnest Gallery & Framing just up off Pioneer Way, on Tarabochia Street. A space away from where Maví stood is the Woodstock Gift Gallery, set back from Harborview drive behind a wrought iron gate.

“We were so disappointed when Gallery Row closed,” Ebb Tide member Bill Wachtler said in a virtual call in January.

“Absolutely,” fellow Ebb Tide artist Chuck Flewelling said, nodding.

Hopes to revive ArtWalk

When a handful of local artists revived Gig Harbor’s Art Walk in 2023, Gallery Row was still open — and it made a difference, Flewelling said.

“We had a lot of success with that, and now, with Maví being gone, too, it’s almost just [Ebb Tide],” he said. “You can’t have an art walk and go, ‘Okay, stand in front of our store. That’s the ArtWalk!’”

ArtWalk ended prematurely last year for this very reason.

“We’re waiting for more art establishments to come back into the area, and then revive that,” Flewelling said of ArtWalk. “That idea is not dead. It is just on the shelf, waiting for other participants.”

But, in the meantime, just because ArtWalk is awaiting newcomers doesn’t mean that the art scene is completely dead.

In addition to belonging to Ebb Tide, Flewelling and Wachtler both belong to Peninsula Art League, or PAL (disclaimer: I do, too). The local art organization hosts talks and workshops, and last year partnered with PenMet Parks. The partnership has yielded new spaces to display art and hold PAL’s annual summer festival. Membership has significantly grown over the last couple years, too, averaging four to five new members a month as of September 2024, according to former PAL President Colette Smith in an interview this past September.

Economic loss

Ebb Tide is also accepting applications for artists to become part of the co-op gallery.

But still, arts happenings don’t necessarily translate into art galleries — and this is an overall economic loss for the city, Wachtler said.

“The more galleries and fine art galleries,” Wachtler said, “the better. [Having more gallery businesses] helps everyone. … I think, to some degree, it functions as [part of] what is available for tourism. The more businesses that the city is able to bring in, we’re going to get more traffic and interest there.”