The city of Blaine’s downtown mural project secured its first mural location on the side of North Whatcom Law’s building at 289 H Street. After months of outreach to businesses, the city will soon begin efforts to find an artist.
The city’s initial goal when it started the project last spring was to have three murals downtown, but has only found one business that will allow a mural on the side of its building.
“This will be our pilot mural,” said Stacie Pratschner, the city’s community development services director. “We may eventually make more once it’s successful.”
The city will soon release a request for mural artists in The Northern Light, Pratschner said. After an artist is commissioned, they will be expected to produce three potential murals for the public to vote on.
The murals will promote the city’s marketing program, Blaine by the Sea, which would highlight the city’s maritime history. Mural art could include tributes to the Alaska Packers Association, old downtown Blaine and the U.S./Canada border.
Blaine City Council unanimously voted last March to create an adhoc arts commission to oversee installation of the murals. At the time, they anticipated the murals to be decorating downtown Blaine by May 2022, but Pratschner said the process has been delayed because of difficulty finding locations for the murals.
“It’s not likely to be done by May,” Pratschner said. “When we first put the resolution together, we had envisioned things moving a lot faster than they have. We’re going to release qualifications to find artists, and we’re looking at later this year before we do anything.”
She said the mural project is important to fulfill the city’s tourism plan, and that it’s exciting and pragmatic.
“Updates to the tourism plan were to install publicly-funded murals,” Pratschner said. “We want to spur economic growth in Blaine.”
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