Tacoma continues to explore its maritime heritage with the return of the Commencement Bay Maritime Fest. Also back for a return engagement is the festival’s art show, featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs on Northwest maritime themes.

 

This year’s art show premiered Aug. 14 and continues through the main festival dates along Foss Waterway on Saturday and Sunday. There are 93 individual pieces on display for the show, most of which are for sale, and some of which were awarded prizes. In all, $800 was awarded to the winning artists.

One of the prize winners was John Rizzotto’s maritime still life, Block, which was painted in oil on canvas. Other works on display include photos by Chuck Murphy including a piece titled in dry dock and old salt a photo composition, works in colored pencil by Christy Camerer, and Going Home, a Chinese ink creation by Patsy Suhr O’Connell. Other entrants range from traditional seascapes to semi-abstract scenes of underwater life to images of landmarks familiar to Northwest residents. These include a painting of the West Point lighthouse, a work set in Tillamook Bay, and another at fisherman’s wharf in Seattle. And of course there are pictures and paintings featuring images of sailing ships and working boats.

The art show has been a feature of the festival since 1999. This is the first year the exhibition can be seen in its new home, the Foss Waterway Seaport’s museum. The museum opened its doors this summer in time for Tacoma’s tall ships event.

But there is still more art to see at the seaport’s Working Waterfront Museum than the art show itself. Sharing the show’s display space, for example, are examples of the boatbuilding art that is also part of Tacoma’s maritime heritage. These include preserved Foss wooden skiffs, as well as a number of Tacoma-built Willits wooden canoes. The Museum complex also includes a working boatbuilding shop where replicas of small boats are set to be built while visitors watch.

 

Also on display is an exhibit of traditional ships in bottles together with the tools used to create them, all of which are the work of local crafter Jeff Simmons. The display includes completed models as well as partially completed models illustrating stages in the building process.

Yet another exhibit with elements of art is a 3,500-foot exhibition on the history of navigation technology. The series of hands-on museum displays includes examples of navigational charts and maps, including ancient Asian forms and unusual stick and shell constructions reflecting ancient Polynesian forms of ocean navigation. The exhibition also features interactive displays that allow visitors to experience first-hand the modern art of maritime navigation.

There is, finally, an artistic aspect to the museum’s warehouse setting. The nonprofit Foss Waterway Seaport facility is housed in the partially renovated Balfour dock building, a longstanding (and still standing) heavy timber warehouse. Visitors can learn about the history of the building, which for many years served as an important grain warehouse on the Tacoma waterfront, through a series of displays and videos.

Of course, there are a variety of other reasons to visit Tacoma’s Maritime Fest this weekend. Other events include port harbor tours, Dragon boat races, a beer garden, a boatbuilding competition, a series of boat rides and boat tours courtesy of the local Sea Scouts, and even train rides.

Some Maritime Fest events are centered at South 4th and Dock St. on the Foss Waterway, while others are based at the Foss Waterway Seaport, 705 Dock St. The Working Waterfront Maritime Museum at the Seaport building is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and weekends from noon to five. Admission is $6 for adults, $3 for children, students and seniors. For more information about the museum call 253.272.2271, or visit www.fosswaterwayseaport.org. To learn more about Maritime Fest 2008, call 253.318.2210.