Three-Day-Only Pop-Up Exhibition Coming to Bellingham August 1-3
At Access for All Free First Friday on August 1, the first-floor art gallery inside the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher building will be transformed by Music, Shadow, and Light for a one-weekend-only pop-up exhibition called Silhouettes & Sound. Created by artist Heather Dawn Sparks and the Femme Metal Collective, the space will come alive with large-scale, intricately cut metal and paper sculptures. Slithering snakes, looming spiders, and feisty foxes will come alive with cast shadows and splashes of projected light and color.
Beyond the visual feast, Free First Friday guests will be able to create their own large-scale shadow art projections in the pop-up Shadow Sail Theatre, relax in the gallery to draw or sketch, or simply immerse themselves in the space.
Museum guests are invited to stay through the evening on August 1 and move to live beats from DJs Radiant Heat and Lotus Drops from 6 – 8:30 pm.
On Free First Fridays, the Whatcom Museum offers free admission, free programming, and extended hours until 9 pm.
The pop-up exhibition will only be on view through Sunday, August 3, and is included with museum admission Saturday, August 2 and Sunday, August 3. The one-weekend-only experience celebrates Heather Dawn Sparks and the Femme Metal Collective as they embark on the creation of a large-scale installation along the exterior east wall of the Lightcatcher building later this year. This new, illuminated public art piece, titled Nocturnal Lanterns, is generously funded by a City of Bellingham Downtown Activation and Beautification grant. Guests at the Whatcom Museum August 1-3 will get a sneak peek of what’s to come while experiencing a space transformed by light, shape, and sound.
Sparks has created installations in more than six countries, 30 cities, and 40+ global art events. They are currently represented by the ArtsWA Public Artist Roster and the City of Seattle Public Art Roster, and they are a feature artist for Portland Winter Light Festival’s Sparking Creativity public arts program. In 2023, Sparks started a Femme Metal Collective to share skills with other femme and trans artists navigating obstacles of gender binary and skill-exclusion in the metal art industry.
Sparks is based in Lookout Arts Quarry, a 61-acre industrial rock quarry-turned-permaculture event center in the Nuwaha territories, Skagit Valley, WA. As a lead builder within an arts community, Sparks consistently collaborates with a diverse team of innovators in dedication to community-engaged practices and environmental sustainability.'
About the Whatcom Museum
The Whatcom Museum was founded in 1941 and overlooks Washington State’s Bellingham Bay. Notable projects have included the 2019 retrospective exhibition WANTED: Ed Bereal for Disturbing the Peace, featured in The New York Times; the award-winning, co-curated exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, which traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2023; and Verdant: French Masterworks from the National Gallery of Art.
Also on view are El velo exquisito / The Exquisite Veil: Works by Alfredo Arreguín; Not the Whole Picture, Garth Amundson & Pierre Gour; and A Pull to the Pacific: West Coast Lithography of the New Deal Era. Opening August 16 are Mary Ann Peters’ myself inside your story and Meander by Io Palmer. The Whatcom Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Whatcom Museum campus in downtown Bellingham includes three buildings: the Lightcatcher, Old City Hall, and Old Fire Station No. 1. For more information about exhibitions and admission, visit whatcommuseum.org.
