Mural nearly complete along Lakeway Drive heading into downtown Bellingham
Bellingham’s de facto front door is getting a fresh coat of paint in the form of a mural on both sides of the Lakeway Drive underpass below Interstate 5, the primary route to downtown for many drivers — local residents and tourists alike.
Denver-based street artists Jaime Molina and Pedro Barrios have been painting their mural since early August and are nearly done. The north wall of the overpass has an ocean theme for drivers heading toward the waterfront, and the south side has a mountain theme for those heading inland.
It’s part of the city’s recent push to create “Instagram-worthy opportunities,” with projects valued at nearly $1 million being planned over the next three years, according previous Bellingham Herald reporting. Money will be coming from the general fund and the lodging tax that the city charges for hotel stays. A total of $90,000 was allocated last year for the Lakeway project.
Molina called the untitled Lakeway Drive mural an “abstract landscape” in an interview Tuesday as he worked on the narrow sidewalk with traffic whizzing past.
“Our work is as much about color as it is the story. That’s where we love to have fun. We love playing with color and mixing color. It’s a way to engage with the viewer,” he said.
Dozens of gallon- and quart-containers of house paint were spread on a drop cloth along the sidewalk, with orange traffic cones to alert drivers. They have five-gallon buckets of water to rinse their brushes and a mechanical lift and ladders to reach the high places along the concrete structure. Everything has to be brought to the site and removed daily. Before they started painting the mural, the city scrubbed the concrete clean, filled cracks and cleared it of moss and other vegetation.
It took them 11 days to paint the north side of the underpass, and it was looking like a full two weeks for the south side, Molina said.
House paint will last longer than the spray paint often used in murals — 10 years or more, he said.
As Molina discussed his work, some drivers were honking, and others shouted things like “Nice work!” and other words of encouragement.
“Every site has different challenges, as opposed to doing art in a studio. When you’re outside, there are so many variables. People have stopped (their cars) to ask questions and I try to talk fast so we don’t cause an accident,” Molina said.
Their mural features a series of people’s faces with their eyes closed, their expressions serene and calm.
“It gets people to ask questions — what is going on? What are they thinking? Are the happy? Are they sleeping?” Molina said.
In July 2024, when the City Council voted unanimously to fund the series of projects, Councilmember Lisa Anderson highlighted the Lakeway underpass.
“One of the things I am most excited about is the mural for the Lakeway underpass,” Anderson said during a committee discussion. “It is such a blighted-looking area and very prone to graffiti. A lot of people coming into downtown (from Interstate 5) will off-ramp at that intersection. It’s such a high-traffic area. I think some beautification on that underpass is much-needed.”
More than 23,000 drivers use that part of Lakeway every day, according to 2023 traffic data from the city. It’s Bellingham’s second-busiest street, after Meridian Street near Bellis Fair mall.
Molina said that the Lakeway underpass “was kind of dreary (but) the whole area is just bursting with so much life. It’s really nice to add some color.”
