Check out the city of Bellingham’s new sculpture at its Pacific Street facility
The city of Bellingham recently installed a massive new sculpture at its Pacific Street Operations Center. Located in the lobby of the building, the art piece, titled “Between The Ocean And The Sky,” is constructed of 547 interconnected glazed stoneware ceramic pieces throughout the building’s interior.
Inspired by the Nooksack River, the piece was built specifically for the operations center, and it demonstrates Bellingham’s positioning between mountains and sea, according to artist Clayton Binkley. The artwork was assembled in Binkley’s Seattle studio before being moved to Bellingham and installed over two weeks in November, according Ryan W. Key-Wynne with the city of Bellingham.
“The work that I do is always intended to be sort of experiential,” Binkley said in a video produced by the city of Bellingham. “That’s also why I like to work at large scale, because people can inhabit the work and feel themselves in relation to the work. It becomes a part of the kind of fabric of the world that we are inhabiting.”
The cost of the sculpture is listed at $240,000, and it was funded through the “One Percent for Art” program. Created in 2015, the program requires one percent of eligible capital improvement project costs be spent on artwork for those projects.
“The inclusion of artwork in public places reinforces the city’s status as a regional arts destination, increases quality of life and attracts tourism and visitors to the area,” according to the city of Bellingham website.
The sculpture is part of phase 2 regarding the construction of the operations center, which was opened in May 2023. Phase 2 began in July 2024 and is expected to be completed later this year.
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