WWU Design students enchant the waterfront for Bellingham's 'Fire & Story' event

Digital drawing of a smiling troll with menacing eyes next to two shadowy humanoid figures amid a snowy night in the woods

Students from our Design department will have their work featured in Fire & Story - a large Bellingham community event. Fire & Story runs January 23 through 25 at Bellingham's Waterfront.

"Fire & Story" is an outdoor festival for sharing and experiencing local culture through multisensory arts and performances. The WWU Department of Design collaborated with Fire & Story creators at Paper Whale, exploring their heritage to create and animate original short visual stories.

The students' animations will be projected onto the historic Tile Tank each night of the festival.

Read the full story and view more of the students' work.

Realistic digital illustration of aurora borealis lights dancing above a mountain by a lake. The lights take on an inverted mountain shape, creating a vertical symmetry throughout the image.
digital sketch of a wolf-like creature's head coming into the image from the top. The creature's jaws are open with sharp teeth surrounding a small red circle in the air.
digitally created scene of a cabin in the snow at night. A reindeer larger than the cabin appears between snowy hills, the same color as the snow
Digital sketch of 3 fantastical creatures beside a fire in the woods, below a crescent moon. One creature is humanoid with 3 eyes. One is humanoid with a goat head, and one in the middle appears to be a dragon

What is Fire & Story

Fire & Story is a family-friendly winter festival brimming with illuminated art installations, roaring fire pits, and captivating performances which include music, storytelling, fire dancing, live metalsmithing, saunas and so much more. This outdoor event celebrates the spirit of winter while embracing the weather. 

Fire & Story Festival is a production of Paper Whale, a Bellingham based non-profit cultural accelerator dedicated to cultivating community in an evolving program of multi-sensory events.

The festival fills the Bellingham Waterfront space. It includes reservable saunas, and four performance entertainment stages:

  • Music stage
  • Lore stage for dances, skill demonstrations and other performance arts
  • Story stage for storytelling, poetry, comedians and more
  • Fable stage for a special late-night performance

Who is Paper Whale

Paper Whale is a non-profit "cultural accelerator" group based in Bellingham. The name Paper Whale is derived from the following:

Paper: Bellingham's Waterfront District was formerly a pulp and tissue mill, where we began.

Whale:  The Blue Whale, in Lummi iconography, represents the “Protector." Paper Whale works to preserve arts & culture in this region so shaped by our connectedness to marine ecology. 

Paper Whale works to acknowledge the original artists of this place and the land itself as we live on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish People, the Lummi and Nooksack Tribes.

What is the Tile Tank?

Image

A cyclist in mid-air over a dirt hill in front of two orange-tiled towers. Behind them, apartment buildings and a forested hill are visible.

Known for its tiled exterior, the Tile Tank is a remnant of Bellingham Waterfront history. From 1926 to 2001, this area was dedicated to a large paper pulp mill. It was owned and operated by Georgia-Pacific from the early 1960's, which was shut down in 2001. The Tile tank, along with digester tanks, an acid ball, some brick buildings and other facilities were part of that pulp mill. The Port of Bellingham has since been working with numerous groups to redevelop the waterfont space to be enjoyed by the community. Much of the pulp mill facilities have been demolished for safety, and some have been kept in tribute to the iconic Bellingham history. Today, the Bellingham Waterfront is a large park with a pump track, playground, food and shops, murals, open gravel spaces and parking.

Learn more about Bellingham's Waterfront history: