New public art installation added to Sunshine Alley breezeway

Fri­day Harbor’s lat­est pub­lic art instal­la­tion came to life this past Tues­day in the Sun­shine Alley breeze­way between The Bait Shop and the Palace Theater.

There’s a Sto­ry Here repur­pos­es his­toric San Juan Island pho­tographs in the style of so-called exag­ger­a­tion post­cards, a pop­u­lar design approach in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry that added absurd but real­is­tic-look­ing ele­ments to exist­ing images, most often for the pur­pose of pro­mot­ing the supe­ri­or­i­ty of a spe­cif­ic place or local commodity.

Although most of the six post­card pan­els are recent cre­ations, one of the pieces – It’s the Salt Air! by J.A. McCormick – was recent­ly dis­cov­ered by the San Juan His­tor­i­cal Muse­um. It is one of only two known orig­i­nal exag­ger­a­tion post­cards from San Juan County.

There’s a Sto­ry Here is the third out­door exhib­it the Town of Fri­day Har­bor has installed in the Sun­shine Alley breeze­way since 2018. It will remain in place until May of next year.

The Town thanks Kris­tine Brown of Print­onyx for research and graph­ic design; the San Juan His­tor­i­cal Muse­um, the What­com Muse­um, Peg­gy Sue McRae and Jen­nifer Rigg for pho­tographs; and Ali­cia and Jeff Carnevali for use of their build­ing as the installation’s canvas.

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