Tacoma Ocean Fest is this month. Online this year, event hopes to connect people to the sea
Following a postponement from the originally scheduled June 7 event due to COVID-19, Tacoma Ocean Fest will be taking place all-online on Sept. 13. The event will display art, music and dance performances all centered around the ocean.
“This is a really difficult time for our world,” said founding director Rosemary Ponnekanti in a press release. “We are all connected. And right now, people also need joy in their lives. That’s what Ocean Fest is about – inspiring our imagination and empathy through the arts, informing us through science and showing us how to take action. And having fun, even though we can’t gather together.”
One of the first performers will be Dakota Camacho, who will be performing a dance grounded in ancestral lineage (Matao/Chamoru, Ilokano). The thought and work Comacho put into the performance came from a deeply personal place.
“When Rosemary gave me the invitation, I thought about my relationship to the ocean, and it brought up a lot for me,” Camacho said. “I grew up in a family that spent a lot of time in the oceans.”
Camacho wants to address various crises facing the environment head-on by tapping into past wisdom.
“I wanted to offer a prayer that we can right our relationship with the elements,” Camacho said. “It’s pretty clear to me that indigenous cultures have deep wisdom about being in alignment with the earth and with that which gives us life. I’m thinking about the wildfires that are raging right now, the climate crisis, all of these different things that are telling us we need to right our relationship with the earth.”
In addition to performing a dance, Camacho created a score which weaves in historic voices discussing impacts of U.S. militarization, recent news clips about military conflict with native communities, and ancestral songs.
Camacho’s performance can be seen at 10:30 a.m. the day of the festival.
Lourdes Jackson, an artist and muralist, will be showing a large piece a few hours later at 2:30 p.m.
Jackson’s work will be familiar to anyone who has seen the street mural on 11th Street in Tacoma.
“That was a mural that was commissioned by me in 2018. It just so happened to fall right around the time my daughter’s birthday was, so, for one of her birthday presents, I wanted to depict her as a superhero,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s work represents not just a local connection but also proved to be salvation for the artist in a tough time.
“I’m a Tacoma kid. My life was totally different prior to art. I mean, I’ve been drawing all my life and just doing what I guess kids do. Doodling around, drawing cartoon characters and stuff. But I was a troubled kid, so I’ve been to prison a couple times,” Jackson said. “My daughter was the person who saved me from going to prison a third time and helped me get out of that lifestyle. She was the one who helped me focus on my art work. That mural was actually the second mural I’ve ever done. It was a really great opportunity for me to showcase my work but at the same time show my daughter that I love her and put her face on a street that I grew up in.”
While Jackson has experience with big murals, the piece for Ocean Fest is something the artist has never undertaken before.
“What I’m working on is a three-piece triptych that’s going to depict the relationship between ocean life and humans,” Jackson said. “Instead of doing it on canvas, like I do on a regular painting, I’m going to do it on organza, which is like a see through fabric that comes in different colors. As I layer the fabrics on top of each other it will create the different depths of the ocean.
“It’s going to be one of the biggest pieces that I’ve ever done.”
Jackson hopes to blow audiences away with its scale.
“I want it to be a very, very breathtaking piece,” Jackson said. “In terms of when you see it, I want you to have a lot to look at. I want it to be something where your eyes wander from part to part.”
Following Jackson are a series of photographers.
First is Dean Burke, who will be conducting a livestream at 3:30 p.m.
“It’s a diversity of photos, a mix of things I see when I’m out. I’m generally on the water three to six days a week depending on the season,” Burke said. “The theme is that we have access to this water now, and we have access to have experiences in these waters that had been robbed from us for a pretty long time, for a number of decades here.”
The livestream is a first for Burke.
“I’m kind of curious to see how the process goes,” Burke said. “Hopefully the images will stay up long enough at the Seaport.”
Burke won’t be alone in displaying photos. Fergus Hyke will be going on an hour later at 4:30 p.m.
“I have been taking pictures along the Tacoma waterfront, on the water, around the water for almost a decade now,” Hyke said. “I’ve probably taken more scenic and landscape images just from living so close to the waterfront and developing a sense of pride for Tacoma. I’ve lived here most of my life, so it just seemed like a natural fit.”
Hyke is driven by a desire to give Tacoma more recognition in the photography scene.
“When I first started shooting the waterfront area, I had been seeing a lot of photographers shooting Seattle and a lot of areas outside of Tacoma. I just thought it was time to say, ‘Hey, let’s showcase the place where I live,’” Hyke said.
Each moment Hyke captures has a story behind it.
“I’ve got a panoramic that I’ll be showing. It’s a fun panoramic only from the standpoint that it was by pure circumstance and luck that I actually got the shot,” Hyke said. “It was through the use of a borrowed camera. I ended up taking a picture that has still been the most requested image I have ever taken from a landscape perspective in Tacoma.”
In addition to the panoramic, Hyke has a series of candid images he hopes will have a positive impact on audiences.
“The other images are simply images of life here in the South Sound around the water,” Hyke said. “If that image changes their life in a positive way, then that image holds more value beyond just something that I like.
“We’re connected to the water, we’re connected to our home, so let’s take care of it.”
Ocean Fest Info
▪ When: Sept. 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
▪ What: Artists, musicians, dancers and more showing their work
▪ Where: All performances will be available to watch www.tacomaoceanfest.org.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
