The mystery of Grace

Grace is the name given to a steel sculpture of a woman balanced in the Natarajansa pose on a piece of rusted and barnacle encrusted cannery slag in Bellingham Bay. No one seems to know who created her, or put her in the middle of the lagoon, about 70 feet from a boardwalk. She just simply seemed to appear one day in March without permits or permission, her arm gently pointing toward the Salish Sea.

This is not the first time Grace has ‘graced’ a place. Ten years earlier she showed up at a different location along the water, and then one day just as mysteriously disappeared. Today, people hope Grace will remain. It has been a brutal time in our world — a changing climate, a mysterious disease, an ugly and divided response — how nice that something beautiful showed up without permission or fanfare or even the need for acknowledgement.

I had been wanting to get a closer look at Grace, so I rented a kayak at Fairhaven’s Community Boat Center and floated up and around her, struck by the simplicity, the quiet, and the willfulness captured in the piece. I hope she remains there. The place would feel sad without her.