Walk into the It's About Time Cultural Arts Center in downtown Ferndale and the first thing you notice is the density of it: handmade jewelry fills the storefront cases, local paintings cover almost every inch of wall space, and glass sculptures catch the light near the entrance. The gallery at the heart of the building rotates exhibitions by artists from across Whatcom County, and a recent show featured two Bellingham artists, Maggie Bates and Erin Libby, whose work arrives from wildly different life trajectories but shares a commitment to vivid, imaginative storytelling.

Maggie Bates: Wildlife, Wonder, and Animated Watercolors

Maggie Bates is 65 years old, grew up in rural Wisconsin, and spent her formative adult years in Alaska, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in illustration from the University of Alaska Anchorage in the 1990s. The wildlife and landscape of Alaska, so distinct yet philosophically similar to the wilder corners of Whatcom County, shaped the vocabulary she still reaches for when she paints.

"I am a person who is always looking for beautiful things," Bates said. "Trying to express beauty, trying to express connection to nature. I enjoy my drawings the most when I am expressing some narrative."

During her time in Alaska, Bates attended illustration workshops in Florida run by Disney animator David Passalaqua Sr., spending time walking the streets of Disney World with a sketchbook and a backpack stuffed with work by her favorite artists. It is an unlikely combination, the Alaskan wilderness and the constructed magic of a theme park, but it surfaces in her paintings, which tend to animate the natural world in ways that feel both grounded and slightly enchanted.

She moved to Bellingham in 2004 and continued developing her style, drawing additional influences from Celtic art, triskele patterns, and the architectural work of Antoni Gaudi, which she studied firsthand in Barcelona. Her personal library is lined with books by Thomas Hart Benton and Egon Schiele, two artists who approach figure and landscape from very different angles. That range shows up in pieces like "Stag," "My House," and "Ravens Roost," which combine physical watercolor with digital animation. Each painting comes paired with a QR code; scan it and the static scene comes alive, with trees swaying and birds crossing the horizon.

The children's book that eventually emerged from a poem she wrote while teaching at a Waldorf summer camp also takes the name "Ravens Roost." Bates tucked the poem away for nearly 20 years before returning to it, eventually publishing the book in 2022. It earned strong reviews from Chanticleer Book Reviews and Kirkus, introducing her work to audiences beyond the gallery circuit. Her paintings, animations, and the book are available through her personal website.

Erin Libby: Nine Decades of Making Art

Erin Libby's story begins a full generation earlier. Born in 1934, she was introduced to art through her mother, a prominent society photographer and portrait painter. By age 8, she had won a scholarship to the Museum School of the Gallery of Fine Art in Columbus, Ohio. By 14, she was showing work at street fairs in Chicago.

"Mama has always had a real talent for channeling her unconscious," said her daughter, Celt Schira. "And of course, it's informed by an entire lifetime of study of art and art history and art technique, and all kinds of media."

Libby trained at the School of Art Institute in Chicago, Mexico City College, and the University of Chicago. By 1966, she had shown her work in Paris, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. She then spent more than three decades working in the toy industry from 1966 to 2003, a career arc that might seem like a detour but that her daughter describes as consistent with a creative sensibility that always found ways to express itself.

Now a Bellingham resident, Libby's work at the recent It's About Time exhibition included a piece titled "A Coterie of Mountebanks," created in collaboration with her daughter Celt Schira. The painting reflects the dreamlike surrealism that has characterized her work across decades: figures that seem to exist slightly outside ordinary logic, scenes that feel simultaneously personal and archetypal.

That Libby, now in her early nineties, is still exhibiting new work in a Whatcom County gallery is itself a kind of statement about what sustained creative practice looks like across a lifetime. Her career spans the postwar American art world, the commercial toy industry, and now the local gallery scene of the Pacific Northwest.

The It's About Time Cultural Arts Center

The It's About Time Cultural Arts Center in Ferndale has built a reputation as one of the more active arts venues in Whatcom County outside of Bellingham proper. The center combines a working gallery with a retail space where local artists sell directly to the public, a model that keeps the organization financially grounded while giving artists a real commercial outlet for their work.

The rotating gallery program is the heart of the operation. By featuring different artists from across the county on a regular schedule, the center functions as a connector, giving artists from Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, and elsewhere a shared venue and a shared audience. The Bates and Libby exhibition, which has now closed, was one of a series of shows that tend to draw visitors from across the county.

Ferndale sits about 10 miles north of Bellingham along Interstate 5, a short drive that is easy to overlook when Bellingham's own arts scene is so active. But the City of Ferndale has invested in its cultural infrastructure over the years, and venues like It's About Time are part of a broader effort to establish an identity for the city that goes beyond its industrial and agricultural roots.

For anyone interested in seeing current work by Whatcom County artists, the center is worth a visit on its own terms. The retail gallery is open year-round and features work by dozens of local artists across a wide range of media, from the jewelry and crafts near the entrance to the paintings and glass sculpture inside. Upcoming exhibitions are posted on the center's website and social media.

Whatcom County's Broader Arts Scene

The stories of Bates and Libby reflect something larger about the arts community in Whatcom County: it tends to attract and retain artists who are serious about their practice over the long term. Bellingham in particular has developed a reputation as a place where artists can afford to live while maintaining access to a genuine creative community, a combination that is increasingly rare in West Coast cities.

Western Washington University's art program has contributed to this ecosystem for decades, and organizations like the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham provide institutional anchors for the regional arts scene. The Whatcom Museum's Lightcatcher building downtown is one of the finest small art museum spaces in the Pacific Northwest, with ongoing exhibitions of both local and nationally recognized artists.

For residents who want to engage with local art beyond the major institutions, venues like It's About Time offer a more immediate connection to working artists. The recent Bates and Libby show is a good example of what those spaces do at their best: pair two artists whose work has nothing obvious in common and let the contrast do the talking. Bates's animated natural narratives and Libby's surrealist collaborations arrived from very different starting points, but both are rooted in decades of disciplined looking and making.

For more on Whatcom County's local culture and community life, explore this guide to another Ferndale gem worth adding to your calendar.