ICYMI: Senator Murray Announces $11.6 Million in Funding for Washington State Ferries – MORE HERE

Senator Murray: “Like so many in Washington state, ferries are a part of my commute, so I know first-hand just how important it is that they are running on schedule to get people where they need to be.”

***PHOTOS, B-ROLL OF THE EVENT HERE***

Mukilteo, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to tour the Mukilteo Ferry Terminal and discuss recent efforts to modernize and electrify Washington’s ferry system, which is the largest in the nation. Senator Murray highlighted the $11.6 million in funding she recently secured to improve and electrify the Washington State Department of Transportation’s (WSDOT) ferry fleet.

On the tour, Senator Murray and Secretary Buttigieg were joined by Governor Jay Inslee, First Spouse Trudi Inslee, Congressman Rick Larsen (D, WA-02), and Washington State Representative Dave Paul (LD 10). During the tour, they heard from Tulalip Tribes Chairwoman Teri Gobin, Washington Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar, and Washington State Ferries (WSF) Chief of Staff Nicole McIntosh, who spoke about the history of the site, the state-of-the-art terminal—which was crafted with support from Tribes and Native artists—and the importance of making Washington’s ferry fleet more efficient and environmentally sustainable. 

“Like so many in Washington state, ferries are a part of my commute, so I know first-hand just how important it is that they are running on schedule to get people where they need to be,” said Senator Murray. “That’s why, over the years, I’ve made it a priority to secure federal funding to help WSDOT expand and improve their service—most recently to help achieve their goal of electrifying the entire Washington State Ferry system, because, with the largest ferry system in the country, electrifying the transportation industry bit by bit will make a big difference as we work to curb emissions and build a stronger clean energy economy.”

“People understand that transportation means trains, planes and automobiles — it also means ferries, and there are tens of thousands of people a day who really depend on facilities like the Ferry Terminal here in Mukilteo,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Thanks to Senator Murray and Rep. Larsen’s leadership in passing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re investing big to make ferry service cleaner and more efficient with modern electric ferries. This funding is going to make a big difference for ferry commuters across Washington state — and there’s no substitute for seeing it firsthand.”

“It has been incredibly exciting to watch the progress of our efforts to electrify Washington’s ferry system, which is the largest public ferry system in the nation,” said Governor Inslee. “This level of innovation has been possible thanks to the partnership and support of our local and federal partners, and Washington’s stellar congressional delegation.”

“In the Pacific Northwest, ferries are a necessity – not a luxury,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-02), the lead Democrat on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. “Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, states like Washington are making the commitment to cleaner and greener passenger ferry fleets and shoreside infrastructure to reduce pollution, create more jobs, and keep people and the economy moving. I will continue to work with Secretary Buttigieg to fully implement the BIL’s historic provisions to ensure Puget Sound benefits from this movement toward a cleaner and greener transportation network.”

The new Mukilteo Multimodal Ferry Terminal opened in December 2020. It was the first new terminal to open in 40 years and services the second-busiest ferry route in the state—with nearly 4 million passengers each year. Senator Murray helped to secure $4.9 million from the Fiscal Year 2022 spending package to construct an electric charging station on the Clinton side of the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry route through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s Electric or Low-Emitting Ferry Pilot Program and the Passenger Ferry Grant Program.

Senator Murray has long fought to prioritize investments into WSF and ferry systems nationwide. In last year’s spending package, Senator Murray successfully fought to increase investments for the Passenger Ferry Grant Program, including a minimum of $5 million set-aside for low or zero-emission ferries. Senator Murray also helped secure record funding for ferries in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which included $2.5 billion for ferry boats and terminal infrastructure, including $250 million over five years for low or zero emission ferries and more than $17 billion for port and waterway infrastructure. Earlier this year, Senator Murray announced $11.6 million in funding for the improvement and electrification of the WSDOT ferry fleet.

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A story this big needs artwork this big.

For her solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation; b. 1991, Norman, OK) debuted her largest sculptural piece to date, Flag Bearer, a three-stacked figure measuring over 12-feet-tall.

“Watching that be put together with cranes–I kind of had a heart attack, I had to leave the room a couple of times–but it went smooth,” Halfmoon told Forbes.com of the monumental sculpture’s installation. “To watch that be strapped in the air 10-feet above everyone’s head was crazy, but it was awesome.”

The bottom portion of the sculpture alone weighs over 2,000 pounds.

Halfmoon started working big early in her career. At the University of Arkansas where she studied art and cultural anthropology, she had access to a 3-foot kiln, so she made pieces as big as it could hold.

“When I was in those anthropology classes, not only was I learning about my own tribe and our histories, but also about the Olmec heads in Mexico and the Easter Island heads and then not only that, but the earthworks that are in America: Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma, Moundville in Alabama, Serpent Mound in Ohio,” Halfmoon explained. “A lot of those earthworks my ancestors made, Caddo ancestors, especially in the Mississippi region, so I was always interested in large scale works and being a part of that, the idea of community being in those works.”

Halfmoon makes each sculpture by hand using the coil method.

As her career progressed and residencies took her around the country where she had access to increasingly larger and larger kilns, her sculptures became larger and larger as a result. Flag Bearer was made at Cal State University Long Beach which has an 8-foot kiln.

That’s a lot of clay!

Halfmoon made her own clay until doing so became too laborious. She remembers hand producing 400 pounds of clay at a time over two days earlier in her career, an amount she’d use up in a week’s time. Now she orders her material commercial, as much as 2,000 pounds in a single shipment.

Connecting to Caddo

“Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers” is the artist’s first traveling museum exhibition. The title pays tribute to Indigenous women and the matriarchs in Halfmoon’s life, including her mother who works in advocacy for the inclusion of Indigenous history in museum and education programs. All of her sculptures depict female figures in a commanding scale, insisting that Indigenous women be seen and heard.

“That is my experience and I try to stick to what I know and what I can talk about, so as of right now, they have been women,” Halfmoon said.

In that respect, Halfmoon’s sculptures can be read as portraits. Their enormous scale and visual power oppose existing stereotypes and biases, creating new monuments honoring the artist’s Caddo ancestors and traditions, including the elders who taught her ceramic techniques when she was a teenager.

She uses a signature palette of bold and symbolic hues: red, cream and black. The colors reference Caddo pottery traditions; Caddo pottery is black and white. Black connects to the natural clay native to the Red River. The Caddo’s ancestral homelands surrounded the Red River where the present-day borders of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana come together.

Halfmoon often glazes the image of the Red River onto her work; river motifs run throughout, one of many traditional icons she incorporates.

“You’ll see a lot of ‘x’s’ and ‘o’s’ and some of these crosses that represent the four directions and stars on the work that represent imagery I’ve seen on (Caddo) pottery,” Halfmoon said.

That imagery was also prevalent in traditional Caddo tattooing.

Her work, however, is not beholden to the customary.

“I’m super into makeup and fashion symbols and so it’s combining all of these elements together to make a more contemporary body of work that speaks to my personal experiences,” she explained.

Halfmoon’s use of red references the Oklahoma soil, where she continues to live and work, and the blood of murdered Indigenous women.

Rough and Tumble

After absorbing their scale, the surfaces of Halfmoon’s sculptures next confront onlookers. Rough, chunky, ridged, non-precious.

“The human experience is important in my work, I really want viewers to get the sense of what I was going through, to see those human fingerprints in my work is important,” Halfmoon said. “I’ve been drawn to artwork myself you can see that in; I remember when I was young, I went to The Met and saw Van Gogh’s work for the first time in person. They’re so thick and you can see the brushwork and it really pulled me in to that exact moment of when he made that. I was like, ‘wow, I’m here with him. I can see his paint brush stroke marks.’ That really had an effect on me when I was younger.”

Caddo pottery, similarly, has long incorporated visible sgraffito marks–scratch marks–used for incising designs and images into pieces.

“I don’t want them to look machine made, they’re supposed to have imperfections,” Halfmoon added. “They’re supposed to show my personal experience, have that human emotion in them. Having that textured feel was important for me.”

The artist’s glazes, likewise, are untidy.

“I never wanted to spray my glaze; something about still painting on these large-scale surfaces was important to me,” she said. “I also like looseness, I like the loose gesturalness of the glaze in my work, and so to me, they still feel like paintings even though they’re sculptural and they can obviously be experienced in the round.”

Halfmoon credits graffiti artists for influencing her technique, an instantly recognizable tribute.

“Flags of our Mothers” will be on view at the Aldrich through January 7, 2024, and then heads to the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE May 18 to September 14, 2024. Additional locations are being planned, including one, the artist hopes, in Oklahoma.