creative uplift
Poulsbo artists team up to elevate street art and spread joy
Words by Alorie Gilbert
Photos: Logan Weston
Cory Bennett’s art is a lot like his personality: full of color, warmth, energy, dynamic layers and influences. With a style he describes as “iconic neo-pop,” the Poulsbo-based artist merges pop themes and figures with urban street vibes and found media. His canvases and murals have an instant appeal, landing him in recent exhibits at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art and the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle (not to mention the cover of this issue!). They also convey a hint of glamor, which Bennett, 37, attributes to his years growing up in Las Vegas and living in Southern California, where he got his start as an artist.
A move to Poulsbo in 2016 with his wife, who grew up in Kitsap County, has taken him in new artistic directions, in cluding a growing number of collaborative public art projects here and across Washington. The latest commission, which kicked off this spring, is for the Quincy Square project on Bremerton’s 4th Street. Bennett is teaming up with fellow Poulsbo artists and friends Josh Fisher and Jefté Sanchez to create interpretative outdoor signage that honors music legend and former Bremertonian Quincy Jones as well as the city’s Black history. The result will be six vinyl-wrapped columns that weave together storytelling, history, graphics and art.
Bennett and Fisher are close friends and started collaborating artistically in 2018, when the City of Poulsbo commissioned them to paint a mural on a neglected public works building at Centennial Park. The remarkable thing about the project was the participation of over 100 locals, including many school kids, who showed up at the artists’ invitation and added words, handprints and other embellishments to the mural. The large turnout was a surprise, but Bennett and Fisher rolled with it, engaging the community in their creative process without a lot of parameters. “It’s by far the most impactful work I’ve done,” Bennett said. “No one has tagged or defaced it, because the community has ownership in it.”
Bennett loves to include kids, especially his daughter Evalyn (pictured) and son Bennett, in his creative process. (Photo: Joe Kunesh)
Inviting public participation was so rewarding, the pair did it again in 2021 with a mural for the City of Friday Harbor on a 300-foot wall across the street from the mayor’s house (no pressure!). Now it’s the modus operandi for all the murals they do together. As fathers of young tykes, they especially enjoy involving kids in creating backgrounds over which they layer their designs. They gave 15 elementary school students in Friday Harbor spray paint and two hours to leave their mark on that project. A teen who had just been expelled for tagging school property joined in and was astonished to learn the city was paying for it. “There’s something about spray paint,” says Bennett. “The kids go nuts for it.” (The mayor was pretty pleased too and even invited them over for lunch afterward.)
Along the way, Bennett and Fisher joined forces with photographer and fellow “rad dad” Jefté Sanchez, with whom art, skateboarding, music, family and faith are all shared passions. In 2019, they formed an LLC geared toward public art and later joined a roster of 80 artists vetted by the Washington State Arts Commission, leading to a mural project they’re installing this June at century-old Mt. Vernon High School. Sanchez’s interviews and photos of the school’s mariachi and folclórica club—one of the largest on the West Coast—will be a central theme.
And the projects keep coming. Commissioned by Seattle nonprofit Urban ArtWorks, the trio completed a 40-foot mural at the University of Washington over three days in March 2024, recruiting university staff to help create a vibrant blossom-themed installation. Closer to home, you can see the team’s playful, upbeat murals at Vibe Coworks in Poulsbo and on utility boxes around Bremerton (courtesy of the Kitsap County Arts Board). They’ve also been selected to participate in the annual Wayzgoose Kitsap Art Festival on June 1, one of 12 teams creating three-foot linocuts printed with steamrollers. They’ve enlisted their young families in the project.
Collaboration, community and a degree of improvisation are creative fuel for Bennett and company, whose joyful imprint on the West Sound is poised to grow. “We’re inviting people to reconnect with being creative and imaginative, and it’s so cool to see that capacity in everyone,” says Fisher. “That’s a cool twist I didn’t see coming.”
Photos: Cory Bennet
