Our Origins

2013's theme, The Oceanic, highlighted the work of Dr. John Stark of Washington State University's Puyallup campus — a preeminent authority on marine life in the South Puget Sound whose research has led to historic legislative change in Washington State and the European Union. Historic rains and flooding that some called "Biblical" blew manhole covers off downtown streets; we sheltered at Corina Bakery, and right in time for the parade the weather lifted. We gathered at the Wright Park W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory at sundown and proceeded through the Theater District to the private library at Sanford & Son's — an orca, an octopus, a dolphin, starfish, a sea snail, Stena Troyer's sea cucumber and River Meschi's Nautilus among the luminaria.

River documented her build so we would have a tutorial for a luminaria. Stars themselves are the elemental form we officially adopted from Olympia's tradition: if you can build a star, you have the basic skills to build almost anything. Washington luminaria are more ornate than lanterns — sculpted, with detail where lanterns are basic.

That year I met the inestimable Stena Troyer (Surfrider Foundation, Harbor WildWatch), who kept things light-hearted and made everything "easy peasy." The News Tribune covered the procession in an article by Rosemary Ponnekanti — who would go on to start Ocean Fest (2017) and the Tacoma Light Trail (2020), our city's current luminary tradition; we have supported both fully. The Festivus night show celebrated the new independent voice: Wildberries' first ever live set and Santee's debut CD, Historee. Artist Jeremy Leveque crafted 54 ocarinas for the year. We also installed lumins at Le Dîner en Blanc (Sept 26) and at the Hilltop Artists' VIP event (Dec 6).

Stood with us in 2013: Corina Bakery (luminary build day) · W.W. Seymour Conservatory (home ground since 2013) · Good Karma: Center for Joy (workshops) · Tacoma Cabana (Oceanic after-party) — the Yellowbrick

In the bigger picture, our aim was an essential learning platform for introducing ourselves and others to the basic elements of South Sound life. In 2014 we set an example of that intention with a series of events, starting on the Spring Equinox and continuing through the summer to Peace Day, each pairing learning on the year's theme with music. The subjects were Food, the Body and the Environment, presented by people at the ground level doing the work. The three foundational events are set out below — they are y2112 in a sum.

We worked with the Hilltop Artists, getting youth into the creation process. The most ambitious student made the frame and first paper of Everybody's Dragon and was disappointed not to finish it alone in class. The lesson was a good one: some visions require more than you alone to realize. Several hands completed it and it became a highlight of the year — and the 2015 poster. A Jane Goodall Peace Dove led the September 20 procession; Cheryl Rux, later of the Tacoma Light Trail, brought Sally the Serpent; Jen's baby-blue pickup rolled full of luminaria made by Hilltop Artists and others. River destroyed the Death Star.

Puget Creek Restoration Society. The Soil of Earth needed a partner with soil under its nails, and the Puget Creek Restoration Society was ours in 2014 — a Tacoma nonprofit that protects, enhances and restores the Puget Creek watershed and the streams, wetlands and green spaces of Commencement Bay through hands-on restoration, research and education. I spent a good part of the year with them: work parties in the Puget Creek Natural Area, kids releasing salmon fry by the cupful, the first coho returning to a creek people had written off. They are exactly the kind of local, proactive, volunteer-powered organization THE WALL was built to support — the model in one watershed. Follow their work →

In August we announced at Music & Art in Wright Park that the National Music Museum desired a satellite in Tacoma and started a petition; we hosted SAMI alumnus Grant Carrillo's Basic Observation Buoy at the Opera Alley block party; students created five brilliant lumins in April and we built more with Eastside Green Thumbs.

Dr. John D. Stark — the science under the Starflower

Who he is. Professor of Entomology and Ecotoxicology at Washington State University's Puyallup Research & Extension Center — twelve miles from THE WALL's front door — and Director of the Washington Stormwater Center. Ph.D. in entomology and pesticide toxicology, University of Hawaiʻi (1987). Author of more than 140 peer-reviewed papers and the book Demographic Toxicity: Methods in Ecological Risk Assessment. Fellow of the Entomological Society of America; member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences.

What he changed. For decades regulators judged a chemical "safe" by whether it killed a test animal outright. Stark asked a better question: what does it do to a population over time? His lab showed that common pesticides which are each "safe" alone can be many times more lethal in combination — and more so as waters warm (WSU News, 2009) — and that the honest measure of harm is how long a species' recovery is delayed, not how many die today. That idea, population-level risk assessment, moved from a Puyallup lab bench into the machinery of regulation.

Washington State — appointed by Governor Locke to the State Pesticide / Endangered Species Act Task Force (2000–2003); toxicologist on the Department of Agriculture's Pesticide Advisory Board since 2009; Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel since 2008; Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition. United States — EPA Food Quality Protection Act Science Review Board; workshops for the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs on ecological modeling; Congressional briefings on stormwater, pollution and salmon (2014, 2016). Europe — visiting scientist to the European Union's project on mechanistic effects models for the ecological risk assessment of chemicals (2010–2016), carrying the population-level approach into EU chemical policy.

Why it matters here — and everywhere. Stark's subject is the Puget Sound salmon: the fish in our creeks, the runoff from our own streets. His method is universal — it applies to a butterfly in a Washington prairie or a river anywhere on earth. That is the global-local character of the work: look closely at one home water, learn the truth about all of them. It is the same instinct behind y2112 — a hundred-year question asked from one city.

Why THE WALL tells his story. In 2013 The Oceanic highlighted Dr. Stark's work in Tacoma's first luminary procession. On September 5, 2014, Dr. John Stark Presents taught life in Washington's waters framed by music from Bach to progressive rock (program art by Sean Alexander); the Bioaccumulation project with Eddie Harris and MaKenzie carried it further. Learning from the people who do the work, then turning it into light, sound and art the public can hold — that is what we have been doing since.

Sources: WSU faculty profile · Washington Stormwater Center · ESA Fellow citation · WSU News · When 1+1 equals 100 (2009) · WA Ecology · Pesticide/ESA Task Force · Back to 2013 · The Oceanic

At the Lumins Procession itself we destroyed a giant Death Star that represented the evils of our time.

On November 1 I was asked to lead the Día de los Muertos procession for the friends and families of the Northwest Detention Center Resistance — the courage of those families left an indelible impression on me. In December we held the 1st Annual Procession of Stars at Wright Park with the Dickens Festival, bringing light to the holidays.

Stood with us in 2014: Bluebeard Coffee Roasters (financial supporter) · Happy Belly (financial supporter) · Northern Pacific Coffee Co. (host — John Stark Presents) · Fireman's Park (on the route) · Free Range Kitchen (host — Spring! in the Kitchen) · Mad Hat Tea Company (on the poster) · Mash (on the poster) · Minuteman Press (printed the posters) · Reciprocity Farm (fed The Bodily Arts) · Tierra Firma Farms (fed The Bodily Arts) — the Yellowbrick

Everybody's Dragon, started by a Hilltop Artists student in 2014 and finished by many hands, became the 2015 poster — a metaphor for the whole work. Our learning landscape read: "Working directly with the local organizations, businesses and people active in their fields, we gain a fresh look at life in our environs from the perspective of those daily doing the work that betters our quality of life."

Bix was a black-sheep priest of St. Leo's Parish in Hilltop, misunderstood for more than twenty years, who took on the causes he felt strongly about and treated all people the same, rich or poor. He loved sunflowers — which always look to the light and give real sustenance. To honor him I merged the sunflower with the light of life in all of us: the STARFLOWER was born.

Our luminary sub-theme was The Chrysalis. When I met Dain Norman and told him so, he said, "My band is Dain Norman & the Chrysalis Effect!" We began working together immediately and have promoted HOPE together in many ways since. I also met Eddie Harris, a self-taught, world-famous artist with paintings of presidents in museums and early work on the original Scooby-Doo. His passion was teaching the next generation; we connected him with a student, Makenzie, who learned airbrush under him and whom we featured at Art on the Ave in 2017 and 2018 — her first subject: bioaccumulation, the first element needed to understand Dr. Stark's work.

Paris, November 13, 2015. In Paris for business, I was present the night of the attacks as the city fell into chaos. Had I heard of the show at the Bataclan I would have been there — I had searched that area for a show that night and found nothing, so went for music elsewhere. We were turned out of our venue and walked a long way through the streets while the attacks were still under way. That night changed me in ways I could not foresee; it would be years before I understood I was carrying untreated PTSD, and I did not begin therapy until after the pandemic, at Bastyr University Clinic where I had been a patient since 2008. At the time it was a more instinctive impulse that redirected my work toward the impacts of abuse culture on the personal plane. I had met Adrienne Casteele of H.O.P.E. Victims Advocacy that year; her story has inspired me since, and much of my effort turned to supporting people in hardship more challenging than most will ever encounter. "We cannot measure Time — we are the Times."

Stood with us in 2015: The Copper Door (after-party & clothing drive) · Spaceworks Tacoma (star builds & donation space) — the Yellowbrick

2016 was the year Tacoma's Lumins became Stars 4 Peace. The Orlando Pulse shooting reinforced that our work was broader in scope than our local community. I called Tacoma's Rainbow Center to ask if they would help with a memorial for the lives lost; they did, and with Spaceworks Tacoma providing a communal working space, we installed 49 stars at Tacoma Pride. The Tacoma Weekly helped publicize it and many participated. We incorporated the Star of Destiny into the Starflower: the Starflower of Destiny.

On the first anniversary of Paris I hosted H.O.P.E. Sunday — three generations of women musicians and two family-motivated male musicians on one bill. Star Kits were prominent all around Tacoma; Spaceworks gave us space for star builds and for donations from our test clothing drive. The emphasis on learning remained: Eddie and I held a car show with the LeMay Family Collection represented to showcase Makenzie's work. My deeper focus turned to nurturing compassion through understanding — learning what it takes to help people get out of, overcome and re-establish life after abusive situations.

The Lumins that year was unadvertised, but we held a small gathering inside the Wright Park Conservatory, where Stars were installed from the Pulse installation — the Happy Sinners played.

We moved the parade element into Tacoma's 6th Ave Santa Parade — the 1st Annual Procession of Stars. Terracrux Games downtown sponsored the stars; a friend on the team created a luminary template so anyone could make one easily. Stars 4 Peace has been part of the parade every year since, adding a new element each year.

Stood with us in 2016: H.O.P.E. Victims Advocacy (the reason) · Terracrux Games (sponsored the stars) · The Copper Door (Donation Station) · Law Offices of Terry Lumsden (office & donation workspace) · Tinkertopia (star builds) — the Yellowbrick

Before planning THE WALL in a new form, one more essential thing had to be done. In 2019 my good friend Martin Thomas Reed and I collaborated to save Music & Art in Wright Park — a bedrock Northwest music festival with roots in the earliest 1990s, when it was Art in the Park; one of the smallest handful of festivals from that time. It became Music & Heart in Wright Park.

Tacoma's music history is rich with forward-thinking bands ahead of the times — from the Sonics and the Wailers to the 1990s, when Northwest music was found internationally. Nirvana and Soundgarden practiced here; Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains was born and raised here and credits Tacoma with shaping his songs, especially Rooster. Since 2022 **Tacoma Creates** — Washington's first voter-approved arts initiative — has supported Music & Heart, allowing us to focus more on creating and worry less about paying for it. Music really does save lives. We work in the media of light and sound and change how others see what is possible in their own lives.

Following Music & Heart 2019, Tacoma's First Night — the City of Destiny's New Year's celebration — adopted our theme from that year's festival, The Tree of Life, for its own 2020 celebration (see the post below).

THIS SECTION IS BUILDING — see THE WALL for what this project became.

Stood with us in 2019: Peterson Bros. 1111 (financial supporter) · Hilltop Loans (financial supporter) · Purified Water To Go (watered the festival) — the Yellowbrick

Through the 2020 pandemic I became aware of the need for a hybrid system of contribution to people in need, and began planning THE WALL in a new form. In 2020 the Chrysalis returned to the Conservatory. In 2021 Stars 4 Peace made 50 OG Star Kits for a free workshop at the Tacoma Public Library — my mom filled our home with quality-time activities that brought our family closer, and she and her man made the kits in her kitchen. We installed at Bostwick and were in the Santa Parade again, as every year.

On March 20, 2026 we presented ORIGINS at Lynn Di Nino's TRIPOD Arts. Today the work lives at lookwashington.com — THE WALL as a web platform: a Resource Library of the 501(c)(3) organizations doing the work, area maps, the community calendar, partner windows for local businesses, safety messaging, and seasonal campaigns — International Day of Peace, the Season of HOPE and the Holiday HOPE Hop, and partners like Washington's Skoolie Foundation. Every donation, band, painting and neighborhood business adds a brick. My life changed completely because I met some of the best people I have ever known in this city, who happened to be artists. Wherever you are, I hope you are as blessed as I have been with a supportive, creative and kind of awesome community.