The Make.Shift Gallery is committed to engaging the community by showcasing artwork that is fresh & innovative.
We support local & regional emerging artists by providing a quality space, acting as a supportive platform for artists of all experience levels, & encouraging arts patronage in our community.
Make.Shift Art Space presents our First Annual Substrate Gallery Gala.Our goal is to annually raise funds to repair, improve and update our music and art studios while uplifting and celebrating our arts community! Each piece will be for sale for $100 with additional donations encouraged. 100% of sales support Make.Shift Facilities projects that currently include reconstruction of 2 practice spaces, lighting and electrical upgrades and the construction of a permanent DJ booth in the venue!
This year's substrate: Clipboards ! Make.Shift will provide artists with clipboards with a professionally primed surface for free! Artists will receive a Make.Shift gift bag filled with show passes,merch and more! Artists will also be added to our digital artist registry and supporter wall in the building.
Artwork is due in person by Wednesday, September 2nd. The Opening reception and galla Friday, September 4th 5pm-9pm.
5pm official show opening
7pm community forum Q&A in the venue.
More TBA!
In the spring of 2026 our building took on unprecedented flooding causing multiple practice spaces unusable. While we have received a ton of support from the building owners to repair the outer structure we are solely responsible for repair and maintenance within the building. Like many community institutions we have been financially impacted by the drastic funding cuts to the arts leading us to ask our community to help build the Make.Shift they want to see now and in the future.
“My dream is to make as many paintings as possible and inspire others to enjoy the creative process of making art” - Darrin Randall
This gallery showing will include decades worth of art created by Darrin Randall. Darrin was a father and artist, who unexpectedly passed away in December of 2022. This show will be a memorial to celebrate his years of abstract painting, functional ceramics and his creative mind.
Whether you knew Darrin or not we hope you will come see color and form through his eyes.
Proceeds from selected art sales will be donated to the Bellingham Food Bank!
Opening Reception Friday May 1st 5pm-9pm!
ROUND 2 Opens this Friday 5pm-9pm as part of First Friday Art walk!
Our Skatepark fundraiser show continues through the month of April with new submissions, skate videos . Come grab that board you had your eye on and meet some like minded community members.
Dozens of artists of all ages from the PNW & beyond have created art on or constructed out of old skateboards. Most pieces are available for a starting price of $100 w/donations encouraged. All proceeds go to support construction of the new Bellingham Skatepark! Our first month of the show raised nearly $4,000 directly from community art sales!
If you purchased work during March your boards will be available for pick up on Thursday, April 30th! Please reach out to gallery@makeshiftartspace.org
Make buddies who make and enjoy video projects, get together off streaming because streaming feels like a soundless void dedicated to stripping us of our creativity and turning us into advertisement machines.
Adrien Converse spent the first decade of their professional career in high pressure environments involving an overload of responsibility and a deficit of support. They learned to find grounding and peace through intentional time in nature, as well as establishing a consistent artistic practice. This show explores the overlap between those two worlds: being present with nature, and honest artistic expression.
Identity Under Pressure- A group art show Featuring Harmony DeVaney and ZionArtistry -Opening recetion Friday January 2nd 5pm-9pm. Works on display for the month of January. Avaiable for viewing Thursday-Saturday 1pm-6pm.
2025
Its the most magical time of the year, again! Every year during October Make.Shift Art Saace hosts an Halloween themed open call art show. Its always amazing to see what people dream up and bring to our door step. Stop by for the First Friday opening. Cant make it? Dont worry we are open Thursday-Saturday 1pm-6pm to experience the show!
Great Odds Celebrate Create Passion
Featurng work by:
Serene Serblusek
Janae Holladay
Oepening:
Friday, September 5th
5pm-9pm
Make.Shift Art Space
306 flora st
98225
This August Make.Shift will be hosting a free outdoor event titled Radio Forever. First, we kick things off in the gallery! The Radio Forever art show is a group exhibition celebrating all things community radio and the analog technology that brought us to the present! This show features paintings and sculptures , an interactive theremin installation, a working telephone booth and a historical collection on loan from the Spark Museum and Whatcom Museum. Join us for the opening of the show August 1st 5pm-9pm in the Make.Shift Art Gallery!
"Come Outside" aims to showcase the dichotomy of the natural and built environements around us. Through this exploration, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the ways these spaces intersect, coexist, and sometimes clash. By examining our relationship with both, we can uncover new perspectives on how we shape and are shaped by our environment.
“Unchained: Art From Inside Whatcom County Jail,” is a gallery of art entirely from incarcerated people from Whatcom County. The show is coordinated by the Whatcom Pen-Pal Project, a writing program seeking to reduce the isolation of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) by facilitating connections between the inside and the outside world. Though the gallery features a breadth of themes and displays the range of people’s capabilities, a consistent theme is Envelope Art, the longtime prison tradition of using your letters to the outside as a canvas for your work. It acts as a form of resistance to the constrictive rulings of life while incarcerated.
Future Mythology
The 8th anual collaboration between Make.Shift Art Space and students at Samish Woods Montessori! Students have imagined myths written by humans of the distant future,to explain and remeber events in human history still to come. These works are interpeted by local artists. Each artists response piece will be displayed next to the student painting that inspired it.
The Red Cathedral is a collaborative show, featuring chainmail by Good Boy Mercantile and paintings by Hypersymbol. The artists envision the Cathedral as a gothic medieval church, such as might be encountered by a wanderer in Arthurian myth. Within the Cathedral, the artists offer modern-day wanderers an opportunity to contemplate the mysteries present in our world, and to connect to far-distant generations of people who reached towards that mystery through religion, narrative, and art.
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Opening reception Friday January 3rd 5pm-9pm
Make.Shift Art Space
306 Flora Street
Bellingham, WA
98335
In My Feelings" invites you to reflect on the vast spectrum of human emotion, much like the intricate layers of the feelings wheel. As you engage with these works, we invite you to explore your own emotinal landscape-both the uplifting and the challenging. Emotions offer profound insights into our minds and lives when we take the time to engage with them.
Opening reception Friday January 3rd 5pm-9pm
Make.Shift Art Space
306 Flora Street
Bellingham, WA
98335
Threads of Transformation encourages artists to reflect on how preloved textiles, once carrying another story, may be given new life and meaning through the artistic process. Whether it is a family heirloom quilt or scraps from a thrift store, each piece tells a narrative of sustainability, reinvention, and artists' vision.
2024
It's almost time for Kid's Art Walk! Join us on Friday, May 3rd from 5pm-9pm as we celebrate the opening of “Haiku", the seventh annual collaboration between Make.Shift and 4th, 5th and 6th grade students at Samish Woods Montessori.
2023
Sculptures by Kade Grossarth, Carrie Cooper, Mr. Peripheral, frameRateZero, and Lucas Hatten
2022
2021
2020
Make.shift presents “The Work is Never Done,” and atemporal multimedia exhibition that guides us through a timeline of experience. In June we proudly feature five different artists using five different mediums, with themes spread throughout centuries of perspectives. All five of our featured artists are women based out of the Pacific Northwest. Some of them deal with contemporary concerns and hardships and some peek into our uncertain future.
Make.Shift opened an invitation to all artists in our community to create a piece of art inspired by the work of some very talented kids. The exhibit will display these works by students and local artists side-by-side through the month of May. Every year, Make.Shift Gallery celebrates Kid's Art Walk in May. This year, we've partnered with Cedar Tree and Sammish Woods Montessories and asked 5th to 7th-grade students to create artistic renderings of their most outrageous dreams!
For the month of April Make.Shift invites you to step outside of the gallery and into an environment that welcomes curiosity and play. Spring has sprung and it’s time to invite your inner child to Playful Creatures, a partially interactive exhibit showing a combination of local, regional, and international artists. The exhibit is focussed on spreading a spirit of playfulness and imagination. Our featured artist this month is Sophia Munic, a Tacoma based Sculpture Artist.
Want to Show Your Art at Make.Shift?
2027 Gallery project proposals are open! Apply here!
September- Substrate galla!
October 2027 - Halloween / Black Cat Theme community art show submissions open in September.
Reach out to gallery@makeshiftartspace.org with any questions!
Please sign up for our newsletter (scroll to the bottom of the page) or follow us on Instagram to receive information on upcoming gallery opportunities.
Before applying to show your work at Make.Shift, please see our hanging requirements.
Other Cool Stuff!
In 2022, the Make.Shift gallery partnered with the Whatcom County Health Department to bring public art into the Whatcom County Crisis Center. Learn more by clicking the button below.
Interested in partnering with Make.Shift for your project? Reach out to: director@makeshiftartspace.org.