60-year soiree at VCA to boast art, music and memories

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Vashon Center for the Arts, now celebrating its sixth decade, will mark the milestone with a party from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 20 — and everyone on the island is invited to attend.

The festive, free and all-ages event — dubbed by VCA as its 60th Birthday Bash — will take place both indoors and out, filling the arts center’s campus with art, music, movement, hands-on activities, memories and mingling.

The party will include performances by Vashon’s bands Portage Fill-Harmonic and Riverbend, community lessons in line dancing, a campus-wide treasure hunt and hands-on arts and crafts activities. A kids’ activity zone, complete with a bubble machine and hula hoops, will entertain the wiggliest young attendees.

Other party-goers, both young and old, can share their recollections of VCA in a special “memory booth” in the Blue Heron Education Center — a chance to add to the considerable archives of the venerable island institution.

Party-goers can also explore VCA’s Heron Meadow, a two-acre wetland located adjacent to VCA. The meadow, filled with native plants as well as murals and other art, was created in 2017 in partnership with Vashon Nature Center.

Food vendors, including Iyad Syrian Food, Dre Neely and others offering sweet treats such as cotton candy and popsicles, will offer food for sale throughout the event.

“This is going to be such a fun party,” said Crissy Baker, communications and programming manager of VCA. “There will be so many ways to celebrate — dancing, enjoying the music of two iconic Vashon bands, looking at beautiful art, exploring our campus and so much more.”

The day will also include the official reveal of a 40-foot-long sculptural installation created by local artist Ela Lamblin and hung in VCA’s soaring Atrium.

The exhibit, which combines sculptural elements with the massive bones of a gray whale, is the culmination of a two-year restoration led by Vashon Nature Center in partnership with VCA. The project preserves the skeletal remains of Singer, a male gray whale who died and washed ashore on a remote stretch of island shoreline in 2024.

The effort involved more than 30 community volunteers, 200 local students, local organizations, tribes and agencies.

Other art currently on view also celebrates the mystery and majesty of ocean life. “Deep Water Dialogues: Art Beneath the Surface,” in VCA’s gallery, is a multimedia group show by local, national and international artists. Another exhibit, on VCA’s atrium wall, displays the work of Vashon High School biology and marine science students, who worked with local artist Annie Brulé to create biological drawings of Singer’s bones.

A third exhibit, hung in VCA’s breezeway, looks to the skies, with colorful portraits of birds created by fourth graders at Chautauqua Elementary School in an annual residency conducted by VCA’s longstanding youth education program, Artists in Schools.

VCA eyes the future

The birthday party will also include the announcement of VCA’s 2026/2027 performing arts season — with 85% of the scheduled performances set to be offered free to those 18 and younger, thanks to generous support from 4Culture’s public access program.

For Allison Halstead Reid, VCA’s executive director, those free tickets are a particular point of pride.

“It’s so important that we create a culture where youth can discover the power of the arts — whether that means attending a school field trip to hear opera for the first time, or coming to VCA to see their friends in a dance or youth musical theater production,” she said.

VCA, she added, has always served as a place where the arts become “familiar, possible and personal” for new generations — a legacy she is determined to build on.

According to Halstead Reid, VCA’s 2026/2027 season will include an array of performances by acclaimed artists spanning genres and disciplines including jazz, blues, classical, folk, soul, world music, comedy, literary arts and contemporary dance.

Homegrown talent will also be displayed in performances by youth who are enrolled in VCA’s musical theater and dance training programs.

In curating the season, Halstead Reid said she was guided by the principle of discovery: giving islanders the chance to see performances they might otherwise never experience.

“The best nights are the ones where you walk in not quite knowing what to expect, and walk out completely transformed,” she said. VCA’s Kay White Hall will also host performances by beloved local groups including Drama Dock, Vashon Island Chorale, Vashon Maury Chamber Orchestra, Vashon Repertory Theater and Vashon Opera.

“The Kay stage belongs to all of Vashon,” she said.

A storied history

Vashon Center for the Arts — one of the oldest private nonprofit arts organizations in the state of Washington — was officially born as Vashon Allied Arts in 1966, thanks to the efforts of an intrepid band of artist founders, including Christine Beck and Kajira Wyn Berry. These “founding mothers” created a space for local artists to show their work and other vibrant programs, including Artists in Schools, to serve island youth.

The organization was housed in multiple locations until 1988, when the group found a permanent home, purchasing the former Odd Fellows Hall that is now VCA’s Blue Heron Education Center.

Since that time — how VCA has grown.

Ten years ago, the organization opened its new performance hall and gallery next door to the Blue Heron building — preserving that historic space to house ever-increasing arts education offerings. The new facility’s lead donor was the late islander and Vashon Island Chorale singer Katherine L. White — for whom VCA’s 300-seat hall is named.

For Halstead Reid, VCA’s Birthday Bash is a chance to recall the core values that the organization has always cherished, and strongly affirm the organization’s commitment to carry on.

“We’re celebrating 60 years of creativity, community and connection, while launching the next chapter,” she said.

To find out more, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org.

Elizabeth Shepherd, a former Beachcomber reporter and editor, is currently a freelance communication specialist for Vashon Center for the Arts working on special projects including the Birthday Bash.