Terrain Gallery exhibit showcases Bloomsday posters through the years

The first year, the poster was simple.

“Run with the Stars,” it said, inviting runners to complete the 1977 Lilac Bloomsday Run alongside Frank Shorter, Don Kardong, Joan Ullyot, Gerry Lindgren, Bob Maplestone and Rick Riley.

“It’s all for fun… for health… a mass celebration of running!!” the poster, designed by Bob Runkle, said.

In 1981, the poster featured a photo by Dan Leahy of a man running in a lush green field with the words “To the Free Spirit in all of us” prominently displayed.

For the 10th anniversary, Harold Balazs illustrated a colorful poster that merged runners, flowers and the words “Bloomsday ‘87.”

In 1992, Ken Spiering began his 11-year stint as the artist behind the Bloomsday posters, highlighting elements of the course such as Doomsday and Cemetery hills, both looking peaceful without a runner or water station in sight, finishers spilling into Riverfront Park, runners jogging past spectators sitting on their porch, and various aerial views of the course and city.

The 30th Bloomsday poster, from 2006, featured a photo by Don Hamilton that guides the viewer’s eye from lilacs in the foreground to a group of runners in the background.

For the 40th Bloomsday poster, Steve Merryman created a collage of two runners using pieces of past Bloomsday imagery. Behind the two runners are pages and pages of race results.

This year, to celebrate the 50th running of Bloomsday, the organization reached back out to Spiering, who teamed up with John Mraz to create a poster that depicts an aerial view of runners approaching the finish line on the Monroe Street Bridge as well as landmarks like the Spokane River, the SkyRide and, appropriately, Terrain Gallery.

Oh, and it’s all made to look like Lego pieces and minifigures.

“50 Years of Movement,” on view through April 25 at the Terrain Gallery, showcases every Bloomsday poster from the race’s half-century lifetime. The exhibit also features a quilt made from the finisher shirt from each year of the race.

During the opening night of the show, Spiering was on hand to sign past Bloomsday posters.

When he was initially approached to design a Bloomsday poster, Spiering, known for his paintings and his large-scale work including the Radio Flyer red wagon sculpture in Riverfront Park, was happy to contribute.

The first couple of years Spiering felt a bit apprehensive after completing a poster, unsure if he would be asked again the following year, but when he was offered a five-year contract, the process became more of a mutual commitment. That contract would go on to be renewed for another five years.

Spiering’s work bounced from realistic depictions, like an aerial view of the Maple and Monroe Street Bridges with Riverfront Park in the background in 1995 and two women sewing a Bloomsday shirt quilt in 1998, to more imaginative, like a young boy, crouched behind a sandcastle made to look like the Spokane County Courthouse, watching a group of insects run for the finish line on a beach in 1999.

Spiering’s last poster, in 2002, features what he calls an angel’s eye view of the race. Rather than paint, Spiering used small sculptures to represent the buildings along the course and colored beads to represent each color group of the race, all lined up and ready to hit the starting line.

“By the time I was done doing all those little sculptures of the buildings of the city, I guess I finally realized that maybe it was time for some new blood to come in,” he said. “Then when they called and asked me about doing the 50th anniversary, it doesn’t get better than that. I didn’t have to do any asking or begging or anything so I was thrilled to do it.”

For the 50th Bloomsday poster, Spiering worked with graphic designer Mraz. Spiering said their relationship is full of constant comedy and banter, which distills their at-times absurd ideas into something more manageable.

“It turned out to be probably the best collaboration over a longer period of time, especially in my later years, for me to have now the sculptural collaborations,” he said.

“50 Years of Movement” runs alongside “14 Million Miles: 50 Years of Bloomsday” at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, which is on view through May 3. The exhibit features a variety of race memorabilia including a finisher shirt from each year, a pair of Nike-sponsored Bloomsday running shoes, an unofficial COVID-19-era race shirt and photographs from throughout Bloomsday’s 50 years.

Bethany Lueck, director of sponsorship and communications at the Lilac Bloomsday Association, said she and the rest of the Bloomsday team knew they wanted to have an art element to the 50th anniversary celebration, especially given the race is known for its finisher shirts and posters.

“It’s something that separates Bloomsday from other races of its size and caliber is that community tie-in with the artists and featuring the city in a beautiful way,” she said.

Lueck said one of the biggest goals with the Terrain Gallery and MAC exhibitions was to give people a chance to see Bloomsday-related images and items that they do not normally see. They might have a poster or two themselves, for example, but not everyone has seen every Bloomsday poster in one place. The same goes for all 50 finisher shirts on display at the MAC.

The reception from visitors to both exhibitions has shown that Bloomsday’s impact extends beyond athletics.

“It is a nice shake up for all of us in the sporting world to get into the arts scene and the art scene to appreciate the sport world,” Lueck said. “There’s no lines. We’re all here appreciating the same thing.”