BREMERTON — If you regularly walk down Dr. M.L.K. Way, formerly Seventh Avenue in downtown Bremerton, you may expect to be greeted by the sight of a plain, gray wall.

You’d be wrong.

Peninsula Community Health Services, the owners of that building, teamed up with local mural artist Erica Applewhite and invited members of the community out on Saturday, June 25, to paint that wall with a colorful image.

Now, instead of “a very nice shade of gray,” as PCHS CEO Jennifer Kreidler-Moss put it, you will see a giant octopus, with each limb doing something different in relation to Bremerton.

“The focus of the design is an octopus,” Applewhite said. “That was our first idea, let’s do a giant octopus.

“Octopuses have eight arms, and each arm has brain neurons in it, so it can think for itself, kind of, so that means that each arm can do something different and not really know what’s happening … we’ll take each arm and each arm can do a separate task in the community.”

For instance, one limb is listening to a heartbeat through a stethoscope at the PCHS building, another is hammering away for Habitats for Humanity. One is even helping people paint the mural of which it is the focus.

The day of the community event, Kreidler-Moss said people were painting the lower half of the wall. She said students from nearby high schools will be coming out and finishing the mural in the near future, and she expects it to be finished by the end of summer.

Betty Nordforce, step-mother of Applewhite, the artist, had nothing but good things to say.

“I think it’s awesome,” Nordforce said as she helped paint the wall. “(Applewhite is) very talented, and she works hard to get community things going.”

Kreidler-Moss said the mural is a part of the beautification efforts in downtown Bremerton, with the hopes of adding to the downtown beauty and drawing people in.

“There’s always people running around doing the theater thing, the antique thing. The thrift shop is (nearby),” she said. “In general, we want to be part of the revitalization of Bremerton.”

Most of the materials and time that went into the project, Kreidler-Moss said, were donated. She said if they were to price out the project, it would probably add up to $15,000 to $20,000, but PCHS has only put in about $3,000 to $4,000, because everything else was donated by members of the community.

That’s one of the reasons why the community was invited to help paint the mural.

Many families help paint the mural on the back of the Peninsula Community Health Services building June 25. Photo by Michelle Beahm

“It’s a great community-feel type project,” Kreidler-Moss said. “We have our staff here, we have some patients here, we have some board members, some political figures — couldn’t be more awesome.

“The backside of the building is more part of the community than it is part of our daily operations. We kind of hope everybody takes ownership in it.”

Alicia Hammers and her husband, Isaak, showed up to help paint with their four kids because she saw a flyer during a doctor’s appointment with PCHS

“I think it’s amazing,” she said. “I was really excited when I saw it. I think it’s wonderful … I really think it’s awesome to have the whole community out here doing something beautiful to help our neighborhood.”

PCHS employee Patricia Lambro also brought her children.

“I think it’s important for families to go out and participate in their community, kind of show that it’s not just about each individual family, but it’s about everybody,” Lambro said, “and that when you work all together on big projects, you can do really big things.”

Applewhite feels the same way. She lives only half a block away from the wall, and she is one of the people who walks by it on a daily basis.

“What to me, I think, is the heart of it is not even the mural,” she said. “It’s creating an opportunity for this neighborhood to come together and be together, because it’s incredibly diverse. This creates the sense of ownership and pride. It’s a vehicle for that, like bread is a vehicle for butter.”