Wikipedia
Fishtown may refer to:
- Fishtown, Indiana, unincorporated community in Harrison County, Indiana
- Fishtown, Philadelphia, neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Leland Historic District (Leland, Michigan), historic district in Leland, Michigan; colloquially known as "Fishtown"
Fishtown was an informal artists' community housed in a cluster of old cabins and fishing shacks on the Skagit River delta in Skagit County, Washington, USA, from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. It was part of the larger Skagit Valley arts community, centered on the town of La Conner, but was rustic and isolated, without electricity or plumbing, and tended to attract younger and more eccentric artists. It was home to several noted painters, poets, and sculptors. Charles Krafft, who went on to international attention and controversy as a ceramicist, was for over ten years the "self-proclaimed Mayor of Fishtown"; another longtime resident was Robert Sund, who, along with several other poets, developed a recognizable Pacific Northwest style of poetry. Scholar, painter, and poet Paul Hansen, who became a professor of Chinese languages and noted translator of early Chinese poetry lived in Fishtown for several years, and best-selling author Tom Robbins was a frequent visitor.
Billing themselves as The Asparagus Moonlight Group, the Fishtown artists held successful exhibitions of their work in Seattle in 1971 and 1974. These helped establish the commune as a countercultural mecca of the Pacific Northwest.
With changing lifestyles and increasing pressure from the land's owners, the Fishtown artists' community gradually dispersed, beginning in the late 1970s. In 1988, most of the original fishing shacks and the boardwalks that connected them were demolished, amid protests by remaining residents and their supporters. A few "Fishtown artists", such as painter Maggie Wilder and sculptor Bo Miller, continue to live and work in the area.