Bellingham United Football Club forward Ivan Colin’s impact leaves more than cleat marks on turf. When he’s not helping Bellingham United (BUFC) on its championship run, he is an emerging artist with several downtown works.
Wander down to the corner of West Holly and Bay streets and find blue waves curling across the right half of a new mural — Colin’s work. Stop by Aslan Brewing Company to try its new Mexican lager, Unidos, and notice the blue-and-white label designed by Colin and inspired by Mexican Talavera pottery.
Colin, 28, is a longtime soccer player who has always liked to trade ball for brush. The BUFC forward grew up playing soccer in Napa, California, but he also had an affinity for art.
“I feel like everybody is born making art,” Colin said. “But it’s just like Picasso said, we just forget how to be artists when we grow up, and the ones who remain with the spirit of a child — those are the ones that keep creating.”
Colin went on to play soccer at Linfield College — now Linfield University — in McMinnville, Oregon. He originally set out to study business but began to question his decision after feeling disconnected from his classwork. Some of his first artistic undertakings were cartoons, video game-style art and graffiti lettering on his class papers.
After a change of heart, he began studying studio art while continuing his other passion: soccer. Inspired by both his early interest in graffiti and Linfield professor Ron Mills-Pinyas’ work, Colin developed his own colorful, abstract and fluid style, influenced by the natural world.
Ivan Colin climbs up the scaffolding to paint his large mural.
(Photo courtesy Ivan Colin)
“I love seeing objective art, but … I like kind of testing my viewer a little bit more. I want to stretch their imagination,” Colin said. “A lot of times, it was like these classical painters who were converted into abstract artists … It tells me that they’re curious, or they were bored with what they were already doing. That’s kind of how I was.”
After graduating, Colin felt he wasn’t ready to hang up his cleats yet. He reached out to coaches of nearby soccer teams and heard back in 2016 from Lance Callaway, Bellingham United’s head coach at the time.
Callaway told Colin he could come to a team practice as a tryout, so Colin made the five-hour drive up to Bellingham and began training with the semi-pro team. Two weeks later, he secured a spot.
“As a player on the field, [Colin]’s full of energy, passion,” current BUFC head coach Jason Conway said.
Bellingham United’s Ivan Colin (9) points to teammate Ale Tomasi (24) after scoring the tying goal at Orca Field against Washington Premier at Whatcom Community College on July 1. The final score was 2-2.
(Andy Bronson/Cascadia Daily News)
Colin also wanted to exercise his creative mind and took up marketing for the team, creating social media graphics.
After two seasons with Bellingham, Colin, still wanting to play professionally, returned to California to attend open tryouts for USL League Two’s San Francisco City FC. In his first preseason match in 2019, Colin sprained his MCL, a ligament in his knee.
“Oh, man, what a bummer,” Colin said of his injury. “Right when I’m feeling peak condition, peak performance and coach is showing interest and talking to me.”
While rehabilitating, Colin had time to focus on his art. People began reaching out for commissions and purchasing his work from a showing in Napa.
“I still wasn’t fully 100 percent on board with pursuing art full time because it’s hard to let go (of) training soccer my whole life,” Colin said. “I knew that art will always be there.”
Post-injury, Colin played one more season in California, this time with his hometown National Premier Soccer League team Napa Valley 1839 FC.
As COVID-19 halted NPSL play, Colin returned to Bellingham in 2021 to be with his girlfriend, now his wife. That season, he helped BUFC win an EPLWA league title.
“I think that going down to California was awesome for him, but I think he did come back way more mature having seen what the next level was like,” Conway said. “He runs all of our warmups and cooldowns, and guys really have turned to him for a lot of leadership on the team.”
Colin scored the third goal in Bellingham’s 3-0 win over Yakima United on Saturday, July 16, to send BUFC back to the league championship. The team will vie for the title against rivals Washington Premier on Saturday, July 23, at Whatcom Community College.
Beyond soccer, Colin is working in graphic design and marketing for Signs Plus in Bellingham. In May, Aslan Brewing Company featured Colin as its Artist of the Month, with his artwork for sale in the brewery. The feature served as a launching point for Colin’s upcoming collaboration with Aslan in which he designed a label for the new Unidos beer.
The lager comes out July 22, with the goal of “unit[ing] the Latinx community in Bellingham,” said Georgi Shillington, Aslan’s marketing director who worked with Colin and Aslan’s lead bartender, Elmer Antonio, to create the label.
“[Colin’s pieces] were just so different and super colorful and really livened up the space here at the brewpub, and I think that really caught Elmer’s eye,” Shillington said.
Ivan Colin wears the respirator mask he uses for spray painting with a Bellingham United soccer shirt.
(Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)
For the past several weeks, Colin has also spent his evenings atop scaffolding outside the Holly Street building, collaborating on a mural he was selected to paint with local tattoo artist Bianca Torres. Colin’s portion of the near-finished mural is full of deep navy and light blues, swirling together into a wave pattern.
“Recently, I am more serious about making money off of my art and being able to do that as my own business,” Colin said. “Right now, it’s just a side hustle, with goals of earning X amount of dollars with it. That pushes me to just get things and turn them around, as well as showing locally.”
