SEQUIM — A key component to the educational mission of the Dungeness River Nature Center at Railroad Bridge Park is mere weeks away from being finished, bringing the entire nature center project to near completion.

Powell Jones, nature center director and park manager, said he expected the center’s Exhibit Room to be substantially done and open to the public by May 1.

The exhibit includes a surrounding mountain-to-sea diorama representing the environment of the Dungeness River watershed and includes displays of the center’s collection of taxidermy birds and animals from the former Dungeness River Audubon Center that once occupied the same site and which had been on temporary display at the new building.

The Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society and the National Audubon Society are administrative partners with the nature center.

Jones said the new exhibit room was essential to the new center.

“We feel like that is the heart of the building,” he said. “We do education in the bigger rooms, but (the Exhibit Room) is the one place people can just go in and educate themselves.

“Even though the rest of the building is very flashy and beautiful and wonderful, that’s the heart.”

Vanessa Fuller, operations manager for the center, said the Exhibit Room was originally slated for completion last fall, but the unexpected bankruptcy of the art firm that had commissioned to do the work threw the entire project off track.

“We were so close to the finish line in October, then we had to stop and wait,” she said. “I’m just happy to finally see it finish.”

The Ballard-based Mach 2 Arts group was brought in to finish the work the original firm had started. The work is based upon original designs developed by the center’s designers, administrators and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, which maintains the center and surrounding Railroad Bridge Park.

Mach 2 co-owner Hal Peterson said his organization was able to step in and take over the exhibit project.

“We managed to come in and we were able to pick up right where the other company left off and bring this home successfully,” he said. “This is definitely our specialty.”

The exhibit centers around a progression of landscapes meticulously researched for accuracy and realism. It was designed to replicate flora found in the Dungeness watershed and provide a realistic showcase for the center’s fauna collection.

“This is focused on people who are going to walk up the watershed,” Peterson said. “Our mission is to make it as accurate as possible.

“An expert on lowland grasses may come in here and realize we did all the research and these are the correct plants represented in the correct way, not just a bunch of grass. We shoot for the audience member who actually knows. We want that person to come in add say, ‘Oh, that’s right’.”

Mach 2 artist Benjamin James, who was working on the diorama’s shoreline depiction, said it was important to convey factual scientific knowledge while creating an eye-catching display.

“We hope that everybody is a bit of a little bit of scientist anyway, or a little bit of an artist who appreciates this kind of thing,” he said.

Jones said the completion of the Exhibit Room, along with a recently finished classroom building, would substantially finish the project. He said Mach 2 still had a three-dimensional tree structure under construction in Seattle that would be added to the room at a later date.

Additionally, wayside exhibits around Railroad Bridge Park and the nearby Dungeness River waterway were still to be installed.

James said working on the Dungeness River Nature Center’s diorama had become a highlight of his career.

“This thing is beautiful,” he said. “I love the fact that they’ve done as much art as they can possibly do.”

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Photojournalist Keith Thorpe can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 59050, or at kthorpe@peninsuladailynews.com.

Shannon Kelley, left, and Benjamin James of Ballard-based Mach 2 Arts work on details of a nature exhibit under construction on Wednesday in the Exhibit Room of the Dungeness River Nature Center in Sequim. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)