Craig Spencer knows some people view the liveaboard community in Eagle Harbor as a group of floating freeloaders.

But Spencer wants people to understand that it’s something else: a low-income community in danger of displacement, a culture facing possible extinction as plans move ahead to establish an open-water marina in the popular harbor off Bainbridge Island.

An artist and liveaboard, Spencer hopes to raise awareness about the harbor’s liveaboard culture through an exhibit on Bainbridge Island in March. The show, to be held at the Victor Alexander Tasting Room and Gallery, will feature about 10 of Spencer’s oil paintings of boats moored in Eagle Harbor.

“I want to keep this issue alive and before people’s awareness,” says Spencer, who’s lived aboard in the harbor since 1997.

“We’ve gotten a lot of publicity and a lot of it has been skewed over the years or just portrayed in a negative light. I’m just trying to present an alternative view of the cultural and artistic aspects of the harbor.”

Under the open-water marina plan, Eagle Harbor’s liveaboards would be charged moorage fees for the first time. The city has estimated that the owner of a 30-foot boat could pay between $200 and $250 monthly, plus a small fee to use the city’s showers and garbage disposal. The cost will ultimately depend on the size of the marina, which has yet to be determined.

To Spencer, the Eagle Harbor situation is another example of a scenario that has played out in communities across the country, as gentrification and rising rents push out low-income residents, including artists. Communities such as Eagle Harbor’s liveaboards, he says, are vital to accommodating those people.

“To my mind, rents just seem so artificially inflated. It just seems like that eliminates a whole class of people, and a whole lot of traditions that have been really important to our community are just being lost.”

The liveaboard tradition in Eagle Harbor dates back a century, when the formerly industrial harbor was dotted with liveaboards working as shipwrights, fishermen and mill workers. Over the years, the harbor’s liveaboards included missionaries and musicians, families and students, drunks and taxi drivers.

A proposed open-water marina in Eagle Harbor would be the first marina of its kind in Washington state.

Eagle Harbor has gradually transformed from one of the busiest industrial harbors on the west coast to one of Puget Sound’s most popular cruising destinations, surrounded by homes with million-dollar views. To some island residents, the harbor’s liveaboards are a source of irritation, a community that has been allowed to squat on public land for years at no cost.

Eagle Harbor’s liveaboards are currently in violation of state regulations, which prohibit boats from remaining on state-owned land for more than 30 days without a state-authorized use. The situation has been a topic of heated debate for more than a decade, as the City of Bainbridge Island has grappled with a solution for how to legally accommodate the liveaboards.

The matter came to a head last year, when the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction over the harbor, gave the city a deadline of Dec. 31 to submit a lease application for an open-water marina and start paying the state for boats using the harbor.

In October, Bainbridge city council agreed to establish an open-water marina that will accommodate 16 vessels, including 12 visiting boats and four liveaboards. The city is currently negotiating the terms of the lease with the state.

In the meantime, Spencer can be found painting aboard Wicca, a 1940s boatshed turned houseboat turned artist’s studio that he is taking care of for a friend. With his easel set up on Wicca’s front porch, Spencer has a bird’s-eye view of the boats moored around the harbor, which include his Westsail 32, Old Hand. For his upcoming show, Spencer is focusing primarily on traditional boats, creating impressionistic images in bright, soothing hues.

A few of the harbor’s liveaboards serve as advocates for the community, including longtime resident Dave Ullin, who sits on the city’s harbor commission. Spencer prefers instead to engage in “peaceful protest” through his painting—done, he notes ironically, within view of some of the island’s priciest waterfront property.

“To be here working in a peaceful way, to preserve the community, is an act of defiance,” says Spencer, who also does landscaping work. “I think just making a statement like that can perhaps be powerful.”

Ultimately, what does Spencer want people to understand about the harbor’s longstanding liveaboard community?

“That there’s more to liveaboards than just us looking for a free ride or a place to get drunk and high,” he says. “We actually have lives. And it’s valuable, in that sense.”

Spencer’s show is scheduled to open March 21 at the Victor Alexander Tasting Room and Gallery, 120 Madrone Lane, Suite 101 (just off Winslow Way). Hours are 1 to 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Spencer’s work can also be seen on his blog, aviewfromwicca.blogspot.com