Will a whale make a good pig?

A Langley arts group is exploring installing a large whale piggy bank near Langley’s Whale Bell Park to raise funds for the maintenance of Seawall Park.

“It’s modeled after Rachel the Pig at Pike Place Market,” Joann Quintana said at a recent city council meeting. “The funds collected there help pay for a health clinic for low-income people. We’re looking for a way to pay for maintenance at the park.”

Quintana is a member of the Langley Arts Commission, Parks & Open Space committee and she sat on the Seawall Park ad hoc committee that studied upgrading Seawall Park. The council recently viewed a park design proposal that includes adding artistic shelters and other features.

Kids could play on the whale bank and parents drop coins into it, Quintana said.

“It could also be a Wishing Whale, as in ‘I wish to see a whale,’” she added. “It ties into so many themes.”

The whale sculpture could be made of bronze, but that’s probably too expensive, Quintana said. No design or material has been selected but artists are being consulted and ideas for raising private funds to build it are underway.

The project could cost $50,000, the Langley Arts Commission estimated at its September meeting.

A fundraising arm of the arts commission called the Langley Public Arts Consortium would take the lead on raising private donations for the Wishing Whale bank.

Georgia Gerber, the Whidbey artist behind the famous bronze Pike Place pig named after her neighbor’s prize-winning porker, is also being consulted.

“There are, of course, many ways that a whale bank could be made,” Gerber said in an email. “Bronze would be a prime consideration due to its durability and ease of maintenance, but other materials would certainly work and compliment the look and feel of the Whale Park. A lot will depend on the balance between all of the goals of the project and the cost of producing the sculpture/bank.”

Installed in 1986, Rachel the Piggy Bank became a must-see-and-rub-its-nose-for-luck tourist attraction at the iconic Seattle waterfront market. It raises about $10,000 annually for social service programs, according to the Pike Place Market website.

Money — how to raise it for the project — and how it stays safe in an oversize public bank are considerations yet to be tackled.

Gerber said she’s often consulted by other artists about the money mechanism.

“The money that is dropped into the collection slot falls into a locked metal box that is removed every night and replaced with an empty duplicate box,” Gerber said. “This way no significant amount is left inside the bank for long.”

Rachel’s creation got a boost from Fratelli’s Ice Cream Company because it wanted to start funding social programs in the Pike Place Market neighborhood.

“Certainly the more popular and interactive the sculpture/bank becomes the more money will be donated,” Gerber said. “But the cost of producing such a bank may take some time to be realized through donations alone.”

This isn’t the first time Whidbey Island residents have created a whale-pig hybrid.

In 2001, Langley Middle School students dreamed up porcas. An art class turned a fiberglass pig into a pod of porcas as part of Seattle’s “Pigs on Parade” fundraiser that placed 199 artistically designed hogs around the city.

The porcas wallowing in mud had dreams, the students said, of swimming off to sea.