What’s Up ponders mortality at the annual Dia De Los Muertos show in Bremerton.

BREMERTON — This month, with the right state of mind, the Artists for Freedom and Unity gallery feels like a crypt.

The coolness of the cement floor; the stillness of the autumn air; the silence in the room. If you can disregard the Callow Avenue traffic rumbling by the front window, sit quietly and meditatively, it makes for a most eerie feeling — almost like you’re not alone, but you’re not sure whether that’s good or bad.

It’s the eighth annual Dia De Los Muertos show, a traditional group art show celebrating Day of the Dead in Bremerton. It’s a show which, through the support of its artists, has ironically survived the demise of both its original residence and second home.

Surrounded by skulls and spirits of all sorts in this year’s exhibition, I am seated beneath a rendering of death from first-time “Dia De Los Muertos” artist Ben Boardman.

It’s titled “Death Comes with a Mustache.”

A full-bodied skeleton is coming out of an inky black background with a mustache on its face and a molotov cocktail in hand.

It’s a fitting piece underneath which to digest the show.

Boardman said he created it as an ode to the traditional Day of the Dead skeletons, which are often portrayed in the living’s attire. He meshed his style with that tradition. And, in a way, that’s what the Dia De Los Muertos show does each year — it celebrates the tradition through contemporary artists’ styles and their many different interpretations of “Day of the Dead.”

As is typical of most AFU shows, it is exceptionally blunt.

Directly in front of me there’s another skeleton, sans mustache, who has apparently drunk itself to death and is continuing to do so through its ear cavity. To the right of that, there’s a hideous-looking antelope skull with six horns, blue orbs for eyes and a jaw hinged with an old bike chain. And above my right shoulder, Mother Mary watches over the ghost of John F. Kennedy in one of Patrick Cooper’s subtly morbid pieces made of old wood and roofing paper.

It all makes me ponder death — the mortality of it, the demise, the remembrance … the silence. And at that point when it all gets too heavy, I walk out of the show room to ask Boardman, who’s coloring another piece in the lobby, how often he thinks about death.

“Not much,” he says. “I figure there’s more important things in life … like living.”

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS 8 will hang throughout the month at the AFU, 318 Callow Ave. in Bremerton. It will be feted with a party on the official Day of the Dead at 6 p.m. Nov. 1. Info: myspace.com/artistforfreedomandunity