For Nak Bou, every painting or drawing is an adventure, an improvisation, a discovery that begins without a plan or intention.

“I’ll start with maybe some color and then that sparks the flow of everything,” he explains. He knows he’s going to draw on his memories, “but how I’m going to get there, I’m not sure. I let my mark-making lead me there.”

A painting he finished a few weeks ago grew from a simple desire to use pink with sea foam green. “And then I let my intuition takeover: I started with someone holding ice cream, but just a hand with the ice cream. And then images started flowing, and then I was thinking as I was building it, Oh, yeah. I remember the paleta men walking around with their carts selling ice cream in Fresno during the summer.”

Bou’s vibrant, evocative work is currently on view at Gallery 4Culture in Water Shop, an exhibition named for the distilled water store his family operated in Fresno, CA, two decades ago. The show’s pieces—a series of ink drawings on paper and mixed-media paintings on canvas—depict collage-like combinations of people and everyday objects, all steeped in the colorful aesthetics of lo-fi graphic design and the album covers, movie posters, and graphic novels of mid-century Cambodia.

“I intentionally make my stuff kind of flat, with a bit of realism mixed in,” he says. “I like to keep it very rough-looking, not overly detailed.”

Bou’s influences are directly connected to his roots. In 1981, in the aftermath of the Cambodian Genocide, his mother, father, and two older siblings emigrated to the United States, settling into the refugee community in East Dallas, TX. His mother passed away in 1989, and a few years later, when Bou was in the fourth grade, the family headed west to California, eventually landing in Fresno, where they had relatives. At first, Bou’s father was largely living off his pension from his years of work as a janitor for Dallas County, working in his garden, selling vegetables.

It wasn’t until years later that he opened the water shop, selling water alongside Khmer-dubbed martial arts dramas on tape and karaoke DVDs. Bou and his siblings pitched in whenever they could. “We were just there, stuck with him,” Bou reflects. “It was so boring there! But we’d watch VHS cassettes with him in between helping customers with transactions—and a lot of the folks were people from the neighborhood. We’d always have some Cup Noodles that we’d heat up in the microwave for lunch.”

The water shop was not to last, however. Roughly a year after his father decided to shut down the shop, Bou’s father suffered an aneurysm and died suddenly. Today he’s remembered in two of Bou’s Water Shop paintings, including the oldest and weightiest piece in the show, a portrait of his dad at a refugee camp.

The exhibition also features several ink-on-paper drawings Bou made using a fine-point ballpoint pen before he started experimenting with color, as well as bright paintings made with brush pen, gouache, air brush and spray paint. Each of the artworks reflects Bou’s 20 years of experience working as a graphic designer, and his ability to grab the viewer’s attention, if only for a moment. 

But graphic design and Cambodian aesthetics aren’t Bou’s only visual influences. The pieces that collage artist Romare Bearden made during the Harlem Renaissance left a huge impression on Bou as a teen, as did Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom Bou discovered when his sister brought home 1996’s Basquiat film from her job at a video store.

“[Basquiat] had that energy, that kind of innocence of the line work—and there’s that collage aesthetic too,” Bou says. “I owe a lot to African American artists and art history. I’m indebted to that movement and the principles that came out of it.”  

In addition to his studio work, Bou has been making murals and recently illustrated a cookbook for Cambodian American chef Nite Yun, which is due for release this fall. Looking ahead, he wants to keep making larger pieces but is itching to get back to working on paper.

“I want to work on bigger sheets of paper and see what comes out of that. Because the texture—when you put spray paint on it or watercolor or gouache, it just soaks differently from canvas. The paper is going to give you what it’s going to give you—and I like that a lot.”

One thing’s for sure: He’ll always be looking to discover something new. “I see myself as someone who’s always learning, always getting at his craft and never arriving,” Bou says. “I want to be like that until I’m old as hell.”

Water Shop is on view through May 29.

We know that many organizations in the King County cultural, arts, and science sectors have been impacted by federal funding cuts announced in recent weeks. We’re sharing some resources that organizations can use right now, especially those considering a grant withdrawal appeal. In certain instances, organizations have until May 9 to file these appeals.

• FAQ from Americans for the Arts.
• We highly recommend this webinar, hosted by Americans for the Arts yesterday.
• Americans for the Arts have also created this general overview with suggested action steps.
• Here is an appeal template for grantees facing NEA funding cuts.
• Inspire Washington, our statewide arts advocacy organization, have provided some sample appeal letters as well: 
  • …along with a recap with suggested action steps.
  • …and are also collecting information on lost funding. Take the survey here.

Hello, King County! On Wednesday, May 21, 12:00 to 1:00 pm PST, we invite you to attend a webinar to learn more about our new public school cultural education program! 4Culture staff will share about upcoming opportunities including:

• How to grow school-community partnerships through our new online cultural education roster.
• Funding for arts, heritage, historical preservation, science, and technology education programs in King County that work with K-12 students in one or more of the county’s 19 public school districts. Watch for the application opening in September!
• Transportation funding to support students in King County public school districts to access cultural learning experiences.

Attend the live session to ask questions or watch the recording later. Bring your curiosity and (optionally) your lunch!

This event will be hosted via Zoom. Register using the button below and a Zoom link and password will be sent to you:

REGISTER

This program is supported by King County’s new Doors Open revenue stream. Learn more here.

Have questions ahead of time? Email 4Culture’s Cultural Education Program Manager, Bryan Wilson at .

Accessibility:

At 4Culture, we strive to ensure that everyone has access to all our activities, services, and content. Zoom has ADA features like closed captioning, screen reader support, and keyboard accessibility to ensure an inclusive experience for all participants.

If you anticipate or know you may experience any other barrier to your participation, or if you need an accommodation (e.g., ASL Interpretation) to participate fully in this event, please contact us at least two weeks in advance of the event at . We will do our best to accommodate requests made closer to the date, but we cannot guarantee accommodation.

All the way back in 1978, the giant red metal X known as The Kiss was first installed at Ronald Bog Park in Shoreline, becoming a local landmark. The Kiss is among the oldest artworks made possible by 4Culture’s rich and enduring partnership with King County Parks, but it’s only one of many. All across the county, a wide and ever-growing collection of artworks contributes to the experiences people have when visiting the region’s parks—and, if you live here, you’re bound to be familiar with at least a few of them.

If you’ve spent time in Des Moines’ Redondo Waterfront Park, for example, you surely know the eight-ton granite Redondo Arch perched on the coastline. If you bike the Burke-Gilman Trail, you know Ebb & Flow, the kaleidoscopic mural that lines the 230-foot Wayne Tunnel. And if you’ve wandered through Island Center Forest on Vashon Island, you may have come upon a series of animal silhouettes cut from steel.

Today King County owns and maintains 205 parks, 175 miles of regional trails, and 215 miles of backcountry trails—all of which add up to over 30,000 acres of land. 4Culture works with Parks to commission, install, and care for artworks in those spaces.

Many of the artworks in the county’s parks celebrate our region’s Indigenous peoples, like the Coast Salish-style bronze Welcoming Figure at Richmond Beach Saltwater Park in Shoreline or the Ts’msyan totem and Coast Salish house posts in Sammamish’s Beaver Lake Park. While many artworks are permanent, others are created as temporary experiences, though they may forever live large in your mind. For instance, The Long Walk, which for three summers led groups of community members on a 45-mile hike through the county trails system, and Picturing Trails, which consists of 36 photos that were taken along King County trails, then exhibited at Gallery 4Culture before becoming part of the county’s Portable Works Collection.

To unify the vision behind the artworks along the Regional Trails System (RTS), in 2014 Brian Borello devised Park’s first-ever Arts Plan, defining an aesthetic for the trails and an ethos for enhancing the way people experience them. For 10 years, it served as a guide for 4Culture, Parks, artists, and community members working together to create and steward RTS art and design effects.

Among the places and projects Borello’s plan helped to shape is the Kit of Parts for the new Lake to Sound Trail, which will ultimately span 16 miles from the south end of Lake Washington in Renton to the Puget Sound shoreline in Des Moines. Created by Jenny Heishman and Kurt Keifer, the kit helps to unify the trail experience by outlining various sculptural elements intended to support social spaces, assist in wayfinding, provide information, and more. Its components include two types of concrete bases and a series of interchangeable timber forms and painted steel panels that can be combined in more than 60 different ways. As the trail takes shape, many of these elements are currently being installed. Look for them to appear on the SeaTac segment this summer!

With Borello’s Art Plan reaching the end of its decade of intended use, 4Culture and Parks commissioned Rosten Woo to develop an Art Plan for the next 10 years. Completed in December 2024, Seeding considers both parks and trails, imagining ways that agencies can nurture artist and community relationships to the landscape over time. It offers five types of “seeds” that can originate new works: artist residencies, large and small site-specific works, time-based performances in unique locations, and community-focused art collaborations. Now Woo is developing an artwork rooted in the plan, which will eventually make its home in Lakeland North Urban Nature Park.

Woo’s forthcoming piece isn’t the only new Parks project in the works. The community can also look forward to the completion of a new permanent sculpture by W. Scott Trimble at the gateway to Eastrail in Woodinville. Like many of the artworks in King County parks, Trimble’s new work is inspired by the area’s history with trains, wine, and whiskey. Wooden slats recall barrels and railroad ties and its large geometric forms echo the shapes of a locomotive and train car. We can already picture a future in which the artwork serves as a meeting place, an architectural landmark, and a stopping point for those who use the trail or live and work in the neighborhood.

Explore parks and trails artworks here.

Hyunjeong Lim never imagined she’d live in the United States. But when her husband got a tech job here in 2018, she suddenly found herself in San Francisco, some 5,600 miles from her home in Busan, South Korea. Right away, the couple set about exploring their new home on a series of road trips—and discovered a California landscape that felt very foreign.

“It was really magical—the sunshine and palm trees,” she says. “Outside of San Francisco, it’s so dry and sunny that it’s like an alien environment to me.”

Lim had been painting “realistic, imaginary worlds of the mind” since working on her MFA in London at Central Saint Martins more than a decade ago. But in California, the color and tone of her paintings began to change. “What affects my work most is really the nature and the climate environment around me,” she says.

Then the pandemic hit, and Lim was confined to her apartment. “The depths of my painting, the amount of detail or the time I put in increased a lot,” she says. “I felt like, if I make this painting more realistically or with more abundant details, I could feel like I’m in the outside world, traveling through nature all over again. Foliage, leaves, grasses, trees—I just gave extra, more.”

With her husband able to work remotely, he and Lim decided to seek out a more familiar setting, and wound up in Seattle. “It has four seasons, lots of mountains and forests, so it’s very similar to Korea,” she says.

Again, they hit the road.

In time, Lim had visited many of the most celebrated sites in the Western United States: Yosemite, the Oregon Coast, the Olympic Peninsula, the canyons, Utah, even Hawaii. These experiences became the material for her current Gallery 4Culture exhibition, Trip West, a collection of 31 surrealistic landscape paintings inspired by the places she’s been and the people she’s seen on her travels. Made using oil and acrylic paints, they include individual smaller paintings as well as diptychs, triptychs, and various combinations thereof.

Lim has been exploring this kind of imagery all her life. As a child, she spent a lot of time drawing things like mushroom houses and forest creatures. While in London, she returned to the National Gallery again and again to study the works of Renaissance masters, which she loves.

“The layering of thin, sparkling oil colors to build the landscape with tiny brush strokes—it really gives me a lot of joy to just to look at it,” she says of the Flemish paintings that live large in her mind.

When making one of her paintings, Lim synthesizes Renaissance influences with elements of Chinese or Korean screen painting and the idealized landscapes they present. She composes her works through a combination of compositional sketches and spontaneous, intuitive drawing, using her own photos as references and drawing on her own fragmented memories.

The paintings in Trip West not only contain worlds within worlds individually, their juxtapositions conjure even more imaginary places, which is why Lim labors over the way they’re arranged, using her computer to puzzle them together. Paintings may depict far away locations, but “put together, they make another context,” she says, explaining that she sees herself as the conductor of an orchestra. “Like, this painting makes pop sound and another one makes a bass tone.”

Though there’s a lot going on in each piece, Lim says she doesn’t have a specific narrative in mind for any of them. She leaves that for each viewer to fill in themselves, hoping the imagery will trigger their memories of the places they’ve visited in their own lives. “I really believe that strangers—each of us—could slightly understand each other better because we are looking at the same things,” she says.

Yet she acknowledges that some objects carry very different meaning in different places, like tents, for example. “I use a lot of cones or tent shapes because I like hiding something inside of it. The tent can be for lots of things,” Lim explains, noting the many ways she’s observed West Coast artists depicting teepees and tents historically.

“Sleeping in a tent is kind of a luxury to Koreans. We make a pastime of going to a camp site and enjoying nature,” Lim says. In contrast, in cities on the West Coast today, tents can indicate homelessness. “Those simple drawing can tell the different story to each viewer depending on where they’re from.”

For viewers at Gallery 4Culture, the scenes in Trip West may be full of familiar locations. But how might audiences elsewhere respond to them? Lim will find out this fall when she shows these works again as part of a solo show in Seoul. She laughs, “When I show my photos of these places to my friends in Korea, they’re like, where have you been?”

Trip West is on view through April 24.

4Culture’s generous support has been instrumental for yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective, enabling us to cultivate a vibrant community space that celebrates Indigenous culture and creativity. With the resources provided by 4Culture, we have been able to prepare our home for a multitude of community events and gatherings, which has significantly enhanced our ability to serve the people and the broader community.

Since receiving this support, we have welcomed over 1,150 visitors to our land, creating an inclusive atmosphere where individuals can connect, share, and learn from one another. We have successfully hosted more than 50 events, including art exhibitions, performances, and workshops.

Moreover, a key aspect of our work is the rematriation of the land. We have planted over 400 native plants, which not only enhance the beauty of our space but also contribute to local biodiversity and sustainability. This initiative has allowed us to educate community members about the importance of native plants and indigenous land care.

Through these efforts, we have seen how 4Culture’s support extends beyond mere financial assistance; it has enabled us to create lasting connections within our community, promote Indigenous culture, and foster an inclusive environment where creativity and Indigenous land stewardship go hand in hand.

Diana Dvora Falchuk has been preserving a lone butterfly wing since she received it as a gift from a friend in 2007. It’s one of countless little objects she’s amassed over many years, from a piece of gum she chewed in her early 20s to a plastic glow-in-the-dark dinosaur that her son used to play with.

“There’s always been the story of where the objects came from, who else engaged with them, and where in the world they have lived before in my house or my studio,” she says. “I feel almost like a parental motherly responsibility for them.”

A number of Falchuk’s carefully stewarded objects are currently on view as part of her Gallery 4Culture exhibition, Reshimu. Arranged, altered, and combined in various ways, some of them form a series of sculptures on mirrored glass while others appear in a larger wall installation titled “Casa Falchuk – Hay de Todo” that pays homage to her ancestors, who also collected a little bit of…everything.

Prior to World War I, her paternal grandfather and their family were living in what is now Belarus.  At different points leading up to and after the war, some family members were murdered in anti-Jewish pogroms and others escaped as refugees. Her grandfather, still a child, reunited with his next eldest brother in Cuba following the war. Together they moved to Venezuela in search of economic opportunity, and upon their arrival they had to “find a way to survive within a Catholic society, not for strictly religious reasons— they weren’t very religious actually—but because Jews were treated differently,” Falchuk explains. “They had these mercantiles where they literally sold whatever was needed to be sold. It was like, you need something? Come to Casa Falchuk.”

The brothers had started off selling their wares on the beach in Cuba. Once in Venezuela, they went from house to house, then set up a street cart before eventually opening their storefront. At one point, Falchuk says, they made ends meet by going “door to door offering to paint Catholic Venezuelans as saints.” (Her father and some of his cousins eventually ended up in the U.S., where Falchuk was born.)

As an exhibition, Reshimu—a Hebrew word used in Jewish mystical tradition to describe the trace of divine light in all things—is deeply rooted in Falchuk’s Jewish heritage and spirituality.

It grew out of a search for balance. Starting in 2018, she began practicing different ways to integrate the many facets of her personal life, her artist life, and her life as an organizer, coach, facilitator, and policymaker focused on fighting racism and antisemitism. “I was just kind of questioning myself, like, how can I stay more steady and be more authentic, more reliable, more consistent?” During this time she started learning the Jewish spiritual ethical practice of Mussar to cultivate interconnection and balance.

“The spiritual, material, and political are inextricably and inherently bound,” Falchuk says. “That’s actually a beautiful, wonderful thing because it can support us more in fully manifesting the divine in our daily life. Thinking about all the different peoples who are struggling together for liberation, we all have our different lineages for understanding interconnection—the ways that we go about trying to make change and trying to heal ourselves and each other.”

Falchuk says orienting herself to the health and wellbeing of all living beings has been instrumental not only in her art practice, but also in her work dismantling antisemitism—including the ways it gets claimed to shut down protests supporting Palestinians, undermine democratic norms, and promote a white Christian nationalist agenda.

Fueled by a desire to bring disparate fragments together, she began experimenting with symmetry in her drawing and painting. Working freehand without a center line, she would try to make two sides of a 2-D image match each other, knowing they would never be perfectly exact. That exploration led her to try making monotypes by folding sheets of paper in half repeatedly and seeing how the paint looked different on each side. These efforts led to the multimedia monotypes in Reshimu.

The exhibition also features “Palimpsest,” a wall installation made from hunks of posters Falchuk removed from utility poles in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. “All the layers of all of people’s offerings and invitations and needs—a lost cat or a service for therapy or an art show or music,” she says. “There’s just so much of life that is being offered, and that’s also for the taking.” She’s also been working with utility poles and their detritus for over 25 years, drawn to their histories and textures like she is to her collection of objects.

In another large work, “If We’re the Devil, Then the Devil is Surely Gorgeous,” Falchuk again makes use of posters—but in a different way. She initially set out to make a large-scale tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, for her future ancestors. But after working with various materials, she ultimately settled on referencing the tallit using her own poster designs, similar to the ones she makes as an activist, ripping them up, dipping them in wax, and building them up in layers.

Like the entire exhibition, the piece is Falchuk’s way of trying to find healing and repair—which is the whole idea behind Tikkun Olam, a central principle of Judaism that calls for repairing the world in whatever ways you can.

Reshimu is on view through March 27.

In the two years since 4Culture and King County Metro launched the latest iteration of the beloved Poetry in Public program, it has featured poems written by 120 King County residents, uplifting local voices. 

Formerly known as Poetry on Buses, the program has been enlivening commutes since 1992.  For the 2023–2025 iteration, the program was renamed to better reflect its expansion into other modes of transit and public spaces. Here’s a look at what Poetry in Public has been up to lately!

Poet Planner Laura Da’ developed the theme Places of Landing to honor the movements, places, and feelings that shape our days. In 2023, she and the program’s Community Liaisons facilitated a workshop series designed to inspire people to engage with the theme. During the workshops, poetry activities highlighted traditions connected to African American, Chinese, Filipino, Indigenous, Spanish-speaking, and youth communities. Workshops took place at many locations throughout King County, including festivals, cultural hubs, teen centers, libraries, and online and hybrid formats.

Hundreds of King County residents responded to an open call for poems interpreting the theme Places of Landing in late 2023. Then, beginning in April 2024, poems selected by a panel of local literary leaders were featured on King County Metro buses and Sound Transit light rail trains, at King County Parks trailheads, and on 4Culture’s social media platforms.

To celebrate the selected poems, Poetry in Public hosted an open mic session in collaboration with Hugo House. Additional poetry showcases followed throughout the summer and fall of 2024, produced in partnership with community organizations throughout the region.

Bedecked with Poetry in Public branding and a selection of poems curated by Da’, King County Metro’s Poetry Bus acted as an immersive stage where poets could connect with one another and read their Places of Landing pieces. The Poetry Bus made special appearances at cultural festivals, including Pista Sa Nayon at Seward Park Amphitheater as well as Fiestas Patrias and Festival Sundiata at the Seattle Center.

April is National Poetry Month, and we’ll be celebrating the accomplishments of Poetry in Public: Places of Landing as it comes to an end. We encourage you to visit our Storefront Media Gallery over the course of the month as we display a selection of poems that we hope will inspire you to write your own poetry. For more guidance, check out our poetry prompts or visit 4Culture to pick up a Places of Landing poetry prompt booklet!

Friendly greetings! I’m TORLEY, and I make sonic science fiction that explores the expressive edges of electronic music, blending contemporary synthesis with classical techniques. My focus is more on the aesthetic approach behind my craft than adhering to any one “style”. That said, I have a soft spot for saturated melodies, basic chord progressions that morph into wild configurations, and glitchy drum rhythms. I’m accessibly weird!

The 4Culture Album—click through for a free download!—or “T4CA”, is inspired by my sensory experiences traveling across Seattle and King County. This project wouldn’t have been possible without the support of 4Culture — not just through the grant I received, but also through the inspiration I found in their mission to uplift the creative community and our local ecosystem. *T4CA* is about taking recurring-yet-disparate motifs and unifying them in fresh, surprising directions.

One of my keystone references is Ted Chiang, also from this area. His thought-provoking “What if?” approach in every short story and his own contributions to SAL and the writing community inspires me to bring that same level of care and creativity into my music — aiming for quality and quantity.

A quote I obsessively check is Louis Cole’s gem: “If people actually followed [their tastes more], music would be a lot better than it is. It’s purely what I’m excited about and what I’m excited to hear.” This isn’t selfish, as I find that if what you made comes from a place of undiluted YOUness, then it resonates at the right frequency for others too — it shatters the idea that art must cater to a generic formula, instead embracing individuality as a powerful social connector. Thus, we can all be ourselves together.

Thanks to 4Culture, I was able to expand my “sonic spaceship” with new virtual instruments and multi-FX tools, which allow me to experiment and randomize ideas, curating the best results. I also used some of it on AI tools to come up with never-before-heard sounds and generate variations on what I already made. My belief in AI as a tool to accelerate established processes and enhance human creativity was deeply shaped by my work on the game Proxi with Gallium Studios, led by Will Wright (The Sims) and Lauren Elliott (Carmen Sandiego).

I primarily use the Expressive E Osmose synthesizer, a multidimensional instrument that has piano-lookin’ keys but senses superfine touch, enabling subtle flute lines and horn swells and odder fare. This time around, the rich jazz foundations of this area (dating back to Ray Charles and Quincy Jones RIP) strongly influenced my tracks, a tribute to the vibrant local culture.

Again, ultra-grateful and delighted 4Culture grants even exist. If you’ve made something possible with 4Culture fueling your rocket, let’s hear about it!

The Network of Support is opening a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for coaches, mentors, consultants, and technical assistance providers on March 6, 2025.

With increased funding from the Doors Open program, many cultural organizations are navigating new opportunities but may face unique risks and hurdles. The Network of Support brings skilled individuals and organizations to provide as-needed services to cultural organizations in King County, including those undergoing operational crisis and moments of tremendous organizational transformation as well as those undertaking facilities and real estate project development.

Who should apply?
We recognize that diverse perspectives, ideas, cultures, and life experiences of all are critical to our success. We strongly encourage people from historically under-invested communities and community-based individuals and organizations to apply. This application includes three areas:

• Coaches and mentors support leadership development and help assess needs and goals, for organizational success and sustainability or for community and cultural facilities project development.
• Consulting services strengthen internal processes and capacities in areas, such as: accessibility (language, ADA, facilities, mobility); board/board relations; communications, marketing, and branding; community and cultural facilities, including real estate project development; diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion; financial emergency planning; financial planning and/or strategy; fundraising/development; human resources; interpretive planning; leadership and board optimization; legal services; organizational design and management; and strategic planning.
• Technical assistance providers support grant preparation for our Launch and Building for Equity grant programs.

Compensation
Selected providers will be listed on a directory and will be reimbursed at a rate of:

• $185/hour for capacity building and technical assistance services provided;
• $92.50/hour for related project management, administration, and/or travel.

Note: Compensation is based on approved and completed work, and services are requested on an as-needed basis. No compensation is guaranteed.

How to Apply

1. Download and read the guidelines: PDF.
2. Set up an account: register early – account setup takes 1-2 days.
3. Submit online: complete and submit your application via our application portal by the deadline.

We are providing three Drop-in Hour sessions to answer your questions and work on your application:

March 20, 4:30–6:00 pm
Centro Cultural Mexicano
16300 Redmond Way, Suite 100, Redmond, WA 98052

March 29, 9:30–11:30 am
Zoom

April 1, 5:30–7:30 pm
Zoom

This addendum summarizes responses to questions to the RFQ.

As you prepare to apply, keep the application deadline of April 10, 2025 at 5:00 pm PDT in mind!

Questions?
Contact Cassie Chinn, Cultural Services Liaison, at . 

The guidelines and application are in English. If this is a barrier that stops you from understanding the RFQ or applying, please contact or call 206-296-7580 or TTY 711, and we will make sure you get the support you need.

Partner Opportunity
The City of Seattle Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) is issuing an RFQ. We will hold a joint selection process to strengthen each program’s efforts and minimize duplicate efforts for applicants. To be considered for the City’s program, apply separately here.

For 45+ years, Gallery 4Culture has been exhibiting innovative artists and art forms in solo and small-group shows. Today, we’re thrilled to announce the artists who will have exhibitions in the coming season. Check them out below!

Congratulations to our 2025–2026 artists, and thank you to our panelists—Judy Avitia-Gonzalez, Erin Elyse Burns, Em Chan, and Michael Hong—for their time and effort in reviewing and selecting six King County-based artists and artist teams.

4Culture would also like to thank all 119 gallery applicants for their interest in exhibiting with us and the panel for their diligence in making these selections. The next Gallery 4Culture season application cycle will open early November with a deadline of December 11, 2025.

Lee Davignon

March 5 – April 24, 2026
Opening Reception: 1^st Thursday, March 5, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: April 2, 6-8pm

Lee Davignon transforms salvaged materials through textile techniques, sculptural experimentation, and material play, highlighting themes of waste, value, and craft.

Amara Eke and Jade Knox

October 30 – December 12, 2025
Opening Reception: 1^st Thursday, November 6, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: December 4, 6-8pm

Attention, Earthlings! Just in time for the celestial spectacle of the Taurid Meteor Shower, Amara Eke and Jade Knox’s cosmic collaboration lands at Gallery 4Culture. Their vibrant sculptures and acrylic paintings will orbit a radiant ceramic meteorite, transforming the space into an otherworldly encounter.

Reilly Jensen

July 2 – August 14, 2026
Opening: 1^st Thursday, July 2, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: August 6, 6-8pm

A tribute to the things that irk, confuse, or amuse, Reilly Jensen’s large-scale soft sculptures—hand-embroidered, machine-stitched, and adorned with rusted, discarded objects—explore the unsettling realization that our parents’ ways surface in us when we least expect it.

Clare Johnson

May 7 – June 19, 2026
Opening: 1^st Thursday, May 7, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: June 4, 6-8pm

Every night for almost two decades, multidisciplinary artist Clare Johnson has drawn and written on a sticky note to save a small piece of each ending day. Currently including over 6,000 Post-its, this sprawling yet deeply intimate work honors what normal communication can’t—all the separate times held within ourselves, endlessly overlapping, collapsing, and refocusing.

Matthew Parker

September 4 – October 17, 2025
Opening Reception: 1^st Thursday, September 4, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: October 2, 6-8pm

Matthew Parker’s installations of foam rocks and boulders explore the intersection of art and disability, shaped by his experience of creating a body of work without a working body.

Sadaf Sadri

January 8 – February 20, 2026
Opening Reception: 1^st Thursday, January 8, 6-8pm
Additional 1^st Thursday: February 5, 6-8pm

Drawing from Islamic iconography and Shia aesthetics, Sadaf Sadri utilizes digital worldbuilding to reimagine spaces of power and resistance. Legacy exposes the ironies of identity and inheritance, challenging imposed cultural hierarchies.

When Ric’kisha Taylor was growing up in Miami, vibrant clothes, glitzy jewelry, exotic reptiles, and bright-colored cars with flashy rims were all defining features of the city’s visual culture. Her own family had a pet iguana for a time. Her dad wore bright green crocodile-skin shoes to church on Sundays.

Now the bold nature of Taylor’s hometown oozes out of her current Gallery 4Culture exhibition, Gleaming, which features more than a dozen of her sparkly collages and soft sculptures. Taylor herself generally tries not to stand out too much in subdued Seattle, “But I’m flamboyant on the inside,” she says. “And that’s what I want my ideas to look like on the outside.”   

For the artworks in Gleaming, Taylor combined a medley of materials—from synthetic fabrics and artificial hair to rhinestones and glass seed beads. The majority of the pieces depict Black women in ways that Taylor intends to challenge the viewer. She wants you to look at what she’s made and reconsider what you think you know. She’s confronting stereotypes and expectations head-on. 

“Most of the work that I do is a way for you to get so close to the stereotype that you think it’s racist in a way,” she says. “For instance, someone sees red lips on a darker skin and they’re like, I feel like this is minstrel show. But I’m like, you’re making it into that—there are dark women who wear red lipstick. There’s a little conflict.”

Taylor also questions assumptions about beauty and conformity in the exhibition—“especially with the blonde wigs and the blue eyes,” she says. To her, the things people wear, whether clothing, accessories, or makeup, are a way into thinking about identity. In “Lot Lizard,” for example, she explores the complexities of sex work and what it means to be a queer Black woman.

But Gleaming is also about finding freedom from identity and expectation. Taylor’s collage “Rather live with the gators” started as a rumination about how Indigenous people once lived in the swamps of Florida, disconnected from society and connected to the natural world around them. The piece became a way for Taylor to look for liberation in a world where “you can’t travel freely, you can’t grow your own food, and you have to pay the rent.”

“Today we’re held up against so many forms of harm that it’s kind of hard to feel like you’re one with whatever’s happening,” she says. “We have privileges and opportunities, but it’s more convoluted to be in community.”

Like “Lot Lizard” and “Rather live with the gators” Taylor’s artworks often start with a snippet of language. That phrase might spark a drawing or a search for online images before she starts staging the canvas and experimenting with her materials. “After that, it’s just deciding what each figure may need,” she says. “Does this one need a pattern? Are the [sparkling] crocodile tears enough?”

To sufficiently embellish the pieces in Gleaming, Taylor made frequent use of the peyote stitch, aka the gourd stitch, a bead weaving technique with roots in Indigenous America and ancient Egypt; Taylor learned it in a workshop with renowned Black American artist Joyce J. Scott while she was a student at Cornish College of the Arts. “At first I thought it was just a 2-D form, but you can build it into a 3-D or 4-D type of material,” she says.

“I’m kind of obsessed,” she continues. “Now I find beads on my dining table. I find them in my food!”

Gleaming is on view through Feb. 27.

Hello! I’m Sol Dressa, Community Outreach and Engagement Support Specialist here at 4Culture. I’m so excited to help relaunch Hello 4Culture and help expand access to arts, science and cultural funding across King County! I will be traveling throughout the region to hear directly from communities—their ideas, questions, and concerns. As an artist, organizer, and staff member at 4Culture, I’m thrilled to connect with those who build spaces for communities of color—spaces that celebrate joy and play, honor ancestors through arts and culture, and foster healing and intergenerational learning.

Hello 4Culture is a program designed to engage King County residents in conversations about their individual projects, goals, and creative pursuits. Because of the pandemic, it’s been on hold for a while. Now that we are relaunching it, my mission is to ensure we’re building relationships that center those who have been disproportionately left out of cultural funding and public art opportunities. Over the next year, we’ll host pop-up Hello4Culture events and office hours, offering opportunities to ask questions about our grants and programs.

To that end, I’m thrilled to invite you to an upcoming Hello4Culture event in partnership with Friends of Little Saigon. Please join us on Saturday, March 1 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at Friends of Little Saigon’s space at 1227 S Weller Street, Suite A in Seattle. The event will be a BIPOC Arts Swap! Enjoy delicious food, exchange art with fellow local creatives, and learn more about how you can get involved with 4Culture grants and public art opportunities . At this event, you can:

• Share and trade your artwork (or a piece of artwork that you own) with other artists and creatives.
• Discover more about 4Culture grants and Friends of Little Saigon and how you can get involved.
• Connect with BIPOC artists and creatives in King County.

Any medium of art or craft is welcome! This event is open to all who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). We look forward to seeing you there, and stay tuned—more Hello4Culture events are in the works.

Last year, artist Laura C. Wright embarked on a months-long endeavor to plant a pair of dye gardens in Seattle’s Duwamish Valley and then harvest plants to make pigments for creating watercolor paints.

Commissioned by 4Culture and King County Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD), Wright’s waterplant was conceived to raise awareness about what happens when the area’s stormwater and wastewater systems are overwhelmed by heavy rains: With nowhere else to go, they currently overflow into the Duwamish River, causing harm to its flora and fauna. waterplant was a prelude to a big change getting underway this year: WTD’s new West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility, which will hold stormwater and wastewater during large storm events and then divert it to West Point Treatment Plant for filtration before it’s released into the Puget Sound.

In spring, with help from members of the Georgetown Youth Council, Wright planted the Pacific Northwest Native Plant dye garden at Gateway Park North. She then planted the Georgetown Steam Plant dye garden with flowers of historical and cultural value. Plants are good for regulating stormwater runoff!

As summer arrived, Wright led foraging and pigment-making workshops with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, Georgetown Youth Council, and the general public. Participants learned how to ethically forage plants from the Duwamish Greenbelt, which sits on a hill west of the Duwamish River and is Seattle’s largest remaining contiguous forest—500 acres! After foraging, the groups went back to Wright’s studio to process the plants.

The pigment-making process uses a technique similar to WTD’s water filtration methods, offering insight into the water system in the Duwamish Valley.

Later in the summer, WTD staff led a tour of the brand-new Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station, specifically for residents of Georgetown and South Park. There, participants learned about the lifecycle of water and treatment process.

A series of additional workshops in August began with a walk through the Georgetown Steam Plant dye garden. Participants then returned to Wright’s studio to learn how to extract pigment and make watercolor paints.

Everyone who participated in workshops went home with watercolors they and other workshop participants made.

Reaching the end of waterplant’s series of temporary engagements, Wright distributed sample watercolors and offered a painting station at community events, including the Duwamish River Festival, the Georgetown Steam Plant Science Fair, and the Georgetown Garden Walk. She has since created a coloring book that both explains the lifecycle of water in the city and provides instructions for making watercolor pigments from plants at home. We encourage you to download it and consider growing and harvesting your own dye gardens!

“What would a firefly look like if it was actually on fire?” James Hartunian wondered.

At the time, he was in Ohio for grad school, living next to a neighbor from rural Idaho. One night in early summer, the neighbor “ran outside in this excited fervor,” Hartunian says, because he’d never seen fireflies before. The little glowing beetles were just “a benign part of reality” in Michigan where Hartunian grew up. He’d never really thought about them before.

Hartunian makes speculative artwork that starts with an everyday part of nature and then alters it somehow—think ice, plants, mushrooms. TIMBER!, the exhibition currently on view at Gallery 4Culture, began with the fireflies—and then by imagining a future in which they no longer exist, where forests no longer exist, and “the machines are trying to recreate life,” he says.

“Taking this idea, this thought experiment, I kind of pull it all the way to its furthest conclusion,” Hartunian says. “I have a starting point and then I’m like, okay, so in this particular world, what else would there be?”

TIMBER! features three installations, one of which is a mechanical firefly simulation. The piece uses a complex combination of motors, electronics, and mechanical camera sliders to randomly move a series of flickering LED lights; the work is held together using custom-designed 3-D printed pieces and some 700 screws.

In the past, Hartunian has adapted existing components to create kinetic work, but TIMBER! marks the first time he’s designed the circuit board and drivers himself. To do so, he relied heavily on online resources from the DIY electronics community, and a lot of trial and error. (After the exhibition opened, he was still troubleshooting a triggering mechanism that kept shorting out.)

Hartunian likes to figure out how to make things work, not just conceptually, but physically. That makes sense, given that he’s a scientist as well as an artist, with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and membership in the American Chemical Society. (Once upon a time he worked in polymer sciences, which are related to battery chemistry.) “I’m constantly seeking out information,” he says.

Prior to starting his MFA in 2020, he made wearables that re-imagined sensory experiences. But forced to work without other human bodies during the Covid lockdown, he pivoted to plants—an experiment that led him to grow a 10-foot sunflower indoors using a system of grow lights. It bloomed in the dead of winter.

“I never thought that it was actually going to do it,” he says. “There’s this built-in doubt whenever you do anything with electronics where you’re like, this is never going to work the first time…and then it does!”

For the second installation in TIMBER!, Hartunian again considered his mythical forest: “How would you create a tree falling if there’s no tree? What would that look like as a mechanized diorama?” Now an evergreen tree intermittently falls in one corner of the gallery.

“It’s absurd,” he says. “The idea of a tree falling just continuously is silly and stupid. It would never exist outside of art—science fiction, but also fantasy.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hartunian consumes a lot of science fiction books, podcasts, etc. Lately he’s been reading novels from the 1960s, which he says tend to be utopian, rather than dystopian. In those stories, “even when we are able to travel across the galaxy, it’s interhuman squabbles that get us in trouble. And so sometimes I just take out the human and imagine what the world would be like without the human.”

The third installation in Hartunian’s current exhibition is composed of two basket-like domes woven together with soldering iron and wire. With a 5-volt current running through them, the domes power a series of LEDs. Beneath them, grass is growing.

Though the effect is beautiful, “The entire [dome] is designed out of utility, not necessarily aesthetics,” Hartunian says.

In the speculative world of TIMBER! the sun is obscured, so everything has to be grown under artificial light. He started growing the grass a week before the exhibition opened—in his garage where it’s 58 degrees.

Yet nature has insisted on having its way: Mold spores found their way into the soil, perhaps during transport to the gallery. Hartunian grew the grass in coconut husk, rather than the soil he usually uses—the idea being that the coconut husk is more sterile and wouldn’t mold over as quickly. As it turns out, “It’s molding over way faster because there’s nothing in it.”

TIMBER! is on view through Jan. 30.