Beginning in 2016, the mural corridor known as the SODO Track has featured the work of more than 50 artists along the E3 Busway, a two-mile stretch in Seattle’s SODO district. Since its completion in 2018, it has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most celebrated concentrations of public art, transforming a key piece of transportation infrastructure into a vibrant, large-scale cultural experience.

Artists from across the region and around the world contributed to the project, making it a powerful example of how public art can animate the everyday, connect people to place, and reflect the energy of a changing city.

The SODO Track was made possible through a groundbreaking partnership between 4Culture, King County Metro, the SODO Business Improvement Area (BIA), and Sound Transit, in collaboration with a network of additional funders, property owners and community organizations. 4Culture has maintained stewardship of the corridor since it was created, working closely with artists, building owners, and public agency partners.

Now that stewardship role is transitioning. As of July 2025, the SODO BIA will assume responsibility for ongoing maintenance, coordination, and promotion of the murals with funding from 4Culture and Sound Transit, overseeing the enhancement of the corridor’s artworks in anticipation of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Two murals located on King County Metro-owned sites will continue to be cared for by 4Culture.

This change marks the next chapter in the SODO Track’s evolution—one shaped by shifting infrastructure, community leadership, and shared investment in the role of art in the public realm. All project partners remain committed to sustaining the creative spirit of the corridor and ensuring that art continues to be part of the everyday experience in the SODO neighborhood, even as its landscape transforms.

We want to thank the artists, property owners, and community members who brought the SODO Track to life, as well as the project’s curatorial visionaries: Tamar Benzikry-Stern, Cath Brunner, and Gage Hamilton. Their bold thinking and deep collaboration made this ambitious vision a reality.

The legacy of the SODO Track lives on—not just in paint, but in the way it redefined what’s possible at the intersection of art, transit, and community.

Join us on July 26, 11:00 am to 3:00 pm at Yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective at 9674 51st Ave S, Seattle for a Summer Native Art Market! Enjoy a vibrant day filled with beadwork, prints, jewelry, and other goods from local Native artists. There will be crafts, snacks, and live music, as well as opportunities to learn about upcoming grant opportunities.

Interested in being a vendor? Fill out our vendor form by July 14, 2025.

Four years ago, Mel Carter showed up to an emerging artist residency at Centrum with their sewing machine, expecting to make some textile work. “But I was more interested in actually connecting to the place within the space,” they realized, so they set about exploring the Fort Warden grounds—an abandoned army base, a state park, the beach.

“I just kind of experimented with a lot of weird things,” Carter says. Among them: a dried out jellyfish and bark that had fallen off the trunk of the big Madrona tree at the heart of Centrum’s campus—both of which Carter submerged in various tinctures to see what would happen.

“I definitely identify as a witch,” they say, smiling. “These are all kinds of liquid spells, colorful concoctions of tinctures, oils, syrups, like resins, remnant liquids from rituals…any kind of earthly materials that serve purposes, like for protection or retribution.”

The experimentation Carter did at Centrum ultimately led to the work currently on view in their solo exhibition at Gallery 4Culture, bitter, the mourning, which features a collection of glass vessels filled with colorful—and meaningful—natural ingredients, along with some textiles. The show synthesizes an array of influences, from ecological values to spiritual ideas and Carter’s Japanese heritage. In each of the works, Carter is performing some kind of alchemy.

The glass vessels themselves speak to transformation, too. A few years ago, Carter was helping their friend and fellow artist Francesca Lohmann to fix up a house so they could move into it when the house caught fire and burned down. “What is the element of fire trying to teach me?” they wondered.

Curiosity about fire and its powers led them to start taking glassblowing classes at Pratt Fine Arts Center, where they immediately loved the process for its physicality and tactility. “I like the movement and the choreography of it,” they say. “You’re just sweating and hot and moving all around just like the glass. There’s this dance and spatial awareness because there’s so many things to look out for—and the danger helps my brain to focus.”

Carter emphasizes that glass is alchemy: “It transforms into something magical, it reflects everything around it, but it’s also transparent, so you can see through to the other side.”

As for what goes into the vessels, Carter focuses mostly on herbalism and plants, sourcing them from farmer’s markets, migrant vendors, local BIPOC grocers and stores, people who are deeply rooted in the city. “It’s really important to me to make work that’s responsive to the place and holds a lot of the history and care that has come into these Coast Salish lands,” they say. Likewise, it matters that their work is largely biodegradable and can be returned to the earth.

Several natural ingredients frequently recur in Carter’s work: mugwort for connecting to ancestors and the past, root vegetables for protection, beets as an offering like blood or wine, salt for cleansing (and common in Shinto practices), and eggs as a symbol of creation, life, and death, as well as a protective shell. They also use indigo and other natural pigments, combined with synthetic pigments from materials personal to them like expired makeup, broken watercolor fragments, and others.

“It creates beautiful shades of blue, green, yellow through the process. I feel like, similar to glass, indigo is alchemy,” they say. “Sitting in the bucket, it’s in its green and yellow state, and then immediately when you bring it out and expose it to oxygen: blue. It’s magical.”

In one area of the gallery, Carter has installed pieces that they think of as a resistance garden dedicated to collective liberation for Indigenous peoples and those in Palestine, Sudan, Congo; another area is a roots garden, with vessels representing daikon, hardneck garlic, and allium. A larger piece is based on a Japanese folktale called “The Monkey and the Crab,” which tells a story of trickery and revenge through various characters, which Carter represented with a chestnut, a bee, an egg, a crab, and a mortar and pestle. And another piece titled “DEEP SEA” reflects their tethers to the different kinds of families in their life: blood families, queer families, passed family. Near the entrance to the gallery, a vessel filled with green liquid hangs from a woven rope they constructed from English ivy harvested from yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective in Rainier Beach—Carter’s version of a Shinto shimenawa, a rope used to mark sacred spaces.

Through their work and the materials they use, Carter hopes to imbue magical properties into the space, and the spaces around it, wherever that may be. “When people go to the gallery and respond in some way, they’re taking that energy and internalizing the meanings and intentions.”

bitter, the mourning is on view through June 26.

From modern-day news articles to ancient Indigenous legends, the Duwamish River looms large in the life and stories of our region. Its physical wellbeing has huge impacts on our water and ecosystem, and its history continues to resonate throughout local culture. Now two new public art projects are taking shape around this enduring legacy, joining 4Culture’s ever-growing collection of water-centric artworks.

In 2018, King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) completed a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project in the Rainier Valley that keeps sewage and stormwater out of the Duwamish River with new and larger pipes and an overflow storage tank. Now a new art project is in the works at the site, created by AREA C Projects, a Rhode Island-based public art practice consisting of artists Erik Carlson and Erica Carpenter.

Known as the Rainier Valley Wet Weather Station, located near the Mount Baker light rail station, the site will become home to Waterlog, a text-based artwork featuring dozens of phrases about water in English, Spanish, Somali, Russian, and Chinese. Pulled by AREA C from local Seattle newspapers and remixed into an evocative story about the flow of water, the phrases (cut from aluminum) will surround the site like news scrolling across the bottom of a TV screen, its themes rising to the surface and submerging again—always fluid, elusive, and reflective, like water itself.

Waterlog aims to connect with the ways that water shapes life in Seattle, whether flowing into and out of household faucets, rivers, weather systems, rain gutters, tides and pipes below the ground. Its name taps into multiple meanings: It is both an account of water, in the spirit of a maritime log that records daily weather and the news of the day, and the experience of saturation or feeling utterly immersed, as humans are in water. (Not only does it define much our region and our lives, our bodies are also 60% water.) Waterlog is expected to be complete in summer 2025.

Not far from the Rainier Valley Wet Weather Station, Seattle artist Timothy White Eagle is also creating a new CSO artwork anchored in the history and natural environment of the Duwamish River. The Path of Water will be an auditory experience meant to accompany a visit to the river itself. White Eagle is currently creating three different soundtracks that will be accessible via QR codes posted near the river in locations that have yet to be determined.

To counter the industrial noise pollution in the Duwamish River Valley, each track will feature a soundscape aimed at connecting visitors more deeply to the place and environment.  Amplified natural sounds will invoke the journey of water all the way from rainfall at the Green River Headwaters through the river system to the Salish Sea. Each track will also feature a different narrative, among them a history of the river narrated by White Eagle himself as well as sounds and stories collected from people with deep roots to the Duwamish Valley. White Eagle is in the early stages of this project now, beginning with outreach to artistic communities, community partners, and the Duwamish Longhouse. Together these soundtracks aim to offer listeners a deep connection to the many histories, personalities, and possibilities of the river and its surroundings. The Path of Water is expected to be completed in 2026.

We’re so proud to have helped fund the creation of Chief Seattle Club’s ʔálʔal Café. Here, they share more about their intentions and dreams for the space.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg refers to a “third place”, as a social setting outside of home (first place) and work (second place) where people can gather informally and connect with others. The ʔálʔal Café embodied a third place for people that felt like a first place. Somewhere they could go where they felt truly seen, heard and valued. Upon crossing the threshold of the space, the feeling of warmth and celebration of identities and stories fill the air. The artwork and photographs adorning the walls reflected the diverse faces in the room, crystalizing a profound sense of belonging to our customers.

The Café transcended the definition of what a traditional European style café is. Ours embodied more than the serving of food and drinks; it served as a place of respite. A place to reflect, renew and connect with community. It offered customers quiet moments interwoven with joyful gatherings that empowered our members and customers to connect with their heritage and embrace pride in who they are.

Decolonizing the food industry is about reclaiming what was stolen. Our lands, our seeds, and our ways of nourishing our people were taken from us. For too long, colonial systems have dictated what we eat and how we grow it. They decide who profits from our labor. These systems stripped Indigenous communities of food sovereignty and forced us into dependency on processed, unhealthy, and unsustainable foods.

Our ancestors knew how to live in balance with the land. They grew and harvested food to honor the earth rather than exploit it. Reviving traditional foodways and supporting Indigenous farmers and chefs are acts of resistance. This is about healing and reclaiming our identity. It is about breaking the chains of colonialism that still bind us. When we advocate for spaces like the café, we are fighting for our people. We are fighting for our future and our right to exist on our own terms in welcoming environments.

The café is in a season of rest. It is a field lying fallow to restore its fertile ground as an enduring sacred space for our community. Our ancestors practiced crop rotation by planting corn for strength, beans for renewal, and squash to protect the soil. Each had its time to grow and give back to the land. We honor that same rhythm. There are times to plant, times to harvest, and times to let the earth breathe. Right now, the café remains in its fallow season. It is gathering strength and replenishing its roots. When the time is right, it will rise with renewed purpose. It will once again nourish the body, mind, and spirit of our people.

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.