Since Indigenous People’s Day was made a King County holiday last year, 4Culture staff have been seeking out intentional ways to learn more about the Native American tribes that make their home in and around King County. This year, staff members attended events that brought people together in celebration. This is part of our ongoing effort to deepen our relationship with Indigenous communities in King County in ways where we are invited to participate.

We started out this year’s activities attending the Seattle Rep production of Between Two Knees by the 1491s, an intertribal comedy team, and got together to discuss the stellar performance and its impact on us. The Seattle Rep did a great job of providing additional resources for audience members to learn more and experience different Indigenous artists’ perspectives.

The weekend of July 21, a number of staff attended the 2023 Seafair Powwow at Daybreak Star. This annual powwow is a wonderful way to experience a Native party! Seeing so many styles of regalia and traditional clothing is stunning, as is the athleticism of the dancing. Everyone is represented in the dance circle, from Tiny Tots to the matriarchs, and guests can join in during the intertribal songs. This year was very special as we were honored to visit with previous 4Culture staff Denise Emerson, whose artwork was on the official powwow merch! To prepare for our staff meet-up, we shared a few resources like Daybreak Star’s Pow Wow FAQs,  Powwow 101 from the NAYA Family Center and Pow Wow Series: Part One, The History & Reclaiming Our Right To Dance by the Indigenous Goddess Gang. This longform article gives a comprehensive timeline of the history of powwows in the US and Canada, through a personal lens. All of us who attended this year’s Seafair Powwow were lifted up by the experience, and inspired by the powerful communities who welcomed us.

Late in July 2023, more than 60 canoes representing tribes from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia set out on Canoe Journey 2023. Their final destination was Muckleshoot, where the Muckleshoot Tribe planned to welcome them. Along the way, the teams of pullers (not paddlers) stopped in other Native communities, like Lummi, Swinomish, Suquamish, where they were welcomed in celebration of the journey.

On the morning of Sunday, July 31, canoes began to land on Alki Beach in West Seattle. One by one, each canoe approached the shore and requested permission to land from the Muckleshoot tribe, whose representative welcomed each nation. Pulling teams, usually reflecting several generations, worked together to pull their heavy wooden crafts out of the water and onto the beach. Several 4Culture staff went to Alki beach to join the crowd that witnessed the canoes welcomed to shore.

After all of the canoes landed, the pullers and other celebrants left Alki for the Muckleshoot Community Center, where protocol was held from August 1 through August 6. During protocol, representatives from each tribe in attendance share songs, dances, and stories. The order of tribes during protocol is determined by the distance that they traveled, with the hosting tribe going last.

Canoe Journey is a celebration of Native culture and ties that exist among communities who have plied the Pacific Northwest waters since time immemorial. The contemporary Canoe Journey tradition began in 1989, when it was called the “Paddle to Seattle.” Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s celebration was the first since 2019, when the Lummi Nation hosted.

To wrap up our report, here are some resources about local indigenous history and practice, as well as info on Daybreak Star’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration on October 9:

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2023 at Daybreak Star

United Indians of All Tribes Foundation

Visit Seattle Support for Seattle’s Indigenous Community

Indigenous Peoples’ Day at the Burke Museum

Native Americans of Puget Sound – A Brief History of the First People and Their Cultures

First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest – Research Guide at Evergreen State College

Pacific Northwest History and Cultures – Native Knowledge 360

Edward S. Curtis Digital Collection at the Seattle Public Library

Indigenous Tribes of Seattle and Washington – American Library Association

The King County Public Art Collection features a wealth of work by Indigenous artists who carry forward the cultures of First Peoples.

Among the wetlands and woods that surround Brightwater, at Delta Pond near Little Bear Creek, Andrea Wilbur-Sigo’s Grandfather’s Wisdom reflects the history and culture of the region’s First People. Twenty upright cedar paddles flank the front frame of a longhouse, “a modern view of what a longhouse would look like standing in a place that it’s highly likely one might have been,” Wilbur-Sigo said when the work was created in 2012. Unfortunately, after a decade in the elements, the longhouse had weathered—so 4Culture contracted Wilbur-Sigo to restore it. As of this month, her work is complete and Grandfather’s Widom is as clean and crisp as ever.

Wilbur-Sigo is a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe, and descendant of the Skokomish Tribe and many other tribes of Puget Sound; she is also the first known woman carver in her family of carvers and a longtime advocate for Coast Salish traditions. For Grandfather’s Widom—her first-ever permanent public artwork—she used symbols that hold great meaning for all Puget Sound tribes: the Killer Whale, Octopus, and Thunderbird, all of them rendered in the crescents, trigons, wedges, and circles that define Salish style.

The King County Public Art Collection (KCPAC) includes a wide variety of works that celebrate Indigenous artists and cultural traditions—from Coast Salish to other Pacific Northwest First Nations and beyond. These artworks share stories and values, honor Indigenous stewardship of this land, and lift up Native artforms themselves, which continue to be passed on from one generation to the next—preserved despite the genocide and assimilation that could have extinguished them. Today’s artists both carry and evolve these traditions.

The collection’s works by Indigenous artists range from traditional to modern using many different materials. For example, Preston Singletary (Tlingit) fuses contemporary blown and carved glass, cast lead crystal, and bronze with Northwest Native themes and designs. The KCPAC includes several of his artworks from various stages of his career in its portable holdings, including Killer Whale Totem and Hyacinth Medicine Amulet. Susan Point, a descendant of the Musqueam people, focuses on Coast Salish traditions. Among her pieces in the county’s collection: a set of six carved cedar panels on the Green River Trail that share the legend of the Northwind Fishing Weir as well as a relief mural and gate design featuring Coash Salish iconography at the West Seattle Pump Station.

Singletary and Point also both have works on view at Harborview Medical Center, as do a number of Indigenous artists, including Dempsey Bob (Tahltan, Tlingit), who currently has a major retrospective on view at Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts, and Connie Watts (Nuu-chah-nulth, Gitxsan, Kwakwaka’wakw), whose Vereinigung hangs from the ceiling of the main lobby of the Ninth and Jefferson Building.

For more artworks that tell Native stories, check out Eagle by celebrated Indigenous sculptor Marvin Oliver (Quinault, Isleta-Pueblo) or a pair of totems by David Boxley (Ts’msyan) that depict his culture’s Beaver and Salmon legends. (A master carver, Boxley also hosted one of the first potlatches in the region since they were outlawed in in 19^th century.) A series of petroglyphs by Roger Fernandes (Klallam) on the Green River Trail illustrate a Duwamish ceremony.

The pieces above reflect just a small portion of the KCPAC’s works by Indigenous artists—and 4Culture is consistently adding more. Through our Curator’s Choice program, we recently acquired a beaded bag by Denise Emerson (Skokomish, Navajo), and a new sculpture by Michael Halady (Duwamish) debuted last month at the King County International Airport. Meanwhile, RYAN! Feddersen (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) is working on a RapidRide commission; Timothy White Eagle (mixed-race Indigenous American) is devising a piece for the West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility; and the forthcoming South County Recycling and Transfer Station will welcome two new artworks featuring the Sun, Moon, Frog, and Heron by Muckleshoot Indian Tribe Cultural Division artists Keith Stevenson, Tyson Simmons, and Sam Obrovac.

4Culture is honored to support these artists and many others through our commissions and acquisitions, and we are constantly exploring how we can do more for Indigenous communities. As you look for ways to mark Indigenous Peoples Day this month, we hope you will seek out some of these remarkable artworks.

A new story pole by Duwamish carver Michael Halady joins a collection of artworks at the King County International Airport that honor the location’s past.

In 1910, just a few years after the Wright brothers first successfully went airborne, a crowd of 20,000 people gathered at The Meadows, a horseracing resort near the Duwamish River. The draw? Pioneer aviator Charles “Crazy Man of the Air” Hamilton was in town to put on a show, diving a Curtiss biplane into the resort’s lake from 500 feet. Reportedly, he was drunk. (He also survived the crash, and many others.)

Within the next year, the City of Seattle’s planning commission set out to transform the farmland along the river into an industrial area. Businessman William E. Boeing Sr. subsequently bought a manufacturing plant there, and it became home to his nascent aviation company, known by 1917 as the Boeing Airplane Company. On that site, Boeing produced and tested 50 Model C trainers for the United States Navy during WWI. Then, in 1928, King County citizens voted overwhelmingly to pay a tax in order to purchase the land and create the region’s first modern municipal airport and its only passenger terminal, which opened in the spring of 1930.

Visit the KCIA and you can see 30,000 Feet, Brad Miller’s enormous sculpture made of 30,000 one-foot wooden rulers, which point to a pair of illuminated photographs hanging from the ceiling. A terrazzo floor by Paul Marioni and Ann Troutner imagines the connections between earth, the moon, and the cosmos beyond. Norman Courtney’s Luminaries uses metal and glass to create Art Deco-inspired, spaceship-shaped pendant lights. A collection of portable works—including paintings, photographs, and small sculptures—hang on the walls of the building’s interior. Outside, several large-scale sculptures line the perimeter of the property, including Peter Reiquam’s Metropolis Fence, which conjures 1930s aviation posters in a series of cut-steel panels. Together, these works celebrate the history and purpose of the site.

Of course, people have lived on and cared for these lands long before aviation ever existed. In December 2020, Greg Thomas with KCIA, reached out to 4Culture about commissioning a new work to honor the Indigenous people—specifically the Duwamish—who had made the site their home long before European settlers arrived in the region.

“They came to us to assist with the project because they wanted guidance in the artist selection process,” says 4Culture Public Art Project Manager Selina Hunstiger. “We were excited to get involved and facilitate a panel that ultimately selected Michael Halady to carve artwork honoring his heritage.” Halady is a direct descendant of Duwamish leader Chief Seattle, for whom the city is named.

That new work—Spirit of the Duwamish —was recently installed at the entrance to the KCIA Terminal Building. A story pole carved from 600-year-old cedar, the form of the sculpture references the house posts that held up two Duwamish longhouses on the site until at least 1855. It’s also a welcome figure with two major symbols: The lower one depicts the collective spirit of the Duwamish welcoming people to their ancestral lands, and the top one depicts Changer, a supernatural being and major figure in the cosmology of Puget Sound First Nations. Changer’s story is one of transformation—fitting for a place so steeped in Indigenous and modern history.

Excited about art at airports? You can also explore the works at Sea-Tac the next time you’re there!

Our King County Heritage Internship Program connects heritage organizations with students and emerging professionals seeking work experience in the heritage field. This year, we partnered with the Museum of Flight on an internship opportunity to work with their collections. Andrew Le is the intern for this year’s program, and he recently received a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. Andrew started working with the Museum of Flight in February, and he will complete his internship in August. Here, Andrew shares insight into his experience.

I am originally from Wichita, Kansas, which earned its nickname “the air capital of the world” by producing more airplanes than anywhere else on Earth. Aviation is part of my heritage. Understandably, I jumped at the opportunity to work at the Museum of Flight through 4Culture’s King County Heritage Internship. Not only do I work in an incredible aerospace museum with many friendly people, I also get to improve access to the diverse materials in their collections and gain valuable experience in my field.

The collections department at the museum is full of unique and interesting things. From Chinese-language airplane design handbooks to secret model wind tunnels, the department has no shortage of objects that stop aviation nerds like me in our tracks. However, having so many interesting things can cloud access to important areas of history. The folks at the museum needed to filter through everything to highlight specific areas of diversity, specifically material created by or pertaining to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), LGBTQ+ individuals, and women. Thus, this Heritage Internship program aimed to improve the visibility of the diverse material within the collections and took off at supersonic speeds.

The project took shape in two parts. The first half of the internship focused exclusively on identifying diverse materials. This process mirrored the Commemorative Initiative created by the museum’s Diversity and Inclusion Council, which identified five months commemorating specific identities. Using these months as a launchpad, I searched each of the collections (archives, library, and small objects) for materials related to these identities and scaled the project to fit the findings. In practice, research began in the library in order to create a list of terms (for example names of diverse aviators or engineers, organizations, or specific historic events) which could be keyword searched in each of the collections databases. While this process often landed on trial and error, the result was a list of over 400 items and collections representing substantial diversity, significantly more than previously thought.

The second half of the internship focused on documentation. Although the project had already identified a lot of Cool Stuff, it wouldn’t be worth much without some form of access. The list of over 400 items lived as an Excel Spreadsheet with lots of data. I retained the original spreadsheet for internal use and created a clean, public-facing copy with an instruction manual for external use. Additionally, I documented the search process for reproducibility and future iterations of this work.

This internship at the museum, most of all in the collections department, is a perfect intersection of my personal interests and professional goals. Working closely with museum staff and uncovering bits of under told aviation stories has been an immensely fulfilling experience, especially for a recent graduate. I hope this project not only helps the museum, but also helps the understanding of aviation history as a whole.

Commissions made in partnership with King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division reveal and celebrate crucial water systems.

Inside Brightwater, one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in the world, workers are constantly monitoring a state-of-the-art filtration system that processes many millions of gallons of wastewater every day. Around the clock, they track variations in weather and waste to ensure that the entire system is doing its job without interruption—guided in part by the sounds they hear coming from the facility’s vast pipes and machinery.

Brightwater’s work is crucial to the health of our community. This fall, artist Susan Robb will invite the public into what she calls the “hidden world” of wastewater through Deep Listening to the System, a sensory experience designed to honor the essential efforts of wastewater employees. The journey will begin with a tour of Brightwater, exploring the complex infrastructure that produces recycled water for irrigation, biosolids for organic fertilizer, and biogas for electricity. After the tour: a stop at the Brightwater Environmental Education and Community Center for a short meditation on gratitude for our natural resources and the people who help preserve them. Then comes the sound bath, a “sonorous event,” Robb says, created by a musician playing crystal singing bowls, gongs, chimes, hand drums, and shakers.

Deep Listening to the System is just one of many artworks that tell the story of Brightwater, located north of Woodinville. Following the sound bath, participants will be encouraged to walk along the site’s three miles of trails, where they can discover pieces like Andrea Wilbur-Sigo’s newly restored longhouse, a pair of iconic sculptures by Buster Simpson, laboratory and blown glass in the shape of micro-organisms by Ellen Sollod, and many others—all of them guided by a single art plan and focused on the meaning and movement of water.

Brightwater belongs to a collection of facilities operated by King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD), which protects water quality for about 1.9 million people within a 424-square-mile area. Working in partnership with WTD, 4Culture has commissioned an array of temporary and permanent artworks; together they illuminate the agency’s many feats and immense positive impacts on the county’s environment and public health. Locations include not only wastewater treatment plants but also pump stations and the sites that handle stormwater during heavy rains, which are known as Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) treatment facilities.

At the South Treatment Plant in Renton, Donald Fels’ kinetic and mandala-like Water Plant rises from a pond and Lorna Jordan’s Waterworks Gardens infuses a series of five connected outdoor spaces with the classical design and theatricality of Italian gardens. At pump stations in Kirkland, Tukwila, Fremont, Bellevue, and Alki, works by W. Scott Trimble, Claudia Fitch, Perri Howard, Dan Webb, and Susan Point consider the lifecycle of water and the routes it travels.

Artworks at CSO control sites beautify stormwater storage and processing while raising awareness of the largely invisible CSO system itself. In West Seattle, a piece by Robert Horner uses rock gardens and rammed earth walls to mimic the path water takes to Puget Sound, and in Myrtle Edwards Park on Elliott Bay, a plaza and a collection of graphic panels by Haddad|Drugan depict underground collection, transport, and treatment operations.

New CSO control projects are also underway at the Wet Weather Treatment Station in Georgetown. This month, a series of outdoor visuals by Don Wilkison will make their debut, in conjunction with free events offering artist-designed packets of pollinator seeds that, when planted, will help the public contribute to clean water efforts. Later in the year, 4Culture will celebrate the completion of Sans façon’s Monument to Rain, a 35-foot clear cylinder that turns rain into theater. All of the works connected to the Georgetown facility were shaped by a CSO Art Plan by Sans façon, which provides a curatorial framework for future artworks and amenities at these locations.

A forthcoming project by Erik Carlson at the Rainier Valley Wet Weather Treatment Station in Beacon Hill/Mount Baker focuses specifically on one of five themes in Sans façon’s plan: “The Intangible,” the poetic material that can’t be conveyed in charts, graphs, numbers and spreadsheets. Carlson considers how wastewater engineers work with the stuff of poetry—such as wind, weather, and time—but, he says, “This poetry itself is neither obvious nor easily accessible to the outsider’s eye, lying submerged as it does within a sea of data.” His text-based artwork, Water Log, uses phrases drawn directly from regional news sources to write open-ended stories about the role of water in our everyday lives and imaginations.

Also on the horizon? A pair of commissions that were recently awarded to Timothy White Eagle and Laura C. Wright, who will create temporary artworks connected to the West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility.

In 2019, the King County Council approved Building for Equity, an initiative to support cultural building projects and create a pathway for us to evolve our funding practices toward more equitable outcomes. This gave us the unique opportunity to re-envision a facilities grant that increases the economic viability of BIPOC-led arts and cultural organizations.

In celebration of Building for Equity’s 4^th anniversary, we’re thrilled to highlight partnerships developed through the program’s Cultural Space Contribution requirement. Even though this is a small component of a larger program, the requirement has generated big results.

Organizations that receive grants of $100,000 or more must provide free space and technical resources to smaller organizations that are BIPOC-led or serve BIPOC communities. They work collaboratively with their partner to set a new racial equity goal, commit to attending anti-racist training, and identifying an anti-racist practice to implement. When we set up this grant requirement, we did not anticipate the creative and meaningful ways organizations would partner!

Historic Seattle partnered with Buffalo Soldiers Museum, offering office space and supporting the Museum’s campaign to preserve the historic Fort Lawton 25^th Infantry Band Building located in Discovery Park.

The Wing Luke Museum strengthened an existing partnership with the Korean American Historical Society, providing collection storage and dedicated office space for volunteers. This increased the Wing’s ties to the local Korean community.

The Sound of the Northwest gained access to classrooms for choir rehearsals, board meetings, and retreats through a partnership with Seattle JazzED. Technical support helped them launch online registration and develop fundraising and marketing strategies. The partners worked collaboratively on two racial equity goals: to invite BIPOC members to join the Seattle JazzED board and to hire BIPOC vendors for both organizations.

The Seattle Opera’s partnership with Tasveer gave the social justice South Asian film and arts organization access to workspace, event space, storage, and theatre-based technical support. Both organizations are currently creating a shared racial equity goal to work on for the duration of their engagement.

To meet the Cultural Space requirement, Town Hall Seattle launched the Venue Access program, inviting BIPOC-led organizations to apply to use their stages and utilize marketing and production support throughout the 2023-24 season.  After conducting a review process, Orquesta Northwest was just selected as their partner!

“We feel privileged for this partnership with 4Culture and Seattle Opera Center. Besides the office and the storage spaces, this partnership also grants us exclusive access to some of Seattle Opera Center’s most beautiful venues,” said Khenrab Palden, Tasveer’s Operations Manager. “The dedicated staff here consistently goes above and beyond to support our small organization. We are proud to say that we will be hosting our inaugural Tasveer Film Summit right here at the Tagney Jones Hall in October.”

Building for Equity is a new model for 4Culture’s long-running Cultural Facilities grant program, which provides a unique combination of funding, technical support, and strategic partnerships. Communities that have historically faced barriers to purchasing and stewarding cultural space are at the center of the program.

4Culture is proud to share several exciting updates about our poetry program. With a renewed vision, we will be implementing a new identity, broadened scope, and captivating theme for the 2023-2025 iteration.

The 4Culture poetry program began as Poetry on Buses, a partnership with King County Metro in 1992. For a deep dive into the program’s history, we recommend checking out our archives.

This year, the program has a new name, Poetry in Public, to reflect an expansion beyond buses to different forms of transit and places accessed by King County Metro. This new identity builds on past iterations of the beloved poetry program and advances the partnership among 4Culture and King County Metro. Poetry in Public recognizes local voices in one of our community’s most vital shared spaces—transit.

As Poet Planner Laura Da’ expresses the theme “Places of Landing,” she encourages us to embrace the importance of landing spaces in relation to community, transportation, and home. Poetry in Public welcomes everyone in honoring the movements, places, and feelings that tell the stories of our days. This approach to public poetry will offer writing and thinking prompts created to engage with place, water, and season. We invite you to find sources of inspiration in the theme, prompts, or to join us in our free workshops to write and share your poem

Following the precedents set by Poet Planners Jourdan Keith (“Your Body of Water”) and Roberto Ascalon (“Writing Home”), our current program aims to amplify diverse poetic traditions and local voices. Da’ and Community Liaisons will facilitate workshops that honor the many ways that people engage with the concept of landings and poetry in their daily lives. Communities of Focus for the 2023-2025 Poetry in Public program include: African American, Chinese, Filipino, Indigenous, Spanish-Speaking, and Youth.

Visit our new Poetry in Public webpage to learn more about upcoming events and submit your poem starting early August!

There’s a good chance you’ve experienced it yourself: you’re riding a King County Metro bus as it makes its way through the city, looking out the window, watching your fellow passengers, when your gaze turns toward the rows of familiar advertisements flanking the bus’s interior. Amid the various promotions and PSAs, you spot something a little…different. A poem. A few lines of verse inviting you to linger for a moment as you soak in its meaning.

4Culture’s Poetry on Buses program began more than 30 years ago and has since published the written work of over 1,000 people from across the region. Some of those voices were professional writers, but the majority were ordinary people—of all ages and backgrounds—who caught a little bit of magic in a few lines of language. Among the wide range of works and experiential projects in the King County Public Art Collection, Poetry on Buses stands out for its unmatched popularity and populism, inspiring submissions by the thousands and proving that art can be created by anyone and everyone.

Its evolution traces back to 1992, when 4Culture hired Port Townsend-based poet and essayist Sheila Bender to curate the first set of poems to be printed on placards and placed on Metro buses. Bender orchestrated a contest and convened a panel to review submissions. Ultimately, six buses were, as Bender put it, “decked out” with four exhibitions of poems—a new one for each season.

“[The project] motivated citizens to value poetry and to write poems after they experienced poetry’s intimacy and power to change perceptions and sometimes lives,” Bender said, recounting the program’s history.

Every other year from 1992 to 2007, 4Culture selected, printed, and displayed roughly 50 poems as part of Poetry on Buses, with different iterations spinning off a mix of related projects: collaborations with visual artists and graphic designers; collections of poems on websites and in printed booklets, including a 2005 anthology from Floating Bridge Press; framed editions that entered the County’s Portable Works Collection; and special events that celebrated community voices with workshops, readings, and more.

Poetry on Buses went dormant in 2007, but resumed in 2014 with a new vision, led by Poet Planner Roberto Ascalon. Together with a team of community liaisons, Ascalon held a series of powerful workshops and performances in community spaces throughout the county, welcoming diverse language and cultural communities to explore the poets within themselves. At those events, people shared both their poetry and the vibrant poetic traditions of their cultures. An open call for submissions on the theme “Writing Home” led to the selection of 365 poems in five of King County’s most spoken languages—English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, and Somali. The poems not only appeared on buses and online, they were also shared in person at an array of readings and a community launch party at the Moore Theatre.

When Jourdan Imani Keith became the program’s next Poet Planner in 2016, six transit and water stewardship agencies, as well as the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, signed on as partners, putting poems on light rail trains and street cars as well as buses. An astonishing 1,600 people submitted entries in response to Keith’s chosen theme—“Your Body of Water”—365 of whom were selected and featured on transit, online, and at readings, with a focus on African American, Amharic, Chinese, Urban Native, Spanish-Speaking, and Punjabi communities. This cycle of the program introduced a multimedia component as well, producing portraits of 52 of the selected poets alongside audio recordings of them reading their work.

This year, following a five-year hiatus, Poetry on Buses returns as Poetry in Public, led by Poet Planner Laura Da’ and ushering in a new era for the program. Learn more about its latest focus, broadened scope, and ways you can get involved.

You never know where your next transit ride might take you, what it might reveal. As Andy Sentir wrote in a poem that appeared on Metro buses in 2005, “In the window’s reflection, I see who I want to be.”

Poetry on Buses is just one of many collaborations between 4Culture and King County Metro. A few current transit projects include the first-ever Metro artist in residence, limited-edition ORCA cards designed by emerging artists, and ongoing art commissions related to the expansion of RapidRide.

Monday, June 19 is Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States on June 19, 1865. Black communities have celebrated Juneteenth as a day of food, parades, and family activities long before it finally became a federal holiday last year. At 4Culture, we celebrate this holiday as an expression of our mission, vision, and values. As we work continuously to examine and eliminate race-based inequities in our work, Juneteenth gives us an opportunity to uplift Black history and culture in an authentic way.

This year, we have commissioned work by artist Moses Sun. 21 Chambers Illuminated: Carnival of Black Joy is now displayed in our storefront window and will be shared digitally across our social media channels. We are thrilled to have this exuberant work of art gracing our space! Sun’s artistic practice fuses hip-hop, jazz, afro-futurism, and the Black southern diaspora of his childhood into a mix of visuals that blurs the lines between digital and analog art. His interdisciplinary practice comes from the hip-hop ethos of grinding in the studio, creating multiple tracks that he remixes into afro-abstractions expressed on various surfaces, screens, assemblage, prints, plywood, and large-scale murals.

Last year, in honor of Juneteenth, our Public Art team purchased photography by artist Mia McNeal for the King County Public Art Collection. This year, these works inaugurate the Spotlight Gallery at King County’s new Customer Service Center at King Street Center. Stop by to see them!

Lastly, to help you celebrate, we’ve pulled together of Juneteenth activities happening throughout King County:

Juneteenth at NAAM
June 17–19, check schedule for times
Northwest African American Museum, Seattle

Renton City Concert Band Juneteenth Celebration
June 11, 2:00 pm
IKEA Performing Arts Center, Renton

Second Annual Juneteenth Royal Ball
June 16, 7:00–11:00 pm
Renton Pavilion Events Center

Africatown Summer of Soul
June 19, 12:00–8:00 pm
Jimi Hendrix Park, Seattle

Atlantic Street Center 22nd Annual Juneteenth Celebration
Saturday, June 17, 11:00 am–3:00 pm
Rainier Beach Community Center, Seattle

It Takes a Village Juneteenth Community Fest
June 24, 11:00 am–6:00 pm
Othello Park, Seattle

Songs of Black Folk 2023: Music of Resistance and Hope
June 18, 7:00 pm
Paramount Theatre, Seattle

Linda Sweezer Memorial Juneteenth Celebration and Festival
June 17, 10:00 am–5:00 pm
Morrill Meadows Park YMCA, Kent

City of Auburn Juneteenth Celebration: Celebrating Black Fathers
June 18, 10:00 am–5:00 pm
Les Gove Park, Auburn

Shorelake Arts Concerts in the Park: P.I E.Pruitt and Maureese Itson Band
June 19, 6:00 pm
Shoreline City Hall Plaza

Reclaiming Our Greatness: Juneteenth Celebration
June 25, 12:00–5:00 pm
Liberty Park, Renton

Celebrate Juneteenth
June 10, 2:00–5:00 pm
KCLS Federal Way Branch

SilverKite Community Arts: Celebrating Juneteenth
June 21, 1:00–2:30 pm
Online event

Juneteenth in Tukwila
June 17, 2:00–4:00 pm
Sullivan Center, Tukwila

Federal Way Black Collective: Annual Juneteenth Cookout
June 11, 1:00–5:00 pm
Town Square Park, Renton

Juneteenth Emancipation Day: Celebrate Freedom
June 19, 10:00–11:00 am
ILWU Local 19 Hall to Terminal 46 main truck entrance, Seattle

Juneteenth Celebration at Global Grub and Groove
June 16, 6:00–8:00 pm
Village Green Park, Issaquah

We are delighted to announce that artists Timothy White Eagle and Laura C. Wright were selected to create artwork, which stimulates curiosity and raises awareness of the largely invisible Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system. The artwork will connect to the King County Wastewater Treatment Division’s West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility located in West Seattle.

Timothy White Eagle, visual and performance artist, has worked extensively in the past two decades exploring Native American, Pagan, and other earth-based Spiritual practices. He is a mixed-race Indigenous American, born in Tucson, AZ. He graduated from University of Utah with a BFA in Theater, worked in Seattle, made art, and operated a performance art/coffee house performance venue, “the Coffee Messiah” in the late 1990s. He spent his 20s exploring performance-based art and began a mentor/protege relationship with a Shoshone-Metis teacher, Clyde Hall in 1995. Around that same time, he began helping to craft personal and community rituals within his Spiritual circles.

In 2006 he began collaborating with photographer Adrain Chesser. Their work together has been displayed and published nationally and internationally. In 2014 he and Adrain released their book, “The Return”. Timothy collaborated and toured with Mac Arthur Genius award winner, Taylor Mac on his Pulitzer Prize-nominated work, “A 24 Decade History of Music”.

Timothy White Eagle crafts objects, photographs, performances, and spaces, and has presented his art and performances on three continents. He was the recipient of the Western Arts Alliance/Advancing Indigenous Performance Launch Pad award in 2019, as well as a Seattle City Artist award in 2020. His recent work in Seattle includes Songs for the Standing Still People, an immersive installation at King Street Station commissioned for the yəhaw̓ exhibition at King Street Station in 2019, an Artist Residency at Town Hall Seattle in 2021, and Revival, an immersive theater and installation work in collaboration with The Violet Triangle at On The Boards in 2022.

Laura C. Wright is an artist and educator exploring communication through the intersections of fiber arts, digital technology, visual media, and participatory practices to amplify stories and histories that go unrecognized in our landscape. This work manifests as site-specific installations, interactive projects, and community-based programming responding to issues relevant to the people and locations in which she works. Her artistic practice is defined by a desire to develop new pedagogical models for supporting creativity and empowerment on a grassroots level.

She is the founder of community-based filmmaking project, the Georgetown Super 8 Festival and has worked with numerous communities throughout the Duwamish River Valley over the past 20+ years. With decades of experience facilitating community art projects, she has passion and sensitivity for inclusiveness and acknowledgement of specific community needs.

Since 2015, Laura has rowed with the Duwamish Rowing Club, allowing her to experience the valley with a different perspective and appreciation. Her interest in evolving landscapes has led to a curiosity for exploring healing plants as a source of dye for textiles, as well as use of these textiles for exploring aspects of healing.

Laura received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of Washington, and a second MFA from the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media program. The combination of these studies has led to a greater range of understanding from traditional tools to the language of communication in the digital age.

Each artist will consider the theme “End of the Line” to create temporary artwork with community in the Duwamish Valley. Considering the West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility, the selected artists will be asked to take into account the theme, inspired by the place the built system meets bodies of water, and guided by the CSO Art Master Plan developed by artist team Sans façon (Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees). In the coming months, artists from the CSO Cohort 1 (Susan Robb, Erik Carlson – Area C, and Don Wilkison) will share work with the public, so stay tuned!

Artworks by some of our region’s most renowned artists give meaning and character to public spaces all around the county. George Tsutakawa’s Sandworm, an undulating steel sculpture inspired by a burrowing marine animal, anchors the 5^th Avenue entrance to the King County Administration Building. An abstract painting by William Ivey—once a student of Mark Rothko—exudes shades of blue in a district courtroom. The Palace of Darius by Mary Henry conveys feeling through meticulously distilled forms at the Maleng Regional Justice Center. Inside the Dexter Horton Building, the complex honeycomb of Cris Bruch’s Mantle appears to glow.

These exceptional works all belong to the Honors Program, a select group of pieces from the King County Public Art Collection acquired over the last five decades. The King County Arts Commission, now 4Culture, started the program in 1976 as a way to lift up the region’s established and mid-career artists and showcase their work in accessible settings. Today, this special collection includes dozens of pieces, offering windows into local interests and histories, and encompassing a variety of art movements as well as our enduring fascination with nature, mythology, geometry, and more.

In some cases, the works themselves have made history. For instance, Robert Sperry—an artist known for pushing the edges of possibility with ceramics—created his largest-ever work for the Honors Program over the course of two years; Untitled #635 is a feat of ingenuity with clay, made using the traditional Japanese kiln firing techniques and dark glazes that were Sperry’s signature. Nine Pentagons: Concave/Convex, an Honors Program commission by Robert Maki, belongs to a significant series of the artist’s metalworks and drawings that explores somatic and perceptual experiences of shape.

Just as much of local art history passes through the halls of the art department at the University of Washington, so did the artists behind many of the works in the Honors Program. Tsutakawa, Sperry, Patti Warashina, Jacob Lawrence, and Alden Mason—whose three-panel mural Lunar Promenade hangs at the King County Administration Building—all taught at UW for many years, leaving indelible impressions on their students, quite a few of whom went on to become accomplished artists in their own right. Beyond the university, Tsutakawa was also a member of the Northwest School, a group of area artists who rose to prominence in the mid-20th century. Oil painter Guy Anderson—one of four artists at the core of the school, along with Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey—also contributed an Honors piece: Sisyphus, which currently hangs at the Seattle Convention Center.

The first Honors Program artworks were initially acquired for the Kingdome, the erstwhile Seattle stadium that opened in 1976 and was home to the Seattle Seahawks, Mariners, SuperSonics, and Sounders. Games by Lawrence—one of the most renowned Black American painters of the 20^th century—vividly depicts athletes and spectators in a large mural. Michael Spafford’s 70-foot-tall Tumbling Figures originally lined an external wall of a Kingdome elevator shaft, and a riot of color in Harold Balazs’ Rhododendrons brought life to the stadium. When the Kingdome was demolished in 2000, these works began journeys to new locations, carefully re-sited by 4Culture’s public art team. Today, you can find Games inside the Seattle Convention Center, Tumbling Figures on the façade of a downtown parking structure, and Rhododendrons outside the 4^th Avenue entrance to the King County Administration Building.

“It was important to keep these remarkable artworks visible in places where people could experience them every day,” says Jordan Howland, 4Culture’s Senior Public Art Project Manager. “Though it’s not particularly common for us to move large, site-specific work like the pieces from the Kingdome, our team regularly rotates smaller portable works through county buildings. From re-siting to major maintenance and restoration, we do whatever is needed to make sure the art can be seen and appreciated.”

Sometimes the best way to keep an artwork accessible is to loan it to another organization with a public location—that’s how Games and Sisyphus landed at the Convention Center. In other circumstances, artists create work specifically to suit a particular location, like Warashina’s Mercurial Miss, a large sculpture depicting a female version of Mercury, the Roman God of commerce, which found its place in the lobby at Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center. (Mercurial Miss was made in 1994; since then, Warashina’s career has continued to flourish. Her most recent public art piece is the human figure Dreamer, installed in 2022 at the corner of Seattle’s Westlake Avenue and Republican Street, and commissioned by Vulcan Real Estate.)

The Honors Program collection is still growing. When resources allow, 4Culture’s public art team assembles a panel of art professionals to review Honors nominations and recommend artists for consideration. Once selected, the artists either contribute an existing work to the collection or create something new—with the artwork’s scale, materials, and subject matter entirely up to them.

We’ve already profiled a dozen of the remarkable works in the Honors Program—not only sharing the inspirations and processes behind them, but also offering a glimpse into the importance of the artists themselves. Later this year, we’ll publish more stories about Honors pieces, including Dale Chihuly’s Puget Sound Forms, which you may have seen at the Seattle Aquarium, and works by Paul Horiuchi, Margaret Thompson, Boyer Gonzales, James Washington Jr., and Gaylen Hansen.

We hope you’ll visit these works in person when you have a chance. Until then, please enjoy learning more about the Honors Program and what makes theses artworks so valuable to our community.

May is Preservation Month and Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month! In celebration of both, we’re thrilled to highlight news that the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) has honored 4Culture grant recipient Dr. Dorothy Laigo Cordova with the 2023 SHPO Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement.

The SHPO Awards are an opportunity to celebrate outstanding people and places throughout the state, and to highlight the significant contributions that archaeology, historic preservation, and cultural resources make to the people of Washington. Award recipients will also be recognized throughout National Historic Preservation Month in May on DAHP’s social media accounts.

Dr. Cordova, or “Auntie Dorothy” as she is affectionately known, is the 91-year-old Founder and Executive Director of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), which is a 4Culture Community Partner and recipient of Heritage Project Grants and a Building for Equity Capacity Building Grant. Born in Seattle in 1932, Cordova grew up feeling unaccepted as American and saw her Filipino heritage being systematically erased, even in immigrant communities. She has dedicated her life to the recognition of Filipino Americans’ rich history and contributions to the country.

Frustrated by the dearth of information about Filipino American history and angered by the inaccurate portrayals in available information, Dorothy founded FANHS around her kitchen table in 1982; it was chartered as a nonprofit organization in 1985, with Dorothy serving as unsalaried Executive Director for the past 41 years. Under her leadership, and with her late husband Dr. Fred Cordova as Founding President, FANHS established its National Pinoy Archives (NPA) housed with its National Office in the historic Immaculate School Building in the Central District of Seattle and designated the nationwide observance of October as Filipino American History Month in 1991 with congressional legislation in 2009. The FANHS National Office and Archives holds one of the largest collections of Filipino American historical photographs, oral histories, exhibits, papers, posters, and material artifacts in the world. In 2016, the FANHS National Museum opened in Stockton, California. Since 1987, FANHS sponsors biennial national conferences in different cities, gathering hundreds of scholars, students, artists, activists, and community folks of all ages for an intergenerational gathering that furthers the FANHS Mission “to promote understanding, education, enlightenment, appreciation and enrichment through the identification, gathering, preservation and dissemination of the history and culture of Filipino Americans in the United States.” Today there are 42 Chapters of FANHS across the country, with governance by an elected board of 27 Trustees. Dorothy has done all of this with no paid staff, and on what she calls a shoe-string budget, often selling t-shirts, books, and lumpia eggrolls as fundraisers.

Although she announced her intention to retire from FANHS in 2024, to transition to “Resident Researcher”, Auntie Dorothy can still be found at the FANHS National Office every day, answering phone calls and email inquiries, giving interviews, hosting students, sharing photographs, talking story, and documenting the layered history of Filipino Americans.

We are thrilled to announce that Laura Da’ has been selected as the next Poet Planner for the 2023-2025 4Culture poetry program. Laura will work with 4Culture, King County Metro, and communities across King County to shine a light on diverse poetic traditions and empower people of all ages to write poems—whether they consider themselves to be a poet or are writing a poem for the first time.

A poet and a public school teacher, Laura Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of the collections Instruments of the True Measure (University of Arizona Press, 2018), winner of the Washington State Book Award, and Tributaries (University of Arizona Press, 2015), winner of the 2016 American Book Award and the chapbook The Tecumseh Motel. Her work has appeared in the anthologies New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press, 2018) and Effigies II (Salt Publishing, 2014). Da’ is the current Poet Laureate of Redmond and a recent writer in residence at Hugo House.

A member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, she received a Native American Arts and Cultures Fellowship. Da’ has also been a Made at Hugo House fellow and a Jack Straw fellow. She is a lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest and lives in Newcastle, Washington, with her husband and son.

The 4Culture poetry program began as Poetry on Buses, a partnership with King County Metro in 1992. Poems by local writers replaced advertising placards above bus seats on a biennial basis through 2007. In 2014-2015, the program was rebooted and explored the theme “Writing Home” in five languages: English, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The 2016-2018 Poetry on Buses explored the theme “Your Body of Water” with a focus on African American, Chinese, Ethiopian, Punjabi, Spanish-speaking, and Urban Native communities in King County.

4Culture is launching a new version of the program for 2023-2025, reflecting the program’s expansion beyond buses to different forms of transit and places accessed by King County Metro including transit stops and public open spaces.

We’ll announce more details about the program and how you can get involved soon—stay tuned!

Earthworks and oil paintings. Bronzes and mosaic murals. Artist-designed bridges and transit experiences. Today the King County Public Art Collection contains nearly 2,500 works of art in a vast array of forms and materials. Whether made by an emerging artist or an established expert, each of these works has a story. How was it created? What inspired it? What does it say about our cultural history?

Over the past few years, 4Culture has been crafting hundreds of these stories about artworks in the collection, revealing details about the origins of individual pieces and the artists and artisans who made them. In the months ahead, we’ll be spotlighting the collection’s works, themes, processes, and locations, including new acquisitions and commissions.

“The collection really speaks to shifts and trends in culture,” says Kelly Pajek, 4Culture’s public art program director. “It helps us better understand our communities and our collective identity— and it belongs to all of us. That’s the beauty of public art.”

In 1973, King County became one of the first governments in the nation—and the first in Washington—to pass a 1% for Art ordinance establishing a dedicated source of funding for the acquisition of artwork. In the 50 years since, 4Culture, formerly the King County Arts Commission, has built an impressive collection that you can readily access in all sorts of public spaces, from airports to parks, bridges to water treatment centers, buses to courthouses.

Along the way, we also became one of the country’s most innovative public art programs by taking strategic risks and centering artists and their ideas. We created, and continue to create, opportunities for artists and arts professionals to influence public policy, stimulate dialogue, and shape the world we live in. Working together, we are always seeking out and finding ways for art to add meaning to the day-to-day lives of our families, friends, and neighbors.

The King County Public Art Collection reflects many significant aspects of our region, not only through objects but through experiences like interactive performances and audio installations. It features works from the Studio Glass movement and paintings by the internationally celebrated Northwest School. It highlights the traditions of the area’s Indigenous peoples as well as traditions brought here by immigrants from around the world. It celebrates the trees, mountains, and water that define our home.

We look forward to sharing stories about all of these topics and more in the months ahead. In the meantime, we encourage you to begin exploring our ever-growing online trove of artwork profiles!

4Culture and King County Metro are thrilled to announce the release of a series of limited edition ORCA cards in celebration of the RapidRide Expansion Program.

Three exceptional emerging artists, Jovita Mercado, Yasiman Ahsani, and Rey Daoed, supported by mentors Angelina Villalobos and Jesse Brown, have created distinctive imagery tied to the contexts, histories, peoples, and cultures that define the new RapidRide H Line as well as the forthcoming G and I Lines.

RapidRide represents Metro’s highest level of investment in service, amenities, reliability, and innovation in the form of bus rapid transit. These lines look, feel, and operate more like trains with permanent stops and shelters, real-time arrival information, off-board fare payment, branded red and yellow buses, and more.

The custom cards will be distributed at community events and made available at the King Street Center Pass Sales Office throughout 2023 (while supplies last), beginning with Jovita Mercado’s H Line design.

“My design commemorates the people who proudly display their identities and cultures. For they’re the foundation of Burien, White Center, and Delridge. These cards immortalize the diversity that people bring to create such vibrant communities.”
Jovita Mercado, RapidRide H Line (Delridge, White Center, Burien) – launched in March 2023

“My design was heavily inspired by my heritage, but most importantly, I focused on how living in the city has reconnected me to my roots as an Iranian-American. For all of my middle eastern sisters: زن. زندگی‌. آزادی. (Women. Life. Freedom.)”
Yasiman Ahsani, RapidRide G Line (Madison, Downtown, West Seattle) – launching in 2024

“Pictures and sketches of passengers made while riding the bus informed my design. I was influenced by the distinctive RapidRide color scheme too. By flipping the image vertically, it became unexpected and special – a perfect way to celebrate this new route.”
Rey Daoed, RapidRide I Line (Renton, Kent, Auburn) – launching in 2025

This project was guided by the recommendation for artist-designed ORCA cards included in the RapidRide Art Plan, commissioned by 4Culture and penned by artists Elisheba Johnson and Kristen Ramirez in 2020.

About the Artists

Yasiman Ahsani
Currently based in Seattle, WA, Yasiman Ahsani is an Iranian-American artist and game designer whose paintings, digital illustrations, and traditional prints feature bold colors, shapes, and patterns inspired by her Middle-Eastern culture. She commemorates her family’s roots and brings to life visions of the communities and organizations she has worked with here in the United States.

Rey Daoed
Born in Seattle and now residing in Sammamish, WA, Fareyza Daoed—often called Rey by his family and friends—is diagnosed with autism and apraxia of speech. Typing, handwriting, and text-to-speech apps are his preferred methods of communication. He began painting in 2015 and the medium has since become an important secondary means of connection. Rey’s artwork has been included in group exhibitions both locally and abroad and featured in public venues throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Jovita Mercado
Jovita Mercado, originally from Yakima and now based in Vancouver, WA, is a Chicana living on the hyphen of the term Mexican-American. Her practice is driven by questions about history, gender, ethnicity, identity, colonization, and exploitation. Through her acts of making, she attempts to humanize and memorialize her culture’s accomplishments and resiliency in order to inspire others.