You’ve likely heard the exciting news that last month, the King County Council unanimously passed Doors Open, a piece of legislation that will increase funding to King County cultural organizations by an estimated $90 million per year. Learn more about this landmark investment here.

To put this into better perspective, 4Culture’s current annual budget is roughly $10 million—this nearly 10-fold increase brings significant change to our organization! As we quickly get to work creating an implementation plan, a top priority is maximizing all of our grant revenue: Doors Open, Lodging Tax, and federal COVID-19 relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

To that end, we’re sharing information about a change to our usual grant calendar. To best serve King County by taking full advantage of the funds available to us over the next two years, we have decided to postpone our 2024 Projects grant program. In its place, we will focus our efforts on getting roughly $1.1 million in remaining COVID relief funding out the door to individual cultural producers in King County, which federal law requires us to do by the end of 2024. The program will open in the spring, and details on eligibility, award amounts, and more will be available soon. 2024 funds for Art Projects, Heritage Projects, and Preservation Special Projects will roll over when the program resumes, creating a pool of roughly $2 million for Projects in 2025.

We’re keenly aware that Doors Open does not include funding for individuals. Supporting King County’s dancers, historians, writers, painters, researchers, sculptors, preservationists, performers, curators, and more is central to our mission. As we craft an implementation plan for Doors Open over the next six months, ensuring that these dollars positively impact individuals as well as organizations will be a priority. We hope organizations planning to apply for a Projects grant will take advantage of the Doors Open one-time facility and operating grants that will open in August 2024. More information on those programs to come soon.

Our Projects grant is a longstanding cornerstone of 4Culture funding. We know its impact in the King County cultural community and that this will represent a significant shift in many people’s plans for 2024. This decision was not made lightly, and we thank you for your flexibility as our entire sector navigates the early months of Doors Open. As always, our staff are available to answer any questions you might have—we know this is a lot of information! Please don’t hesitate to contact us. As we collectively embark on a new year, we could not be prouder to be entrusted with these resources in service of the King County cultural community.

4Culture and Metro are excited to announce the selection of not one but two artist teams who will help advance the future of regional public transit at the forthcoming South Annex Base in Tukwila and an expanded bus stop at Third Avenue South and South Main Street in historic Pioneer Square.

South Annex Base: Haddad|Drugan

Mobility is a human right and Metro is committed to getting people where they need to go—safely, equitably, and sustainably. As part of their transition to a 100% zero-emissions fleet powered by renewable energy, they are expanding capacity at their South Campus to house, operate, and maintain approximately 250 new battery electric buses. After construction, South Annex Base (SAB) will function as a stand-alone bus base. The artist team of Haddad|Drugan (Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan) has just been selected to join the SAB design team and will help influence the overall look and feel of the facilities, develop their own site-specific or architecturally integrated artwork, and recommend and support opportunities for two other artists/teams to lend creative thinking to the project.

Haddad|Drugan’s Seattle-based studio focuses on the creation of large-scale, conceptually driven art and multi-sensory aesthetic experiences that explore qualities of light, color, magic and wonder to reveal cultural and environmental conditions. Their partnership began in 2001 and they have since produced a wide range of innovative public art commissions and plans. Locally, they have worked as design team artists for the Elliott Bay Seawall, Climate Pledge Arena, and Sound Transit’s Angle Lake Station.

Third Avenue South and South Main Street: Preston Singletary and David Franklin

The Third Avenue Transit Corridor is used by tens of thousands of people each day and provides connections for bus riders who are traveling to and from sites throughout the county. A quarter of the buses that operate in the corridor pick up passengers at Third Avenue South and South Main Street in Pioneer Square. With more than 2,650 average daily riders and 24 different routes served, it has become Metro’s 10th busiest stop.

To create a safer, more accessible, and more reliable experience for people catching the bus at this heavily trafficked location, Metro and the City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) are repairing and reconfiguring the streetscape and installing new amenities, including a signature sculpture by artists Preston Singletary and David Franklin.

Singletary lives and works in Seattle. He started blowing glass at Glass Eye Studio in 1982, developed skills as a production glass maker, and attended the Pilchuck Glass School. At the studio of Benjamin Moore, Singletary broadened his knowledge and understanding of the medium by assisting Dante Marioni, Richard Royal, Dan Dailey and Lino Tagliapietra. During this time, he also started to develop his own unique visual style.

Singletary’s practice has since become synonymous with the relationship between Tlingit culture and fine art. His sculptures merge themes from Tlingit mythology and traditional design, and he is recognized internationally for his use of glass as well as other non-traditional materials to bring new dimension to contemporary Indigenous art.

David Franklin developed a profound appreciation for the traditional art forms and histories of the Pacific Northwest when he moved here in his early 20s. Following an extensive apprenticeship with Duane Pasco, he began creating his own large-scale artworks. This experience eventually led him to initiate a collaborative public art practice with Singletary. The partnership leverages Franklin’s expertise in fabrication, project management and community engagement to support Singletary’s creative vision.

Doctors and nurses visit with patients. Staff stream through the hallways. Loved ones wait in lobbies. On any given day at Harborview Medical Center, thousands of people play a part in a range of procedures, tests, and treatments that heal the sick and injured. As all of these people make their way through the hospital’s clinics and corridors, they pass by numerous artworks on the floors, walls, and near the elevators. Each artwork offers a respite, a moment of beauty or perspective. Together these pieces keep the Harborview community grounded day after day, even in the face of extraordinary challenges.

A public hospital managed by UW Medicine, Harborview is the only Level 1 trauma and burn center serving Washington, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and is also a teaching and research institution and the disaster control hospital for Seattle and King County. Its origins trace back to 1877, when the county opened a six-bed hospital; 146 years later, the facility today has 540 patient beds, with more coming as part of a 2020 bond measure to expand and modernize the campus. As Harborview continues to evolve to meet the needs of the region, it remains committed to treating everyone with exceptional care, regardless of their economic status or background.

Though some artworks on view at Harborview belong to the UW Collection, most were commissioned or acquired and continue to be stewarded by 4Culture as part of the King County Public Art Collection (KCPAC). The KCPAC at Harborview was established in 1977, rooted in the belief that art can help offset the emotional, psychological, technological, and institutional experiences of the hospital. It currently includes more than 500 works in an extensive range of media, all of which aim to reduce stress and convey a sense of human dignity. Since 2000, the KCPAC works have been guided by a holistic and comprehensive art plan created by Fernanda D’Agostino; the plan describes design principles for architectural elements, landscape design, and commissioned artworks that encourage healing and support connections to the surrounding neighborhoods.

The KCPAC at Harborview includes several subcollections and a mix of site-specific, integrated, and portable works. The Cultural Heritage Collection celebrates the hospital’s diverse community with 70 pieces by outstanding contemporary artists, among them Juan Alonso, whose large paintings honor his Cuban parents; Mark Calderon, whose pyrographs were inspired by Mexican devotional folk paintings; glass vessels by Preston Singletary; and quilts and soft sculptures by Marita Dingus. The Norm Maleng Collection—housed entirely in the Norm Maleng Building—showcases contemporary ceramics in the lobby, landscapes at elevator landings, and a number of permanently sited works throughout the building. In the West Hospital’s primary reception area, Linda Beaumont’s Full Circle, a sprawling mosaic and terrazzo floor, greets people with a mix of cultural and scientific imagery.

Outside, artworks dot the hospital campus in dramatic and subtle ways. A sculpture and seating elements by Ellen Sollod anchor the hospital’s main entrance. Sidewalks feature site-specific inlays by Robert Horner and Gloria Bornstein. In a work by Sheila Klein, classic textile patterns lend architectural detail to the exterior of the Patricia Steel Building. Many of the hospital’s rooms have views of Beliz Brother’s Harborview Pillows, which appear to hover above a courtyard as if tossed from an open window.

Harborview’s Ninth and Jefferson Building also contains many powerful artworks, beginning with Vereinigung, a monumental sculpture by Connie Watts that features animal figures from Northwest Coast cultural traditions and was created by Watts as she recovered from a major head injury. Then, at the reception desk, Isaac Layman’s Ice Cube Tray renders a meditation on time in astonishing photographic detail. Beside the lobby’s elevators sits Eric Nelsen’s Memory, Myth, Motif, clay assemblages fired in a traditional Japanese anagama kiln in Nelsen’s Vashon Island studio. Upstairs in the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Eric Eley’s Dispersion Field uses mathematical diagramming to form an imaginary geometric landscape in four panels. The newest addition to the building is Katie Miller’s Cellular Flow, which was installed last month in the remodeled patient care and specialty clinics on the ninth and tenth floors. The work’s 15 translucent privacy screens invite reflection by combining images of Pacific Northwest bodies of water with forms based on human cells.

Next time you find yourself at Harborview, keep an eye out for these artworks and many more. New commissions are headed to the hospital campus in the months and years ahead. The collection is always growing!

Amid the many types of public artworks in King County’s collection—portable and permanent works on the walls, large- and small-scale installations, pieces integrated into buildings, ephemeral experiences and participatory initiatives—one group of artworks is particularly unusual: our signature bridges. Since the late 1990s, 4Culture has partnered with the county’s Road Services Division to include artists on their bridge design teams. This collaborative and creative approach to developing transportation infrastructure elevates the experience of traveling over our region’s waterways, often offering a glimpse into who we are and where we want to go.

Many public art agencies around the country create artworks as part of other kinds of infrastructure projects, like transit stations, recycling centers or water treatment plants. Some also “activate” bridges with artist-designed elements or even residencies and performances, as the City of Seattle’s ARTS office has done with the Fremont Bridge, for example. But 4Culture stands alone nationally in the scope and scale of its bridge commissions.

Whether you’re traveling across a span on foot, by bicycle, or by car, the impact of an artists’ thinking can be subtle or dramatic. Maybe you’re going over the Duwamish River and you notice the large, elaborate gears embedded into the railing of the South Park Bridge; artist Barbara Grygutis took those from the original 1931 bridge and included them in its replacement to signal the location’s history and industrial identity. Visit the historic 1921 Meadowbrook Bridge (which, by the way, featured in Twin Peaks a couple of times) and you’ll see four relief panels by Bruce Myers that speak to the surrounding flora and fauna. For the Novelty Bridge in Duvall, Carolyn Law devised unique color experiences for travelers heading toward or away from the city. In Redmond, Cliff Garten created a series of curved design elements for the York Bridge, echoing the shapes of the river below.

Cross the Snoqualmie River via the Mt. Si Bridge and its bright red color will pop against the surrounding evergreens. Artist Cris Bruch gave some insight into his work, “I thought about the bridge as an event, an experience that should contain some awe and excitement, which has a narrative structure to it.” Indeed, from the nearby plantings he selected to the contrasting green elements he devised for the railing, Bruch’s contributions transform the journey from one end of the bridge to the other, calling attention to its environment and architecture while heightening the moment of one’s suspension over the river.

As time passes, older bridges inevitably require replacement or improvement. In 2013, 4Culture commissioned Leo Berk to create a Bridge Manual for future short-span bridge projects in King County. A few years prior, the county had identified more than 50 bridges between 20 and 110 feet long that needed to be replaced. Berk created a kit of parts that can be used in different combinations on all of these bridges—an effective way to enhance even the most humble of crossings.

Around the world, bridges are celebrated as placemaking icons: the London Tower, the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn Bridge, and countless others, both famous and not. In these beautiful feats of form and function, it’s impossible to distinguish where their engineering ends and their artistry begins. A perfect kind of public art.

Bridges are fundamentally about connecting, about linking one place with another, about opportunity and potential. Like art, they help keep us tethered to the earth, history, and each other.

Rosa Woolsey, the 2023 Equity in Historic Preservation Undergraduate Intern, reflects on her introduction to historic preservation and her internship project, researching culturally significant places for Seattle’s Beacon Hill Council and the Beyond Integrity initiative.

The goal of this project was to identify and explore places on Beacon Hill that are culturally significant to its neighbors and in the context of a historic preservation survey. Through employing ethnographic methods in the context of preservation, we were better able to center the voices and experiences of community members who have been excluded from the work of historic preservation.

The primary challenge, and ultimately, advantage, I had with this internship was that I do not have a background in historic preservation. Rather, I have been trained as a student of anthropology. When I started this position, I was excited to apply my skills to a new realm of cultural work and gain experience in community-based research which is exactly what I was able to do this summer.

In hindsight, my internship unfolded in three parts: background gathering, conducting interviews, and writing. For the first month, I had a lot to learn about preservation: the various acronymed organizations, landmarks preservation standards, how practice differs from local levels all the way up to national standards, as well as how preservation is structured in surprisingly inequitable ways. In line with my anthropological sensibilities, I was surprised and frustrated to learn that cultural significance is a negligible part of historic preservation work. In a way, this made my job a bit easier—it was clear to me that what preservation is in need of is the people-centered mission and ethnographic methods of anthropology.

Although I had a personal connection to Beacon Hill through the Cambodian Buddhist temple, Watt Dhammacakkaram, I also had a lot to learn about the neighborhood’s history and the many communities that make up Beacon Hill. This included getting my feet on the ground and taking an initial tour of the neighborhood with my project advisors so I could get a feel for the geography and energy of the place I would spend all summer learning about. After lots of reading and context gathering, I was introduced to a wealth of community leaders and began to schedule interviews with neighbors who were generous enough to share their time and stories with me.

I am lucky to have been working with a meaningful and relatively straightforward research question: What places in your community do you care about? From there, my job was to listen and to document. This is where my background in anthropology and journalism came through. I learned more about the specifics of conducting oral history interviews and was enthusiastic to expand my skills in interviewing and story-gathering. After about a month of carrying out interviews, transcribing, and reflecting on what themes emerged in my conversations, it was time for me to begin the writing process.

For the last month, I have brought all of this information together into a cohesive narrative, putting the voices of neighbors at the forefront of this storytelling. What I came up with was a document that is both a catalog of eleven culturally significant sites on Beacon Hill as well as a critical response to the inequities of traditional preservation practice in the form of a blended methodology study. Those focus sites are: El Centro de la Raza, the Ponce Torres Family House, the Rasmussen Family House, Day Moon Press, Jefferson Park, Watt Dhammacakkaram, Saint George Catholic Church, MacPherson’s Fruit & Produce, Fou Lee Market & Deli, Comet Lodge Cemetery, and the African American Academy. These places were drawn from a longer list I compiled of 74 sites that are recommended for future research and documentation, which is also included in the report. After finishing my final report, I delivered two presentations, one to the Beacon Hill Council, and another to 4Culture staff/board/advisory committee, Beyond Integrity members, and preservation advocates. I was encouraged by the warm reception and feedback on how this work is significant in the greater scope of where preservation is moving.

Through this process, I learned a lot about Beacon Hill as well as the current state of historic preservation, why it is the way it is, what directions practitioners are trying to move it towards, and how anthropology fits into that work. It was especially good timing for me that the undergraduate intern position was established the same year that I graduated. I am grateful to have come into this opportunity as a recent graduate; the chance to immediately apply the skills in interviewing and writing that I developed in college to a new context has been immensely helpful in coordinating what my next steps are. Through this work, and seeing the need for social scientists in preservation, I have felt affirmed in my background and interest in anthropology and the value of culturally-minded work. As such, I feel a greater sense of direction in looking towards options for graduate school and intend on continuing my studies in anthropology.

About Rosa
Rosa Woolsey graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, Minor in Religion, and Concentration in Global Studies in 2023 from Whitman College, where she served as News Editor and News Reporter for the Whitman Wire campus newspaper. For her senior thesis, she completed an ethnographic research project on Buddhism and cultural identity among the Cambodian American diaspora in the Seattle area. Her academic interests and ambitions are fostered by her Cambodian and mixed-race background. Rosa’s primary focus area within Anthropology includes Asian American cultural hybridity, especially in the contexts of migration, religion, and language. In summer 2023, Rosa was introduced to the world of preservation as an Equity in Historic Preservation Intern for Seattle’s 4Culture, where she carried out a community-centered oral history project documenting culturally significant places on Beacon Hill, one of the city’s most diverse and understudied neighborhoods. In this work, she recognized a mutual goal of cultural sustainability in the work of preservation and in her prior research.

Dig into Rosa’s Culturally Significant Places on Beacon Hill report, also located on our Beyond Integrity page.

4Culture is honored to announce the recipients of the 2023 Arc Artist Fellowship!

The 2023 Fellows are:

Jo Cosme, Multidisciplinary visual artist
Kalei’okalani Matsui, Ha’api’i, dancer, teaching Artist
Alicia Mullikin, Chicana dance artist, beadworker, arts advocate
Tommy Segundo, Native formline artist and educator
Che Sehyun, Future ancient storyteller
Lex Vaughn, News Satirist
Timothy White Eagle, Multidisciplinary visual and performance artist

The Arc Artist Fellowship provides critical – but rare – unrestricted awards of $12,000 to artists residing in King County. This year we received 37 highly competitive applications from King County artists working in dance, music, theatre, media, film, literature, and the visual arts.

“Congratulations to the 2023 Arc Artist Fellows! As we all try to figure out whether this a post-pandemic world, and what exactly that means, I’m so proud this program can serve as an artistic commons. A place where this year’s Fellows can meet, create, collaborate, and perhaps most importantly, be in community together.”

-Brian J. Carter, 4Culture Executive Director

Each year, a new cohort of Arc Fellows are selected, with an eligibility requirement that changes based on feedback from the Fellows. In 2022 and 2023, eligible applicants were Indigenous, Aboriginal, or Native artists of diverse international ancestral lands, who live in King County, the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

We seek to lift up the expression of cultural sovereignty of Indigenous makers as culture bearers and as contemporary artists.

Arc Fellows will assist in determining the Arc Eligibility Requirement for next year’s fellowship as well as participate in a public cohort presentation organized by 4Culture and in planning and community engagement for the 2024 program.

The Arc Artist Fellowship will provide the Fellows with portraits and a page on the 4Culture website featuring images and links to explore their work.

Congratulations to Jo, Kalei’okalani, Alicia, Tommy, Che, Lex, and Timothy! Stay tuned to learn more about the 2023 Arc Fellows and how you can connect with their work.

The King County Council is currently considering Doors Open, a proposal from King County Executive Dow Constantine that would increase funding to arts, heritage, science, and historical preservation non-profit organizations through a 0.1 percent sales tax. If approved by the King County Council, tax collection would begin in April 2024. With over 50 years of grant-making experience, 4Culture is the County’s designated agency to distribute funding and implement the program.

Doors Open is the result of a decade long legislative effort to increase funding in Washington State and King County for the cultural sector.

Knowing that increased funding was a possibility, 4Culture worked hard to plan for an equitable Doors Open program. One that meets the growing needs of the cultural sector and aligns with 4Culture’s mission, vision, and values.

Here are some resources about the legislation currently in play and how it may impact you:

Doors Open legislation and additional supporting materials.

Head over to our Data Hub to dig into the community-based research behind our planning:

• 2020 4Culture Strategic Plan/King County Cultural Plan
• 2020 4Culture Cultural Health Study
• 2021 4Culture Cultural Education Study

Advocacy

Inspire Washington is the advocacy organization championing this effort. They have built a broad and powerful statewide coalition to champion advocacy and resource development for Washington’s cultural sector.

Visit DoorsOpenKingCounty.org their advocacy website for the initiative.

Press Coverage

The Seattle Times

The Stranger

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.