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Office of Arts & Culture news and events

Dr. Quinton Morris is the new co-chair of the Seattle Arts Commission

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Dr. Quinton Morris, concert violinist, educator, entrepreneur and filmmaker is the new co-chair of the Seattle Arts Commission, serving with Chair Priya Frank. Dr. Morris joined the Seattle Arts Commission in 2017. The 16-member Seattle Arts Commission, citizen volunteers appointed by the mayor and City Council, supports the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Commission members include artists, arts professionals and other citizens with diverse backgrounds and strong links to Seattle’s arts community. The Seattle Arts Commission supports the City by advocating for arts policy, creating access for equitable participation in the arts, and fostering enriching arts engagement for all residents.

portrait of Dr. Quinton Morris with violin
Dr. Quinton Morris, photo by Jean

Dr. Morris is the founder of Key to Change, a nonprofit with the mission of inspiring underserved youth and students of color through world-class music instruction and supporting their development as self-aware leaders. Key to Change operates two string studios in South King County, Washington which serve middle and high school students who may not otherwise have access to classical music instruction.

Key to Change was born out of Dr. Morris’s BREAKTHROUGH World Tour, which paired recitals and concerto performances with lectures, master classes and educational outreach in over 40 cities across five continents. The tour also featured Dr. Morris’s short film The BREAKTHROUGH, which premiered at the Seattle Art Museum and the Louvre Museum in Paris, among other distinguished venues worldwide. He directed and starred in the film, which tells a modernized story of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges: a violinist of African origin who, against all odds, rose to become one of the most prolific and forgotten figures of the 18th century.

Dr. Morris has received numerous awards including the Seattle Mayor’s Arts Award, the Young Artist Governor’s Arts Award, top prizes at the European Independent Film Awards (Paris) and New York Film Week. He was recognized as one of Musical America’s Top 30 Movers & Shapers and the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Award. Additional career highlights include concerto appearances with the Seattle Symphony, three consecutive years of sold-out recitals at Carnegie Hall, eleven years as Artistic Director of The Young Eight String Octet and a TEDxSeattle talk on “The Age of the Artist Entrepreneur.”

Dr. Morris is a Renton native and earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Seattle University faculty in 2007 as Director of Chamber and Instrumental Music and Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music. He is the first tenured music professor at Seattle University in over 35 years and the second living African-American violinist in United States history to receive such a distinction. He is currently enrolled in an online business certificate program through Harvard Business School. 

Introducing A Community-Centered Road Map Towards an Equitable and Inclusive Creative Economy in Seattle

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The City envisions an equitable, inclusive creative economy in Seattle. And today we are excited to introduce a road map to help us get there.

Participants in the Focus Group hosted by Wa Na Wari in Seattle’s Central Area.
Photo credit: Vivian Phillips.

Authored by community engagement and research consultants Vivian Phillips and Aline Moch Islas, A Community-Centered Road Map Towards an Equitable and Inclusive Creative Economy in Seattle presents nine overarching goals that address the question of how the City can grow, support, and retain creatives while reducing disparities and inequities within the creative economy.

The City of Seattle in recent years has explored how our creative community and industries have been and continue to be impacted by the city’s continuing growth, as well as the ever-evolving economic realities that affect creative work. Using the most recent studies, There’s Something About Seattle: 2019 Creative Economy Report (City of Seattle, 2019), and Assessing the Creative Economy of Seattle through a Race and Equity Lens (UW Evans School of Policy and Governance, 2019), as primary springboards, the Office of Arts & Culture, together as partners with the Office of Film + Music, the Office of Economic Development, the Seattle Arts Commission and the Seattle Music Commission, engaged in a community outreach strategy to invite members of the arts and creative community to participate in focus group conversations, mixers, surveys, and interviews. Overall, our year-long process of research and community engagement has led to ARTS, OFM, and partners to reach over 850 individuals.

The Road Map report focuses on information gathered from focus groups and interviews with 151 creatives in the Seattle area, most of whom are people of color. The findings from these conversations were then synthesized to offer the following goals and accompanying action plans on how the City can work to better the conditions under which all creatives in Seattle, especially creatives of color, pursue their careers:

Summary of Goals

1. Improve Quality of Life for Artists and Creatives

2. Engage Harder to Reach Populations

3. Enhance Existing Initiatives and Create New Initiatives

4. Bridge Artists, Technology, and Creativity

5. Access to Artistic and Creative Work Space

6. Strategically Align the Work of the Commissions

7. Build More Strategic Collaborations Across City Departments

8. Stimulate Innovative Thinking

9. Integrate Existing Research and Data into Decision-making

Read about the findings and proposed action plans in the report, and please let us know your thoughts in the comments of the blog post

Escape Destinations at Urban Triangle Park

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One day the signs may say you are in Narnia but the next day Middle Earth, and then in the days following Howl’s Castle, Co:pern:ica, and then Lilliput.  In Seattle’s newest public art located at Urban Triangle Park, Escape Destinations consists of two separate sculptures that employ a bus-blind device to scroll through lighted names of fictional destinations from literature, games, film and comics.  Each day, once a day, the location will change.  The smaller, yellow sculpture facing into the park features 100 place names taken from children’s literature and culture, and the larger blue sculpture facing the intersection features 100 different place names taken from adult literature and culture.

moving signs
Janet Zweig, Escape Destinations. Photo by Spike Mafford

The artist, Janet Zweig, inspired by the changes happening in this neighborhood and a nod the adjacent Amazon campus referencing its beginnings as a bookseller, created the artwork in recognition of the changing identity of place.  In contrast to a place having the same name and many identities; the artwork renames the park every day. The changing names are meant to give the visitors a feeling of escape or fantasy and the artist hopes inspire web searches and reading discoveries.  The fictional places are places we might be quite familiar with and we can visit in our minds, while a real place has many histories that are invisible to us.

moving signs

Janet Zweig, Escape Destinations. Photo by Spike Mafford

Janet Zweig is an artist who lives in Brooklyn, NY, working primarily in the public realm. She was born in Milwaukee, raised in Chicago, and has lived and worked in New York since 1994. Zweig received her BA from Cornell University and her MFA from The Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.

In Zweig’s public artwork, she uses text, signage and mechanical and digital devices as formal elements.  Frequently she incorporates several strategies to bring the public into the work, including crowd-sourcing content, making interactive, kinetic or changing pieces, and making work specific to a situation. Her artwork attempts to speak to viewers as individuals rather than thinking of a community as a static entity, She seeks to address the reality of communities that are in change and motion and works to bring something new to a situation, to allow each viewer to see something in his or her own way, and to create engaging experiences. To learn more about her artwork, you can visit her website http://janetzweig.com/.

Escape Destinations is located in Urban Triangle Park is located at the corner of Westlake and Lenora in Downtown Seattle.  If you spend your lunch hour there, you will likely be transported to a new destination.

Fabrication support provided to the artist by Transign, Alpha Proto, and Sign Effectz, Inc.

Commissioned with Seattle Parks and Recreation 1% for Art

The American War exhibition opening at ARTS at King Street Station

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February 6 – March 21, 2020 at
ARTS at King Street Station

Opening reception
Thursday, February 6, 2020, 5 – 7 p.m.

The American War will be on view at ARTS at King Street Station February 6 through March 21, 2020. Artists Pao Houa Her and Sadie Wechsler designed the exhibition taking inspiration from  layout of an archives’ research room. It features photographic and video works, both created and found by the artists, that expose the legacy and residue that remains in Southeast Asia and the United States in the aftermath of what is known stateside as the Vietnam War.

man in field
Pao Houa Her, Guy cousin in Thailand, 2017; Inkjet print. 8”x10”

The American War, which is the common name used for the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975) in Southeast Asia, caused more than 3 million casualties and a legacy of lasting trauma for the people and the lands of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the United States. The war also contained conflicts in countries outside of Vietnam, including The Secret War in Laos.

The Secret War, run by the CIA and executed by the US Air Force, ravaged over 30 percent of the countryside, contributed to nearly half-million Lao refugees. To this day, unexploded ordnance in Laos is still detonating, taking life and land from the folks in the countryside. Her and Wechsler look at the scar of these wars and how they continue to shape lives and land across the world.

prosthetic legs on chair with photo
Sadie Wechsler, Legs for Display, 2018; Inkjet print; 22.75” x 30”.

“We invite visitors to enter our place of research, to examine the complicated connections, and the rippling effects of war on the people and the countries that have been impacted,” says Pao Houa Her and Sadie Wechsler. “We also are addressing how openness, curiosity and dialogue are catalysts for new and deeper relationships and learning.”

The exhibition will consist of over 40 objects including contemporary photography by Her and Wechsler, historical images, poetry and video for visitors to explore. Her and Wechsler created and collected materials, including works from the National Archive in Washington, D.C., that reflect the life altering effects the war continues to have on the people who lived in the region – especially the Hmong people from Laos. Accompanying the exhibition, the artists have produced a double-sided poster featuring artwork by both artists, alongside a commissioned poem by Hmong American poet May Lee Yang. This publication is free for all who attend the show.

Pao Houa Her works across multiple genres and technologies of photography to address Hmong identity and related notions of desire and belonging within the Hmong American community. Her was born in the northern jungles of Laos in 1982. With her family she fled the conflict resulting from the American War in Vietnam – like many others, by crossing the Mekong River on her mother’s back. After living in refugee camps within Thailand’s borders, Pao and her family were sent to the United States in 1986.

In conversation with Her’s images are Wechsler’s photographs. They are evidence of Wechsler’s attempts to understand and ultimately take responsibility for the continued bloodshed of the United Sates. She visits museums, sites of death, and locations of memorial in Laos and Southeast Asia to have a glimpse into how the United State’s wars are felt after they are “finished.” Wechsler also engages in military archives in the US to visualize state sanctioned impacts of these wars. Friends and collaborators, Her and Wechsler met through the MFA photography program at Yale. Together Her and Wechsler visited Laos, where they initiated a conversation that both dissected and complicated their different relationships to the global impact of the war. This show is the first physical manifestation of their ongoing dialogue.

Pao Houa Her was born in 1982 in Laos, and was raised in Saint Paul, MN. She currently lives in the Twin Cities region. She received a MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2012 and a BFA in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2009. Her received a Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists in 2013 and was awarded Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2009 and 2012. She also received an Alice Kimball Fellowship in 2012.

Sadie Wechsler (born in Seattle) received a BA from Bard College in 2007 and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013. Her work has been show nationally and internationally and was included in Format Festival England and Beijing. She has been included in group shows at Aperture Gallery, Belfast School of Art, Photoville, and Newspace Center for Photography, and has had solo shows at DeSoto Gallery and Gallery 4Culture. Wechsler has received the Delivan grant from Bard College and the smArt Ventures Grant from the City of Seattle. She has been an artist in residence at Anderson Ranch Art Center and the Arctic Circle Expedition. In 2016, she self-published her first monograph Part I: Redo and her work can be found in the collections of the Yale University Library, the Hammer Art Museum, the Getty Research Institute and the King County Portable Collection.

ARTS at King Street Station is a new kind of cultural space where communities of color have increased opportunities to present their work and be seen and heard. Grounded in community leadership, the public programming and cultural space on the third floor of King Street Station are incubators for artists and communities, experimenting with the best ways to respond to the cultural needs of an ever-changing city. A cohort of King Street Station Advisors select and respond to community exhibition and programming ideas. ARTS’ goal for King Street Station is to be a resource for the city and the embodiment of the Office’s commitment to racial equity. Admission is free, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm, First Thursdays, 10 am – 8 pm.

New Arts Integration Professional Development Series

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The Creative Advantage is excited to announce a new Arts Integration Professional Development Series.

These workshops highlight integrating various arts disciplines into a variety of content areas and are open to all SPS staff. There are spaces reserved for arts partners on a first come first served basis.

The series kicks off on January 14th at Franklin High School:

  • Visual Arts + STEM for K-5 Educators with Arts Impact (Jan 14th)
  • Ethnic Studies + Theatre of the Oppressed for 6-12 with Rachel Atkins + Jennifer Dunn (Jan 14)
  • PK-3 Literacy & Theater with Book-It (TBD Feb)
  • Language Arts/Social Studies + Radio/Podcasting with KUOW RadioActive (TBD Feb)
  • Language Arts/Social Studies + Film with SIFF (TBD Mar)
  • Cultural Representation and Appropriation with Naho Shioya (TBD April)
  • PK-3 Literacy + Visual Arts: Visual Thinking strategies with Seattle Asian Art Museum (May 9)

Below are more details on the January workshops. Please contact Tina LaPadula to inquire about space and reserve a spot.

Arts-Integration: Visual Arts + STEM for K-5 Classrooms

Tuesday, Jan 14, 4:30-7:30 pm Franklin High School

This session is for K-5 classrooms integrating Visual Arts, Science, and Engineering and is led by Arts Impact, a professional development program that trains teachers to integrate the arts into classroom content such as math, literacy, and science.

In this workshop, teachers learn foundations for arts integration and a lesson called, “Sculpture in Balance”. In the lesson, students analyze sculpture and role of sculptor as engineer. They explore paper construction techniques and design, construct, test, and optimize a standing mobile sculpture. Students revise engineering through use of a wind, drop, and earthquake tests. Last, students reflect on sculptures in a class sculpture park, and write about how their artistic engineering process reflects a growth mindset.

Ethnic Studies + Theatre of the Oppressed for Middle and High School

Tuesday, Jan 14, 4:30-7:30 pm Franklin High School

This session showcases examples of new, hyper-relevant Ethnic Studies high school curriculum related to gentrification, redlining and displacement, and is led by Theatre of the Oppressed teaching artist Rachel Atkins and Jennifer Dunn, SPS Humanities teacher and facilitator for the Center for Racial Equity.

In this workshop, teachers will step into the role of students and experience first-hand the transformative power of exploring content through Theatre of the Oppressed activities. In the lesson, students research history and current issues around gentrification, redlining, and school/ neighborhood segregation in Seattle, through text, video and discussion. They then explore their own ideas and learn about other perspectives through the theatre technique of machines: Students choose words and physical gestures to express an aspect of the policies or impact of gentrification. Students collaborate by connecting their words and gestures with others to create a machine to represent their concepts. Students use the same process to imagine potential alternatives, resistance and solutions, to transform the machine into a machine of change, and consider their own role in transformation.

The Seattle Seahawks award $53,000 to The Creative Advantage

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Group photo from the Poster Series reception at the Museum of Pop Culture (l-r): Artist Shawn Wolfe, Barry Ament, Coby Schultz, Jeff Kleinsmith, Gail Selhorst, Preston Singletary, Randy Engstrom and Gnartoons (AKA James the Stanton). Photo by Tina LaPadula

Proceeds from The Seattle Seahawks Game Day Poster Series exceeded all expectations.

On January 2, the Seahawks gave $53,000 in proceeds from the sales of eight game day posters that they commissioned local artists to create this season. The funds will be used to purchase art supplies for visual art programs and classes at Seattle schools

Each individual school has different ways to fund their annual visual arts materials needs e.g. school budget, PTA, Donor’s Choose. The Seahawks Gameday Poster Series proceeds will go to schools that have the highest needs in our district. The schools will be determined using the SPS equity index and identifying schools we know have struggled with the on-going expenses needed for a quality visual arts program.

Gail Sehlhorst, Visual and Performing Arts Manager at Seattle Public Schools
  • Preston Singletary and his tribal take on the Seahawks vs. the Bengals, photo by Tina LaPadula
  • Jeff Kleinsmith and his futuristic poster of the Seahawks vs. the Cardinals, photo by Tina LaPadula

Thank you Seattle Seahawks!

Regional Arts Festivals, Winter and Spring 2020

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Seattle Public School students asked for it, and it’s happening! Regional Arts Festivals are an opportunity to celebrate the arts learning taking place in Seattle Public Schools, highlighting visual and performing arts from schools in K-12 Creative Advantage Pathways in the Central, Southeast and Southwest K-12 Pathways.

  • Southwest Festival – Thursday, February 6th at Chief Sealth High School
  • Southeast Festival – Thursday, March 19th Rainier Beach High School
  • Central – TBD

General Format

Festival-style celebrations open to all grades in the school pathway and all arts disciplines. In school work and community partners supporting work after and out of school time in that pathway. While a full slate of performances will happen in an auditorium, there will also be displays, hands-on activities and smaller ensembles or individual performances in other spaces. Adult and student emcees will manage the flow of the evening.

Community Arts Partners can be involved by:

  • Signing up to bring students for a 3-4 minute performance (performances can be choral/singing, instrumental, dance, theatre, spoken word, poetry, story-telling, visual art, projected visual art, short films or documentaries)
  • Bringing students as audience / attendees

Creative Advantage will support with:

  • Pre-festival planning and prep
  • Day of event logistics + running order
  • Tech and stage management (general mics, lighting and sound) – with support from high school students
  • Parent letter templates
  • Event marketing + communication / flier templates
  • Transportation
  • Stipends for teachers and adult mentors supporting participating youth.

If you would like your students to be celebrated in the Regional Art Festivals or know of students who would be interested in joining the student youth committee please contact our RAF Manager, Masao Yamada, at masao.yamada-c@seattle.gov

Huge thanks to Paul G. Allen Family Foundation for supporting this new endeavor.

Emerging Artist Sarah Thompson Moore selected for the Alki Pump Station Public Art Project

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The Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS), in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), selected emerging artist Sarah Thompson Moore to develop site-specific, site-integrated permanent artwork that will be incorporated into the restored ground plane of the Alki Pump Station.  The Alki Pump Station is located on the 1411 Alki Ave SW adjacent to the beach and serves an important function to address and limit combined-sewer overflows.  The artist noted that the popular waterfront location allows her to “design an experience that will heighten the viewer’s sense of the surrounding environment and the history of the site while also drawing connections to the human/water relationship and SPU’s role in maintaining that relationship.” Thompson Moore will work with the project team, and community members to develop, fabricate, and install artwork that is expected to be installed in early 2021. 

The Alki Pump Station Project is intended to improve the existing pump station to meet the needs of the growing area, improvements include upgrades to mechanical, electrical, structural, and civil elements below ground and restore sidewalk, pavement, and landscaping areas above ground. The project will address the health and safety needs of the neighborhood as well as provide an opportunity for public art in the community.

Sarah Thompson Moore was born in Eastern Oregon and now makes her home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  Her studies have taken her to Florence, Italy and later, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she obtained her BFA in Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  A trained bronze foundry artisan and master mold-maker, Thompson Moore’s early work involved comprehensive study of the figure for which she has received awards and private commissions.  This technical background established the foundation from which she has expanded her creative practice to include more experimental materials and concepts, giving preference to the process of creating as well as to the experience of viewing.

Seattle Center Poetry Garden: Beaded Necklace

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Asia Tail (Cherokee), Beaded Necklace

October 1, 2019 – January 6, 2020

Photo credit: Asia Tail

In contemporary and historical gathering practices, Indigenous peoples from many tribes, including my own, often leave small gifts behind when harvesting. A buried bead or shell serves as a token of thanks to the land for what has been taken and records the gatherer’s presence on the site. This gifting is often accompanied by song or other sounds of acknowledgement. Jewelry is also gifted in the same way between Indigenous individuals.

My piece at the Poetry Garden embodies the Indigenous spirit of gifting and reciprocal relationship building. The string of beadwork acts as a necklace draped across the landscape, singing a song for the space and surrounding plantings.

By translating common practices from my tribe and local tribes into a temporary art installation on a colonized site, I hope to create an accessible entry point to educate the public about the continued relevance of Indigenous ecological knowledge, while paying homage to the history of the land the center sits on.

Photo credit: Asia Tail

By artist Asia Tail

POETRY GARDEN ART SERIES

The Poetry Garden Art Series is a collaboration between Seattle Center and the Office of Arts & Culture. Each year we invite artists to create works specifically designed for our Poetry Garden, asking them to create work that is responsive to the natural environment surrounding the space. Each installation is up for about 3 months. Visit the Poetry Garden often to see the latest work!

Apply for the Artists Up Mentorly Scholarship 2020

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Opens Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Closes Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Artists Up has partnered with Mentorly to launch a mentorship program for Washington artists and they have opened applications for the Artists Up Mentorly Scholarship. This scholarship is for artists living in Washington State who are looking to elevate their practice through mentorship.

If you do receive a scholarship, you will receive four one-hour-long mentor sessions. This scholarship will cover the online mentoring fee for Artists Up participants ONLY. There are several Artists Up recommended mentors available or you’re welcome to choose a mentor from Mentorly.

Artists Up is a collaborative effort between 4Culture, ArtsWA, and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. The goal of this program is to serve historically marginalized or underrepresented artists in Washington State, including artists of color, LGBTQ+ artists, artists with disabilities, artists who are new to the U.S. and Washington, mature artists, and low-income artists.

Mentorly is an online arts mentorship platform that provides opportunities to connect with emerging and professional artists from around the world. These mentors are experienced artists, representing all creative disciplines, vetted by Mentorly or Artists Up. Mentors can offer invaluable information gained from their own experiences that can help advance an artist’s career. If you would like to elevate your practice through mentorship, learn new skills, or explore a new field by receiving one-to-one coaching from another artist, then sign up now. Anyone is welcome to create a Mentorly profile and sign up for these mentorship sessions. But this scholarship application is only for those in need of financial assistance to afford this opportunity.