(Street) Art in Seattle
Murals, music and other kinds of art in Seattle
The first thing Charlie noticed on the train from the airport into Seattle was Mount Rainier. The second thing was the overwhelming amount of murals. It was impossible to get a picture from the train though. Charlie knew she was onto something.
Since 1973, for every capital building project in Seattle, 1% of the budget goes into an arts fund. You will see the impact of that as you walk through Seattle. In 2024 for example, the city hired 50 artists to do murals in several places in the city. Charlie only spotted a few of them.
Since 2008 and in relation to economic downturn, there are pop-up art installations in storefronts. One of them can be seen in an abandoned shop window near Union Station.
Another example of the favourable nature of Seattle towards the arts is the fact that kids have access to all kinds of musical instruments in school. Parents don’t need to spend a fortune on an instrument for their child to learn. That is no surprise in the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix and grunge music, namely Nirvana. You can learn more about both at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop).
Art in different areas of Seattle
Let’s start with the heart of the city, Pioneer Square. As you walk around the area, you will notice several art galleries and coffee shops that display art. There’s a history to that.
In the late 60s, Pioneer Square was an economically deprived area and it was cheap to live there which attracted many artists. Today, it is no longer a cheap area, but the art remained. There is one building where the city provides subsidized art studios to keep the artistic spirit of Pioneer Square alive, the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts (also called TK building). Artists live and work from there and you can enjoy regular performances and exhibitions.
Ballard and Fremont
North of Down Town Seattle are the districts of Ballard and Fremont. Ballard was historically a fishing town and still has a huge marina where apparently, you can find the best fish restaurants. Fremont was historically a logging area. When Pioneer Square became too expensive for artists to live, Ballard and Fremont took its place and attracted many of them. That is still visible today as there is a large number of street art and murals in both areas. Once again, Charlie did only see them from a bus and it was impossible to get a good shot, unfortunately.
The Fremont Arts Council organizes many events throughout the year, the biggest one is probably the solstice parade in June. In Ballard, it is the Ballard Art Collective, a group of artists, that keep the spirit in this neighbourhood alive.
One thing that also becomes obvious in this area is that homeowners like to spread art. There are quite a few commissioned murals on private property and most of them are facing towards the public side.
Every year in August, there is an event in Ballard called “Art in the Garden”. Local artists can exhibit their work while owners of the so-called P-Patches (community gardens) celebrate community gardening.
Street Art by Henry
It seems that the street artist you’ll see the most of in Seattle is Henry, Ryan Henry Ward. He even offers his own street art tour in a colourful bus!
His murals are very recognizable as they all follow his unique style that was born out of his background as a cartoonist, a mix of spray paint and brush and the experiences he made travelling Nepal, India and South Africa. He inspires residential customers and there are a few hundred of his art works in several places in the city. Apart from murals, he also made sculptures for the iconic Flatstick Pubs in Seattle.
Henry paints in the moment without a stencil and he adapts his pieces to the buildings they’re on always whilst maintaining his own unique style. At the building of a dance school for example, he added some dancing starfish and the mural at the house of an Egyptian family shows a camel and hieroglyphs. His most famous figure though is the Sasquatch (also known as Bigfoot) that he adapted from local mythology and refined over time.
Henry also has an art gallery at the waterfront, opposite the Seattle Aquarium and the Miners Landing. If you want to, you can take some of his art home.
A note on music in Seattle
What would an article about art in Seattle be without mentioning music? The city is proud of its most famous sons, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, and it is the birthplace of grunge music. It also has a strong history of blues and Jazz.
The best place to learn more about it is the Museum of Pop Culture. Next to a guitar gallery, you can learn about the travels of Jimi Hendrix and the rise (and fall) of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. Charlie felt so inspired that she even added a book to her digital nomad luggage, a biography of Cobain.
Not far from the MoPop is KEXP radio, a popular radio station in Seattle where grunge music remains alive. There is a spacious coffee shop where they do live performances and that is mostly used for coworking during the day. If you like rock music while you work, it is the place to be. Charlie loved it!
Throughout the year, there are more than 100 festivals in Seattle and a lot of them are about music and arts. The most famous are probably the Northwest Folklife Festival, Bumbershoot and Capitol Hill Block Party. If that isn’t enough, there is the annual Sasquatch Music Festival just a bit outside Seattle.
