In search of inspiration and connection? Check out your neighborhood museums with a Capitol Hill poet

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Wyeth’s Winter 1946 — North Carolina Museum of Art

Baugher

A neighborhood poet wants you to know about the halls of creativity available to you around Capitol Hill.

Capitol Hill resident and poet Janée Baugher has received the Dorset Prize awarded to an author that “exemplifies innovation, depth, and a unique perspective on the human experience.” Baugher says she gains that perspective from visiting area museums. Fortunately, the area around Capitol Hill has halls rich with beauty and creativity in spaces like the Frye and the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park.

Fellow artists’ works serve as inspiration for her craft, and she describes visual arts as a creative outlet of self expression without having to focus on herself. Baugher’s winning collection, The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles, is inspired by the work of Andrew Wyeth. She feels his art embodies the concept of the shared  human emotional experience. Launching her to the blank page, Baugher has built this collection as a way to answer why and how she’s felt so moved by Wyeth’s work.

A visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2006 introduced Baugher to Wyeth. His works stand out to her for their profound ability to evoke emotion through his use of realism. Wyeth focused on the ordinary people of Pennsylvania and Maine, finding beauty and significance in the everyday.

“I turned to the visual arts as a way of extinguishing the personality,” says Baugher. Viewing Wyeth’s art allowed her to step away and into the greater realm of human emotion. Continue reading →

This week in CHS history | The Cramp returns, CC’s first to require vax proof, RIP Broadway Urban Outfitters

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Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2023

 

The HoneyHole emails: a fired employee, thousands of dollars in rotten meat, and a Capitol Hill sandwich legend struggling with staffing and management issues — UPDATE


Continue reading →

CHOP Salad: Yes, a Sweetgreen really is opening at 11th and Pine

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(Image: Sweetgreen)

(Image: CHS)

11th and Pine was the battleground for some of the most intense clashes between police and demonstrators during the CHOP occupied protest. Four years later, it will be the turf of two warriors of the fast-casual restaurant start-up struggle.

Salad chain Sweetgreen has made a splashy start of its preparations to finally open on Capitol Hill with signage and posters plastered across the corner’s windows some three years after CHS first reported its plans for 11th and Pine. Continue reading →

Bike Everywhere Day on Capitol Hill includes calls for city to act ASAP to address safety issues with new Pike/Pine traffic flows

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CHS has been working on a larger story we hope to publish soon about the problems and what the city is going to do about them — but here’s a quick Bike Everywhere Day boost to the calls for city leaders and the Seattle Department of Transportation to act immediately to address the half-baked safety measures around the partially completed changes making Pike and Pine into one-way streets between Capitol Hill and downtown and the new bike lanes installed as part of the project.

CHS reported here on the construction challenges for the area from the project underway between I-5 and Bellevue Ave wrapping up 18 months of scheduled work changing the streets to one-way vehicular traffic and installing new bike lane protections.

Those challenges have now transitioned into day to day use challenges as the new traffic flow has opened and bicyclists are funneled into the designs despite missing signs and construction equipment blocking lanes. Continue reading →

Seattle Fire helps family escape blaze, saves 1895-built Central District apartment building

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(Image: Seattle Fire)

A family narrowly escaped and two firefighters were injured as they were able to save the structure after a fire broke out Thursday evening in a 129-year-old apartment building part of a historic commercial row along 25th Ave S.

Seattle Fire says firefighters at nearby Station 6 noticed smoke coming from the 1895-built building in the 2600 block of S Jackson around 5:45 PM: Continue reading →

Suspect charged with second degree murder in Capitol Hill Station stabbing

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The King County Prosecutor’s office has announced it has charged the suspect in Saturday’s deadly stabbing on the Capitol Hill Station train platform with second degree murder and intimidating a witness.

Shawn Patrick Moore, 26, was jailed following his arrest Monday by a U.S. Marshals task force that tracked him down in Eatonville.

Police and prosecutors says Moore killed Corey Bellett in a fight sparked when the Harry’s Fine Foods chef brushed by Moore and another man on the light rail escalator as the restaurant worker was on his way to catch a train home after a Saturday brunch shift. Continue reading →

Inside 12th Ave’s NOD Theater, eXit Space School of Dance has taken a leap of faith on Capitol Hill

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(Image: eXit SPACE)

(Image: eXit SPACE)

While many Seattle arts organizations were hit hard during the pandemic, eXit SPACE School of Dance took a leap of faith, investing in a theater space on Capitol Hill — now the lively and flourishing NOD Theater.

Celebrating its 20th year next season, eXit SPACE began in a 900-square-foot space and now spans three studios including 12th Ave’s NOD Theater and offers over 80 classes a week.

“This space was so meaningful to our community for decades, and it was important to us to keep it open and accessible to the arts in Seattle.” said faculty member Karen Baskett.

NOD Theater was formerly home to Velocity Dance which opted to leave Capitol Hill prior to the pandemic looking for a more affordable base for its works. In a desire to preserve this space that provided an affordable place to perform and  a pillar of their community, eXit artistic director and owner Marlo Martin took a chance and signed the lease.

The theater has a long history in the dance community of Seattle and has been a home to a number of arts organizations. Continue reading →

District schedules Central District-Capitol Hill meeting for proposed school closures for Memorial Day weekend — UPDATE: Rescheduled

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Seattle Public Schools is holding a series of community meetings to present its plans to shutter 20 elementary campuses across the city to address budget woes and, the district says, establish “a new foundation of stability and consistency that our students and staff need to thrive.”

The meetings will take place throughout May and June. The meeting for communities around the Central District and Capitol Hill has been scheduled, surprisingly, on Memorial Day weekend. UPDATE: The district has rescheduled the meeting to Thursday, May 30th:

“Our goal is that all schools would include the elements that many of our families, staff, and students said were important during the Well-Resourced Schools Engagement Sessions last fall and earlier this spring,” SPS chief of staff Bev Redmond writes.

CHS reported here on the Seattle School Board’s vote approving a plan from superintendent Brent Jones to consolidate the system’s elementary school campuses from 70 to 50 based on the district’s “Well-resourced Schools” framework it says has been shaped by public feedback and establishes a base level of resources that should be available on every campus including the number of teachers per grade level and additional resources like “education intensive service classrooms.” Continue reading →

Now hiring: Cal Anderson Park Alliance seeks ‘activation manager’ to shepherd gatherings and events in park and plaza

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Capitol Hill Garage Sale Day 2023

As a coalition calls on city officials to do more to address safety and drug crimes around the core of Broadway, Pike/Pine, and Cal Anderson, the nonprofit formed to help maintain and improve the beloved but challenged city park is looking for someone to fill a new role to keep the public space active and fun for every type of visitor.

The Cal Anderson Park Alliance has announced it is hiring a manager for a pilot activation program that it hopes will bring events and activities to the Cal Anderson Shelterhouse and the nearby Cathy Hillenbrand Community Room located in the Station House affordable housing building above Capitol Hill Station just north of the park. The program will also help keep the AIDS Memorial Plaza above the station busy with activities beyond its role hosting the weekly farmers markets.

CAPA says the Activation Manager will “coordinate community use and programming of these spaces, as well as Cal Anderson Park and the Capitol Hill Station Plaza” working with community members, the CAPA Board, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Parks Foundation, and nearby property management to coordinate activities and the use of the park and community spaces.” Continue reading →

Seattle City Hall shaping new nude and neighbor-friendly policy for Denny Blaine Park

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Hundreds of supporters won the right to “Keep Denny Blaine Nude” last year and push back on a misguided attempt by Seattle Parks to add a children’s play area at the popular clothing optional hangout on the shores of Lake Washington.

Now Seattle Parks is hoping to codify Denny Blaine nudity and shape a policy supported by the residents of the park’s affluent neighborhood and the thousands of visitors who make the park part of their Seattle summer rituals.

The department will hold a meeting Thursday night on its proposed policy updates for the park that would specify and protect the importance of being nude at Denny Blaine while also creating two zones within the green space with hopes of providing a better experience for neighbors living near the busy parks property.

It is already legal to be naked anywhere in Seattle. The city’s archaic lewd conduct law crumbled thanks to a 1980s couple who got busted skinny dipping at Madison Park Beach and successfully sued City Hall. Continue reading →