Tag Archives: art

The Central District’s missing Terry Furchgott mural

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The new post office is located in Seattle’s Central District on 23rd Ave and E Union, reopening in September 2020 after a 20-month closure (Image: Sarah Goh)

By Sarah Goh, UW News Lab/Special to CHS

In 1995, Seattle artist Terry Furchgott painted a six panel mural for the United States Postal Service. Her artwork hung behind the main counter of Seattle’s Central District post office on the southeast corner of 23rd and Union.

When the branch closed to make room for a new development in January 2019, the paintings disappeared. In the new location across the street, the wall behind the main counter remains bare.

“I really miss those paintings,” Central District neighbor Amy Hagopian said. “I thought they really captured the heart and soul of the Central District. What happened to them?”

Hagopian is not the only customer wondering where these paintings went. Furchgott herself had lost track of her mural as well. According to Ramanda Johnson, who has worked at the USPS Central District branch for 23 years, customers frequently ask her where these murals have gone.

“They were meaningful,” Johnson said. “It was a talking point for a lot of people who were from the original neighborhood.” Continue reading →

‘Enough is Enough’ — Seattle adds second Black Lives Matter street mural

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(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle has a new Black Lives Matter mural.

The new art stretches along the sidewalk of 4th Ave below Seattle City Hall, and, like its Capitol Hill counterpart, will be “a long-term installation that will remain in place for years” and will be “regularly maintained by the Seattle Department of Transportation.”

CHS reported here on the city’s pledge for long-term maintenance of the large Black Lives Matter mural that stretches across E Pine south of Cal Anderson and was painted by community artists and activists during the CHOP protests. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill Community Post | Aloha Community Art Museum Exhibit Opening Tonight

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(Image: Aloha Community Art Museum)

From the Aloha Community Art Museum

Starting this week the Aloha Community Art Museum will be exhibiting watercolor paintings by Lulu Anderson, with an opening gala on Friday, September 24th from 7 to 8:30 pm. In addition to having art on display, there will be live music provided by local DJ Cherry White and a limited number of prints that Lulu has generously donated for attendees to take home. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s ‘fountain mountain’ is flowing again — UPDATE

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Thanks to Sarah from the Capitol Hill Seattle Facebook group for the picture

A nearly five-month project to repair crumbling stone and the inner workings of Cal Anderson’s iconic sculptural fountain is complete.

Water is again flowing on “fountain mountain.”

Flow to the Doug Hollis-designed fountain was turned back on this week after the work project that stretched through the summer and covered the landmark in scaffolding and construction wrap.

Contractor JMS Masonry worked to strengthen the structure and apply water repellent and anti-graffiti coatings to the fountain. Seattle Parks and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture also had the trouble-prone pump system that powers the fountain repaired.

We’ve asked Seattle Parks for a final price tag on the summer overhaul and will update when we learn more. UPDATE: Parks says the fountain pump rebuild cost around $18,000 plus another $5,000 in costs for removal and installation, and a $9,500 valve replacement. Total cost of the summer’s work should come in around $35,000 — plus 200+ hours of Seattle Parks labor and work from the Office of Arts and Culture. The results on a crisp, end of summer Seattle September day? Priceless.

The fountain is a celebration of what lies beneath Cal Anderson and the creation of the neighborhood’s central park — two 6.25 million-gallon vaults full of Seattle Public Utilities drinking water. There has been a reservoir at the site for 115 years. After the state mandated that Seattle’s open water sources needed to be covered in the early 1990s, Kay Rood and community groups helped lead an effort to cap the reservoir with a park.

 

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Capitol Hill Community Post | Aloha Community Art Museum Exhibition Opening – Friday, July 30

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From the Aloha Community Art Museum

This Friday, the Aloha Community Art Museum is delighted to host the opening celebration of a solo exhibition by Friedel Fisher (@agoraborealis on Instagram). Please join us between 7 and 8:30 pm to meet the artist, view their amazing art, and enjoy some tiny snacks. Fancy dress is encouraged but not mandatory. Masks are required for all attendees who are not fully vaccinated.

Friedel Fisher is a queer, life long multi-media artist, dedicated to exploring physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries with their work, allowing creativity to be their primary guide for shadow integration, trauma mastery and creating a liminal existence outside the performativity of all binary legibilities.

The Aloha Community Art Museum (@alohaartmuseum on instagram) is located in the alley between 17th Ave E and 18th Ave E just north of E Aloha St on Capitol Hill. The museum is dedicated to encouraging creativity in everyone, and celebrates the work of local artists of all ages and experience.

 

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Give CHS a buck and support local journalism dedicated to your neighborhood. SUBSCRIBE HERE. Become a subscriber at $1/$5/$10 a month to help CHS provide community news with no paywall. You can also sign up for a one-time annual payment.

 

New Capitol Hill art gallery From Typhoon explores diaspora and belonging, scattering and transformation

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Now at From Typhoon art gallery: “POP’d” by Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, a show that examines the artist’s Filipino American identity, the American education system, and globalism. (Image: From Typhoon)

A typhoon is something you don’t want to be near. The chaos and destruction of a tropical hurricane can uproot and scatter homes, buildings, plant, animal and human life, and sometimes bring catastrophic death.

However, the creators of a new gallery in Chophouse Row are taking the idea of the typhoon and flipping it, imagining it instead as a meditation on diaspora, uprootedness, and belonging.

From Typhoon is an art gallery that explores many different experiences of scattering, remixing, and transformation.

Making their debut in mid-April, co-owners, directors, and curators J.A. Dela Cruz-Smith and Robinick Fernandez opened their gallery between Wide Eyed Wines and Marmite in Chophouse Row, in Suite B to be exact, at 1424 11th Avenue. From Typhoon was initially conceived as a digital gallery during the pandemic, but with the encouragement and approval of Capitol Hill developer Liz Dunn, From Typhoon secured a 625-square-foot physical space.

“It really came out of us wanting to connect with each other, Robinick and I, on a deeper level, as lovers and as partners,” Dela Cruz-Smith said. Continue reading →

Sold out! Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens to high demand for limited tickets

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(Image: CHS)

Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park remained a center of life through the pandemic but the energy level has increased starting with Friday’s reopening to the general public of the Seattle Asian Art Museum. But demand to see the overhauled museum and a limited schedule means you’ll need to wait a bit longer if you didn’t already make plans for reserving tickets when CHS reported on the planned reopening.

Currently, online reservations are booked up through June with the first openings coming in the last weekend of the month. SAAM remains at limited capacity, open Fridays through Sundays, 10 am–5 pm. Timed tickets will be sold online only, and future dates will be released on a rolling basis every Thursday.

The June 30th deadline for fully reopening the state and lifting COVID-19 restrictions on capacities will also hopefully bring more opportunities to visit.

Most people have never seen the overhauled and expanded Seattle Asian Art Museum in person. The Volunteer Park museum shuttered in mid-March 2020 as COVID-19 numbers climbed. Only weeks earlier that February, the building had reopened after three years of closure and construction to overhaul and expand the museum.

CHS reported earlier on the museum’s reopening plans here.

Learn more at seattleartmuseum.org.

‘Intertwined’ banners above Central District connect Seattle to Portland via 23rd Ave, MLK

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(Image: Wa Na Wari)

A new Central District project that connects Black art creativity and community across the Pacific Northwest can be seen fluttering in the breeze above 23rd Ave, E Union, S Jackson, and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

The banners of Intertwined, a new temporary public project from art center Wa Na Wari and the Seattle Art Museum, will hang above these Central District streets through April 2022 and continues an installation that first began in the Rose City featuring the work of artist Hank Willis Thomas and Portland-based artist and storyteller Intisar Abioto. Continue reading →

To get ready for Pride, City of Seattle will brighten Pike/Pine rainbow crosswalks and Black Lives Matter mural — UPDATE: Capitol Hill in-person Pride celebrations planned for late summer and October

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A Pride tradition is scheduled to start this week on the streets of Pike/Pine. Crews from the Seattle Department of Transportation will be out to restore the neighborhood’s rainbow crosswalks. The round of street maintenance will also mean a cleaning for the E Pine Black Lives Matter mural added to the street during CHOP.

The SDOT activity will brighten up the elleven rainbow crosswalks up and down E Pike and E Pine as well as include work to refresh the large BLM mural just south of Cal Anderson Park.

UPDATE: Organizers have announced Seattle Pride celebrations will take place in October. Another celebration focused on Capitol Hill will happen later this summer.

Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Scaffolding covers Cal Anderson’s Waterworks, a symbol of what lurks below

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Work began this weekend to restore the Waterworks fountain in Cal Anderson, leaving the crumbling stone and cement structure covered in scaffolding, plywood, and tarps.

While the city enjoyed a bout of Seattle hot temperatures in the 70s, the fountain continued its long dry spell as contractors began the process of pulling the surface of the sculpture apart piece by piece to strengthen the structure, figure out what is wrong in the inner workings of the fountain, and, hopefully, get the whole thing pumping again. Continue reading →