Capitol Hill
Seattle's Capitol Hill has long been the city's LGBTQ+ and arts hub, and its murals reflect both with rare directness. The neighborhood's walls were transformed during the summer of 2020, when the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ/CHOP) produced an explosion of spontaneous community art that remains one of the most significant murals as political act moments in recent American history.
Featured Artists
All artists →CHAZ Community Collective
In June 2020, following the Seattle Police Department's withdrawal from a six-block area of Capitol Hill, community artists painted "Black Lives Matter" in massive yellow letters across E Pine Street. The resulting artwork — created by hundreds of individual painters over two days — became one of the most photographed images of the 2020 protest summer and a landmark in the history of public art as political action.
Lyla Fujiwara
Japanese-American Seattle artist whose mural practice centers queer joy and Asian American visibility. "Fierce Joy" on Broadway was commissioned for the 2021 Capitol Hill Pride season — a 40-foot celebration of queer Asian femme identity that explicitly pushes back against the sorrowful register of much LGBTQ+ memorial art in favor of something unapologetically exuberant.
Andrew Schoultz
Bay Area artist with a strong Seattle presence whose dense, tapestry-like murals weave together natural and urban imagery in complex visual narratives. "The Hill Remembers" on Olive Way documents Capitol Hill's arts history — the clubs, galleries, record stores, and community spaces that defined the neighborhood's identity from the 1980s grunge scene through the 2010s tech boom.