Pioneer Square
Pioneer Square is Seattle's oldest neighborhood and its most architecturally distinctive â Victorian-era brick warehouses that survived the 1889 Great Fire provide the most beautiful canvases in the city. The neighborhood's art galleries and studios have generated a mural culture that leans toward the serious and formally ambitious, reflecting a district where the line between street art and gallery art has always been permeable.
Featured Artists
All artists âDune
Seattle-based artist whose large-format abstract murals are influenced by Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous art traditions and natural systems. "Totem" on 1st Ave S reinterprets the formal language of Coast Salish design â its ovoid forms, U-shapes, and split-U elements â through an abstract contemporary lens that is neither appropriation nor pastiche but an attempt at cultural conversation.
Meggs
Australian artist whose graphic, typography-inflected murals have a print-like quality. "Bricks" on Occidental Ave is one of his most site-responsive pieces â a mural that literally incorporates the Victorian brick of its Pioneer Square host building into the composition, making the building's historic fabric part of the artwork rather than a background for it.
Shaun Peterson (Qwalsius)
Puyallup artist whose work in traditional Coast Salish design has appeared in museums and public spaces across the Pacific Northwest. "Coast Salish Remembrance" in Pioneer Square â the original city built on Duwamish land â is a formal artwork in traditional style that also functions as a land acknowledgment, asserting Indigenous presence in the neighborhood that displaced it.